Sir, - The doctrine of transubstantiation became a dogma of the Church only in 1215 during the Fourth Lateran Council. What was the situation before that?
Did Jesus Christ really share his body and blood with his disciples during the Last Supper (changing the bread into the substance of his body and the wine into the substance of his blood, to use the words adopted in 1215) or was he just treating the bread and the wine as a symbol for his passion and resurrection?
Why did he also pass the host and the wine to Judas Iscariot, knowing that Judas would betray him? Wasn't he very generous and broad-minded in doing so?
Why did not the Church show the same kind of generosity and broadness of mind when it came to the interpretation of Christ's command to remember his passion and death by breaking the bread and drinking the wine? The opinion that the bread and the wine by the act of consecration are changed ("conversio") into the body and blood of Christ dates mainly from the ninth century (Paschasius Radbertus), was mainly defended by invoking the distinction (by the pre-Christian Greek philosopher Aristoteles) between substance and accidence, and was vehemently opposed by other theologians (e.g. Berengarius of Tours).
After it became a dogma of the Church in 1215, it never enjoyed general adherence (e.g. John Wycliffe in the 14th century and in his footsteps many others who in their efforts to reform the church met with so much intolerance that in the end a schism was the only way out; hence the Reformation).
Why has the institutionalised Church to be a straitjacket, particularly when Jesus Christ himself and the early Church did not impose such a straitjacket upon their flocks? Why should honest Christians who recognise brothers and sisters in Christ outside their institutionalised church and have a strong desire to share the bread and the wine with them be condemned?
Would not every church be a much happier place if primarily based on love, generosity and charity instead of on dogmas and laws invented by some human beings in the course of its history and imposed on other human beings under threat of hell and eternal damnation? - Yours, etc.,
From Maureen Fox
Lismore, Co Waterford.