"And no one during all this time [the first thousand years of Christianity] thought of denying the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. It was reserved for Berengarius in the year 1088 formally to deny it - a denial which was later recanted. It has been only since the beginning of the sixteenth century that the world has devitalized religion, made the Church a structure, and the Bread of Life only a figure and a symbol. But in the Church - the Mystic Body of Christ - there has been an undying loyalty to the Eucharistic Presence, not only in the most humble tabernacle of a foreign mission, but also in the great jubilee demonstration of a Eucharistic Congress. It is the Eucharist that makes the difference."
-Fulton J. Sheen
Ma non è vero. Solo intorno al 1150 la Chiesa assunse una posizione netta circa la presenza reale, e non simbolica, di Gesù nell'ostia e nel vino consacrati. L'orientamento della Chiesa, però, non venne accettato dalla totalità dei fedeli, e, nei decenni a seguire, si susseguirono accesi dibattiti, anche fra membri del clero, circa la presenza reale o simbolica di Gesù, producendo in larga parte della popolazione enormi folle di dubbiosi. E siamo nel mediovo, ben prima del XVI secolo!
ReplyDeletePrince Philip once said that after death he hoped to return as a deadly disease that would wipe out half the human population. It will take a lot to convert that one.
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