July/Aug 2000 - As Received

As Received
By Our Readers

Ding! ding! ding! ding! Envoy arriving . . .
My name is Albert Romero and I am a sailor on board a naval ship in the U.S. Pacific fleet: USS BOXER LHD-4. I am a recent convert to the Catholic faith from the Protestant faith. I met a Catholic apologist on board the ship and he told me all that I needed to know. It was a very hard conversion for me. Painful. He introduced me to the magazine Envoy. I looked at it and saw that it was very informative and educational. Thank God! I recommend this magazine to anyone who wants to know more about his or her faith. To anyone one who wants to defend the Catholic faith, I also recommend this four-star magazine.
Albert Romero, USS BOXER LHD-4

Christmas in July?
Keep up the good work. You’re doing a great job! My husband and I are in the process of converting and it’s wonderful to have such a great source of Catholic information and entertainment. Your humor is great! In fact, we are sending gift subscriptions to some of our Protestant friends. We just bought a subscription to Envoy after purchasing the last three issues at a Catholic bookstore. Is it possible to purchase back issues? We’d like to have the entire Envoy collection in our library. Thanks again for your ministry!
Jenn and Marty Rothwell, via email

Looking for love in all the right places
I visited your website and found three choices for “magazine covers,” one such cover with Christ on the cross and the title “How Many Times Does He Have to Die?” Where can I get this article? I’m attending Ursuline College, majoring in Religious Studies, and taking a class this semester on Christology. It’s great! We are predominantly Catholic, but there are a few Baptists, those undisclosed types, and one woman who is Jewish. We’re on break this week, but in our last class we had an amazing discussion on just this topic.
Kitt Lenington, via email

[To obtain back issues, call 1-800-55-ENVOY, or check them out on our website by clicking here. The issue in question, however, has not been archived yet.]

Don't try this at home
I am a faithful and most grateful reader of your magazine. I just get that warm and fuzzy feeling inside from reading your magazine because it is so in tune with the Church and the issues affecting Catholics today. (I almost have to drink a bottle of Nair after each issue to calm the feeling!) I have a son who will be starting his junior year of high school in the fall. We would like to begin taking him on tours of Catholic colleges this summer, but we don’t really know which ones to take him to. Can you recommend a list of good, orthodox colleges where he would receive positive influence and formation? I know there is the Franciscan University at Steubenville, but that is the only one with which I am at all familiar.
Rhonda Dickson, Portland, Texas

Come back, Mr. Winchurch!
I especially enjoyed reading Brian Paul’s response to James Win-church (“And Another Thing,” September/ October 1999). It was both informative and charitable, without the defensiveness that came so naturally to my mind at reading Mr. Win-church’s comments about the Catholic Church.

However, I find myself needing to ask Mr. Win-church: Did you see it as everyone else’s responsibility to change things in your lifeless Catholic parish? Obviously you saw a problem when you “went to Mass, sat there, took the Eucharist and left.” Perhaps if you’d stayed and fixed something, you would have been able to add the missing element to your church. Instead, you did both your parish and yourself a disservice in leaving the Church. Consider this question from Rosalind Moss on her tape “Holy Shock”: When you were a Catholic, did you believe the Eucharist was truly the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ? If so, how could you leave it? Could you leave Jesus Christ for warm fellowship, solid Scripture study?

Take a second look, Mr. Winchurch. Study the doctrine, and then if you see a lifeless parish, share with them what you have learned, so that they may share in your joy. We need people like you to come back to the Church. The Eucharist is not only enough; if it is properly understood, it is the source of all the rest.
Margaret Lashinsky, Emlenton, Pennsylvania

[James Winchurch has since returned to the Catholic Church. The account of his return appeared in “As Received,” March/April 2000.]

Focusing on the Catholics
For several years, I have received Focus on the Family (free of charge) and my children have subscribed to Brio (from the same group) for a small donation. They had some solid Christian stories for young teens, although our daughters took some parts of their evangelism as not quite in step with our Catholic ways, as I did.

Recently, I read in Focus on the Family (April issue) about their group working in conjunction with other churches to evangelize in Italy during the Jubilee. I was offended that these Christian groups would distribute literature (even a child’s magazine called Jubilo) to Catholics on this special holy pilgrimage. They stated they are doing this with “Italy for Christ.” I read this group’s website, and if I am not mistaken, they feel Catholics have it all wrong on this pilgrimage to Rome during the Jubilee, and they are out to save us.

Please help me better understand Focus on the Family’s motives as well as “Italy for Christ.” I felt we were all Christians working together, and now I feel these groups have other ideas. (In addition to Envoy, I subscribe to Catholic Parent, and they have referred to Focus on the Family on occasion in a positive light with regard to literature they recommend.)
Debbie Peterson, Whitefish, Montana

F.M. is tuned in
I just stumbled upon your article “More Vicarious Thrills: The Numbers of the Beast and the Men who Flub Them”. Thank you; I am re-energized. Yours is the kind of analytical exploration and thinking I’ve longed for from Catholics at large (principally, local clergy), but continually fail to encounter. Regrettably, the “themes du jour” appear to focus on “reconciliation” and attrition (as in how to prevent it).

Well, the truth is that all of a sudden I find myself as “reconciled” as I need to be, having failed at my attempts to be passed off as an atheist and agnostic over the past fifteen years. Not surprisingly, my journey has brought me full circle. Still, I’ll need a little more than folk songs and deference to the politically correct to make a responsible go of it. Accordingly, I look forward to subscribing to your magazine and exploring your articles.
F.M. Davila-Vilchez, via email

Need Subtitle for this Letter
In her letter “Form over Substance?”, Mrs. Deborah Cochran expresses understandable concern and confusion over Fr. Brian Wilson’s statement that the bread and wine really and sacramentally “but not physically” become the Body and Blood of Christ. At first, it may sound like a denial of the Real Presence. However, Fr. Wilson is technically correct.

This traditional formulation of doctrine goes back at least to St. Thomas Aquinas. The term “physically” (Gk. phusike) is used here in its strict philosophical sense to mean “in a natural way or manner.” Neither the Body nor the Blood of Christ come to be at the consecration in the way in which flesh and blood ordinarily come to be by any natural cause or process. They come to be by the spoken words of the priest, that is, sacramentally, not physically. Even at the Last Supper, Our Lord's Body and Blood were physically present in Him, but not physically present in the bread and wine He consecrated, at least not in the same sense.

Once the Body and Blood come to be in this sacramental, non-physical way, they are present under the accidents of bread and wine in a real, true and substantial way.
Kevin G. Long, Director
Leonine Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies
Arlington, VA

Is it really?
While visiting relatives for Christmas, I read an issue (Nov/Dec 1999) of your magazine for the first time. I was shocked to see the heretical answer (p. 49) that Fr. Wilson gave to a question about the Eucharist. He states, “The bread and wine really — not physically, but sacramentally — become the Body and Blood of Christ.”

This is an erroneous statement. At the moment of consecration the bread and wine physically become the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ, though they usually retain the same appearances. However, over the last two hundred years there have been some miraculous occasions when the appearances also changed so that all or part of the Host visibly took on the appearance of flesh and blood.

The first and best known of these Eucharistic miracles was at an obscure village, Lanciano, in southeastern Italy. In 1970-71 and in 1981, modern tests of the Lanciano Host proved that it consists of human heart muscle and that the Blood that dripped from the Host is of type AB (the same as the shroud of Turin). The Lanciano Eucharistic miracle has miraculously still not completely decayed after more than twelve hundred years. It can be viewed on the website of the Sanctuary in Lanciano run by the Franciscans at: http://www.cmns.mnegri.it/lanciano/eucharistic_miracle. Beautiful color brochures picturing the Lanciano miracle can be obtained from Sanctuario del Miracolo Eucaristico, Frati Minori Conventuali, 66034 Lanciano (CH) Italy. Their telephone and fax number is (0872) 713189.
Marc Victor Ruessmann, Michigan

The Editor replies:
I do appreciate your taking time to express your disagreement with Fr. Wilson’s remarks in his Q&A column. Fr. Wilson’s response that Christ is “sacramentally” present in the Holy Eucharist conforms to the specific language used by the Church over the centuries. The confusion arises here with the use of the word “physically.”
The Council of Trent, in its precise theological teachings, avoided the use of the term “physically present.” (You won’t find the word “physical” used in any of the canons or decrees of Trent’s teachings on the Eucharist, though you will find “sacramental” used frequently.) Similarly, the Catechism also avoids using the term “physically present” to explain this dogma, relying instead on the classic terms “really,” “substantially,” and “sacramentally” present. The Catechism is relying on the theological vocabulary worked out by earlier councils and magisterial teachings — none of which employ the term “physical” to express Christ’s real presence in the Sacrament.
The terms “sacramentally and really present” do include the substance of Christ’s Body and Blood, though not the outward form and appearance of them (what the theologians call the “accidents” of His Body and Blood). These “physical” accidents, as we might call them, which we perceive with our senses, are those of the bread and wine, which were transubstantiated into the true and actual substance of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Whether Christ’s real presence in the Sacrament is “physical” depends on how we choose to define “physical,” since the Magisterium hasn’t defined this term for us as a way of speaking about the matter. Some orthodox Catholic writers have used the word in this regard, and if we use it in the popular sense of “material” or “corporeal,” then the Church does in fact affirm such a “physical” presence. On the other hand, if we define the term in such a way that we would argue against a “physical” presence, then we must make clear that in doing so we don’t mean to imply that the presence is merely “spiritual,” “symbolic,” or “psychological.”
Below are some representative citations from the Council of Trent and the Catechism to illustrate my point and Father Wilson’s use of terminology. (I’ve emphasized some of the text using bold type.)
In spite of the confusion in this matter over Eucharistic terminology, I do hope you will give Envoy a chance and become a subscriber. I think you’ll find that the magazine is one you would enjoy reading on a regular basis. And even if you don’t wish to subscribe, I hope you will please remember us in your prayers. Many thanks.
Patrick Madrid
The Council of Trent:
“On the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.
“In the first place, the holy Synod teaches, and openly and simply professes, that, in the august sacrament of the holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things. For neither are these things mutually repugnant, that our Savior Himself always sitteth at the right hand of the Father in heaven, according to the natural mode of existing, and that, nevertheless, He be, in many other places, sacramentally present to us in his own substance, by a manner of existing, which, though we can scarcely express it in words, yet can we, by the understanding illuminated by faith, conceive, . . . etc.” (Session 13, 1).
“CANON I. If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema.”
“CANON VIII. If any one saith, that Christ, given in the Eucharist, is eaten spiritually only, and not also sacramentally and really; let him be anathema.”
St. Thomas Aquinas:
St. Thomas also avoided using the term “physically present” in his discussions of Christ’s Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. He uses the terms “sacramental” and “substantial” to explain the doctrine. In his treatise on the Eucharist in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas said:
“I answer that, The eye is of two kinds, namely, the bodily eye properly so-called, and the intellectual eye, so-called by similitude. But Christ’s body as it is in this sacrament cannot be seen by any bodily eye. First of all, because a body which is visible brings about an alteration in the medium, through its accidents. Now the accidents of Christ’s body are in this sacrament by means of the substance; so that the accidents of Christ’s body have no immediate relationship either to this sacrament or to adjacent bodies; consequently they do not act on the medium so as to be seen by any corporeal eye. Secondly, because, as stated above (1, ad 3; 3), Christ’s body is substantially present in this sacrament. But substance, as such, is not visible to the bodily eye, nor does it come under any one of the senses, nor under the imagination, but solely under the intellect, whose object is “what a thing is” (De Anima iii). And therefore, properly speaking, Christ’s body, according to the mode of being which it has in this sacrament, is perceptible neither by the sense nor by the imagination, but only by the intellect, which is called the spiritual eye” (Part 3, q. 76).
The Catechism on the sacramental presence of Christ in the Eucharist:
“In the epiclesis, the Church asks the Father to send His Holy Spirit (or the power of his blessing) on the bread and wine, so that by His power they may become the body and blood of Jesus Christ and so that those who take part in the Eucharist may be one body and one spirit (some liturgical traditions put the epiclesis after the anamnesis).
In the institution narrative, the power of the words and the action of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, make sacramentally present under the species of bread and wine Christ’s body and blood, his sacrifice offered on the cross once for all” (par. 1353).
“The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as ‘the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.’ In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.” This presence is called ‘real’ — by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present” (par 1374).
“Since Christ is sacramentally present under each of the species, communion under the species of bread alone makes it possible to receive all the fruit of Eucharistic grace” (par. 1390).
“It is highly fitting that Christ should have wanted to remain present to His Church in this unique way. Since Christ was about to take His departure from His own in His visible form, He wanted to give us His sacramental presence . . .” (par. 1380).

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