But it still just boils down to transubtantiation or consubstantiation, doesn’t it?
You’re either eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood, or you’re not. That’s what all the arguments for the last thousand years have been about, despite all the extra words.

Oh, so you mean that all of the interfaith, hand-holding, Kumbaya-singing ecclesial “community” in which silly little matters like doctrine would no longer divide us stuff of the last fifty years was just a bad dream that we need
that we need to wake ourselves up from.  It never really happened, and Bobby is in the shower.  Sorry, but I don’t buy it!  Not for a moment!

This is classic Revolutionary manuevering--now that everything is completely different, let’s restore everyone’s peace of mind by saying that nothing has really changed.  Business as usual . . .

And what would you rather have happen, Mary?  Would you rather that nothing change, and the Pope Benedict simply put his seal of approval on all the things that he has referred to as the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture”?

This is an important document--as important as Summorum Pontificum (doctrinally, perhaps even more so).  To dismiss it as “classic Revolutionary maneuvering” indicates that something is deeply wrong--but it’s not with Pope Benedict.

Actually, Robert, it would be well worth reading the document, because it makes it clear that, in fact, it doesn’t “just boil down to transubtantiation or consubstantiation.”

From the Catholic standpoint, ecclesiology is of the utmost importance, because apostolic succession guarantees the priesthood, the priesthood guarantees the sacrament.  In other words, transubstantiation depends on the Church of Christ, properly understood.

By the way, you misunderstand “consubstantiation” (a term often incorrectly ascribed to Luther’s view of the Holy Sacrament, but he rejected it).  Consubstantiation is a scholastic term--another form of the Real Presence, in which Body and Blood are present, while bread and wine remain in substance and not simply in accidents.

In other words, those who supported the idea of consubstantiation were not denying the Real Presence.

Your reasoned, reasonable and revelatory article on the ecclesiology of the Catholic faith is, to this reader, of inestimable interest and value. For the first time, and despite myself, I am beginning to warm to the Catholic Church.

Thank you, Scott, for the ad hominum attack!  There is in fact something very deeply wrong with me I am a realist.  The two rites are absolutely NOT the same, and Benedict can’t make them so just by his words.  The Roman Rite absolutely was supressed, and saying that is never was is meaningless.He chose not to address any of the illegal supression of the Rite or the gross evils done in the name of that illegal supression, but did address some rudeness of the traditionalist.  HA!  Also is the Roman Rite is not still supressed then why can’t you say it during the Triduum?  Please, shake off the shakles of the diabolical disorientation, and see t this man for what he is:  A heritic with a revolutionary mission.

“To recapitulate, Paul teaches, not the resurrection of physical bodies, but the resurrection of persons, and this not in the return of the “fleshy body” that is, the biological structure, an idea he expressly describes, as implossible ("the perishable cannot become imperishable") {author’s note N.B. what Paul actually says is that the perishable must become imperishable} but in a different form of the life of the resurrection, as shown in the risen Lord.” Ratzinger Introduction to Christianity pp 357-358.  Compare this to the Council of Trent on the resurrection of the body.  It is pure gnosticism as is the fundamental drive of all of his writings.  Have you read his books?  If you intend to follow this man (barring the possibility of a major conversion) be prepared to throw over the creed.

Sorry I’m a little late, but:
Scott:
From the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia:
“Consubstantiation
This HERETICAL doctrine is an attempt to hold the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist without admitting Transubstantiation.
According to it, the substance of Christ’s Body exists together with the substance of bread, and in like manner the substance of His
Blood together with the substance of wine.
Hence the word Consubstantiation.”

There is no ‘other form’ of the Real Presence.
Consubstantiation is Heresy.

To the small but alert staff:
I’ve maybe double-posted because my name was dropped
out of the form on the original post...sorry.

Robert--everything you’ve written there is correct.  I wasn’t claiming that consubstantiation is correct; I was simply explaining where the term come from and what it means.  The Catholic Encyclopedia, far from refuting what I wrote, simply confirms it: The concept of consubstantiation does not deny the Real Presence.

You, however, had originally contrasted transubstantiation and consubstantiation not on the question of whether the former was orthdox and the latter heretical, but on the basis of “eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood, or you’re not.” That misunderstands the concept of consubstantiation.  The fact that it is heretical DOES NOT mean that it is a denial of the Real Presence, as the lines that you quoted from the Catholic Encylopedia confirm.