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Joseph PohleThe Holy EucharistChapter 5

Part I, Chapter V: Speculative Discussion of the Mystery of the Real Presence

Chapter V: Speculative Discussion of the Mystery of the Real Presence

“First believe, then inquire,” must be the loadstar of all theological speculation. Fides quaerit intellectum. Though the Scholastics evolved a number of reasons why it is fit that Christ should be really and substantially present in the Holy Eucharist,1 after all is said, the human intellect, even when illumined by faith, cannot fathom the mystery nor demonstrate its intrinsic possibility. The Eucharist belongs to the category of absolute theological mysteries. Christian philosophy can do no more than refute the objections raised against the dogma and show that it is not repugnant to reason.

Unbelievers contend that the mystery of the Real Presence involves three glaring contradictions, to wit: (1) the existence of accidents without their natural subject; (2) a spiritual mode of existence on the part of a material body; and (3) the simultaneous existence of that body in many places.

We will try to refute these three objections in as many sections.

§1. First Apparent Contradiction: The Continued Existence of the Eucharistic Species Without Their Natural Subject

In order to refute the first objection, it is necessary to answer three questions, viz.: (1) Do the outward appearances of bread and wine continue to exist without the substances of bread and wine as their connatural subjects? (2) Are these appearances (accidentia sine subiecto) physical entities or mere subjective impressions? (3) Are substanceless accidents possible, and if so, how can they be explained from the philosophical point of view? The first of these questions can be answered with certainty of faith; for the second we have theological certainty only, while the third is a matter of speculation.

1. The Continued Existence of the Accidents of Bread and Wine Without Their Natural Substrata

The dogma of Transubstantiation implies that the entire substance of the bread and the entire substance of the wine are converted, respectively, into the substances of the Body and Blood of Christ, and that the conversion takes place in such a way that “only the appearances of bread and wine remain.”2 Hence, what the senses perceive after the consecration are merely the appearances without their substances.3

a) If it be further asked, whether these appearances have any subject at all in which they inhere, the answer is that they are accidentia sine subiecto and owe their continued existence to a miracle. This is not an article of faith, but it is part and parcel of the traditional teaching of the Church.4 To deny it would be tantamount to asserting that the Body of Christ supplies the substance of the bread and becomes the subject of its remaining accidents.5 This is to be rejected because the Body of Christ sustains its own accidents, both natural6 and supernatural,7 and cannot assume those of a foreign substance; and furthermore because it is both impassible and immutable, whereas the Eucharistic species are subject to change. “It is manifest,” says St. Thomas, “that these accidents are not subjected in the substance of Christ’s Body and Blood, because the substance of the human body cannot be in any way affected by such accidents; nor is it possible for Christ’s glorious and impassible Body to be altered so as to receive these qualities.”8

Since the Eucharistic Body of Christ exists in a spatially uncircumscribed and spirit-like manner,9 there is in the Holy Eucharist no substratum fit to assume quantitative and divisible accidents. Schell tried to solve this difficulty by declaring the Body of Christ to be the “metaphysical subject of the Eucharistic appearances.”10 But this brings us no nearer to a satisfactory solution of the problem. The most that could be said is that the Body of Christ is the metaphysical subject of the Eucharistic accidents in so far as it radiates a miraculous sustaining power which supports the appearances bereft of their natural substances and preserves them from collapse.

b) The position of the Church may be gathered from the definitions of the Councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Trent (1545-1563).

The Council of Constance, in its eighth session, approved by Martin V in 1418, condemned the following propositions of Wiclif: (1) “The material substance of bread and likewise the material substance of wine remain in the Sacrament of the Altar;” (2) “The accidents of the bread do not remain without a subject.”11 The first of these propositions involves an open denial of the dogma of Transubstantiation. The second was condemned as a distinct and independent thesis, not merely as a conclusion from the first.12 We may therefore sum up the teaching of the Church in this proposition, which represents the contradictory of the one condemned: “The accidents of the bread remain without a subject.”13

This interpretation of the decree of Constance is confirmed by the Council of Trent, which defines that after the consecration only “the species of bread and wine” remain.14 These species must, therefore, be accidents, and, having by Transubstantiation lost their connatural subjects, which cannot be supplied by the Body of Christ, they are clearly accidentia sine subiecto. The Roman Catechism, referring to the above-quoted Tridentine canon, tersely explains: “All the accidents of bread and wine we indeed may see; however, they inhere in no subject, but exist by themselves.”15 And: ”… as the accidents cannot inhere in the Body and Blood of Christ, it remains that, in a manner altogether above the order of nature, they sustain themselves, supported by nothing else; this has been the uniform and constant doctrine of the Catholic Church.”16

2. The Physical Reality of the Eucharistic Accidents

Though such eminent theologians as Gregory of Valentia, Suarez, Vasquez, and De Lugo hold the physical reality of the Eucharistic accidents to be an article of faith, it is no more than a theological conclusion. Certain writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who inclined to Cartesianism, asserted that the Eucharistic appearances are optical delusions, phantasmagoria, or make-believe accidents. This view is derogatory to the traditional belief of the Church, as laid down in the writings of the Fathers and the Schoolmen, and in the definitions of several ecumenical councils.

a) The Fathers draw a clear-cut and sometimes even exaggerated distinction between the “visible sign” (species panis et vini) and the “invisibly present Body and Blood of Christ” (corpus et sanguis invisibiliter praesens).

Some represent the sacramental sign as a “type,” “symbol,” or “figure” of the Body of Christ. This is ambiguous, but no doubt these Fathers regarded the sacramental sign as something as objective and physical as the Body itself. When the Monophysites concluded from the fact of the conversion of the bread and wine into the Flesh and Blood of Christ that there was also a conversion of our Saviour’s humanity into His Divinity, their Catholic opponents expressly declared that the mystical symbols do not lose their proper nature through the consecration, but that it remains, and that it does not lose its sensible essence.17 Thus Theodoret in his second Dialogue tells his Monophysitic opponent: “You are caught in the net which you yourself have spread; for the mystic symbols do not lose their nature after the consecration, but remain in the figure and the sensible form of their essence; they are visible and can be seen and touched as before.”18 Had the Fathers regarded the Eucharistic species as optical delusions, they would not have used such strong language nor neglected a middle term by means of which they could have effectively combated the Monophysitic notion that the humanity of Christ is converted into His Divinity.

b) The Schoolmen unanimously inculcated the physical reality of the Eucharistic accidents and their identity before and after Transubstantiation. In taking this attitude these writers were moved by philosophical as well as theological considerations.

Descartes (1596-1650) was the first philosopher who placed the essence of corporeal substances in their actual extension and recognized only modal accidents metaphysically united with their substance. According to his theory, the Eucharistic accidents simply cannot exist without a subject, but disappear as soon as the substances of bread and wine are converted into the Body and Blood of Christ. To adapt the Catholic teaching to the “new philosophy,” some theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries declared the Eucharistic species to be delusions caused by God in the senses — the theory of apparences eucharistiques invented by E. Maignan, O.M.,19 and followed by J. Saguens, J. Perrimezzi, A. Pissy, Drouin, and Witasse. The Church at first showed great tolerance towards the Cartesians, but in course of time found herself compelled to oppose them. Thus, in 1694, the S. Congregation of the Index condemned the proposition that “The Eucharistic accidents are not real accidents, but mere illusions and optical make-believes.”20

The great majority of contemporary and later theologians rejected the Cartesian theory as inconsistent with ecclesiastical tradition, contrary to the testimony of the senses, opposed to the true concept of Transubstantiation, repugnant to the correct notion of a Sacrament, which requires a visible sign, and incompatible with the phrase “fractio panis” applied to the Eucharist in Holy Scripture.21

c) As for the conciliary definitions on this subject, it is not necessary to add a great deal to what we have previously quoted from the councils of Constance and Trent. The Cartesians claimed that the Council of Trent, in employing the term “species panis et vini,”22 did not mean to say that the appearances of bread and wine after the consecration are real accidents.23 But it is a fact that the Council of Constance, in speaking of the same thing, deliberately uses the term “accidentia.” There can be no doubt that the Council of Trent employs “species” exclusively in its scholastic signification of “species sensibilis,” which is an “accidens reale,” and not in the Cartesian sense of “species intentionalis,” which was a later invention.24

3. The Philosophic Possibility of Absolute Accidents

Leaving the domain of doctrine for that of philosophical speculation, we find ourselves on uncertain ground. To justify the Church’s teaching in the matter, however, nothing more is necessary than to show that the concept of absolute or substanceless accidents involves no metaphysical contradiction.

a) Modal accidents, of course, by their very definition, cannot be separated from their underlying subjects. But there are other accidents (e.g. corporeal quantity), the separate existence of which involves no intrinsic contradiction. Accidents of the last-mentioned kind are called absolute, because their objective reality is quite distinct from that of their underlying substance.25 Aristotle defined quantity as a phenomenon of substance.26 It was merely a logical deduction from this statement to say, as the Schoolmen did, that quantity may be separated from its subject and, therefore, is capable of continuing to exist independently. There is no intrinsic contradiction involved in this assertion, for it has not been and cannot be proved that an accident derives its entire being solely from its underlying subject, or that actual (which differs from purely aptitudinal) inherence is of the very nature of an accident.27 Leibniz (1646-1716) himself, though at first attracted by Cartesianism, came in time to defend the reasonableness of the ancient Scholastic principles on this very point against those who ridiculed them.28

b) The old theology tried to prove the possibility of absolute accidents on the basis of Hylomorphism. Some present-day theologians would like to come to an understanding with modern science by adopting Dynamism. There are other philosophical systems which openly contradict the Church’s teaching, but they are equally opposed to reason and experience.

α) Aristotelean-Scholastic Hylomorphism holds that bodies are constituted by the union of primordial matter (materia prima, ὕλη πρώτη) with a substantial form (forma substantialis); that there is a real distinction between corporeal substance and its quantity; that the two are separable, and that by divine power the latter can exist without the former. It is objected that this theory, by separating quantity from substance, raises an accident, which is ens in alio, to the rank of a substance (ens in se), which would be an intrinsic contradiction. St. Thomas refutes this by pointing out that the accidents which remain in this Sacrament are subjected in the dimensive quantity of the bread and wine that remains, and that dimensive quantity is itself the first disposition of matter and the very principle of individuation.29

β) By Dynamism is here meant not the philosophic system associated with Herbart, Ulrici, Kant, and Schelling, but the theory which holds that elementary substances are endowed with certain fundamental energies whose effects are distinct from the substances themselves and can therefore be supplied by the First Cause. This theory was broached by Leibniz and developed by Franzelin,30 who explains that the fundamental power of matter, to which all others may be reduced, is energy or the power of resistance (vis resistentiae). As force is not conceivable without its manifestation, it is necessary to distinguish between the energy itself and its manifestation or effect, which is really distinct from it and may miraculously continue after the material substratum is gone. This explanation conforms more closely than any other to modern physics, which reduces the powers of nature to pure movements. It would therefore be unwise to reject a priori the related solutions devised by Tongiorgi31 and Palmieri32 on the basis of the atomic theory. The only real weakness in these views is that they do not sufficiently safeguard the identity of the Eucharistic accidents before and after the consecration — though this is not an insuperable difficulty, since even the quantitas separata of the Schoolmen cannot be conceived as a strictly identical, ever ready, and purely static reality.33

γ) The Church, in teaching that the Eucharistic accidents continue to exist without a subject, does not wish to restrict Catholics to any particular view of natural philosophy, nor does she compel her theologians to base their teaching on medieval physics. All that she demands is that they eschew such theories as openly contradict her teaching and are at the same time repugnant to experience and sound reason, e.g. Pantheism, Hylozoism in its various forms, Monism, and Cartesianism.34

4. The Relation of the Eucharistic Species to the Body of Christ and the Mode of Predication Resulting Therefrom

We have seen that in the Blessed Sacrament the Body and Blood of Christ is present under the appearances of bread and wine. How are reality and appearance united? Upon the answer to this question will depend the Eucharistic law of predication, i.e. the correct way of speaking of the Body and Blood of our Lord in their relation to the accidents of bread and wine.35

a) What are the mutual relations between Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and the Eucharistic species? In answering this question we must beware of two extremes.

The first of these is the assumption of a physical union between Christ and the Eucharistic accidents. This is impossible because the accidents of bread and wine cannot become accidents of Christ’s Body and Blood, nor are they capable of entering into a Hypostatic Union with His Person.

The other false extreme against which we must guard is that the body of Christ, in consequence of a positive divine command, is united in a merely external way with the place in which the consecrated host happens to be.36 This view imperils the unity of the Holy Eucharist, makes it impossible to adore the host as such,37 and difficult to explain why the Sacred Body invariably accompanies the consecrated host.

But if the union is neither physical nor purely local, how are we to conceive it? Other theologians define the union between Christ and the Eucharistic accidents as a unio physica effectiva, because the preservation of the substanceless accidents is due not directly to God but to a miraculous power proceeding from the Eucharistic Body of Christ, which supports the appearances bereft of their natural substances and preserves them from collapse.38

b) This sacramental union between the Eucharistic Body of our Lord and the appearances of bread and wine results in a sort of communication of idioms,39 from which the following rules of predication may be deduced:

(1) Predicates which suppose a physical union between Christ’s Body and the Eucharistic accidents must not be transferred from the latter to the former. Hence it would be wrong to say: “The Body of Christ is round, tastes sweet, looks white,” etc., or: “The Blood of Christ has a light color, tastes like sour wine, quenches the thirst,” etc. These predicates apply to the Eucharistic species exclusively. The chief offenders against this rule were the so-called Stercoranists, who were charged with believing that the Body of the Lord is digested like any other food — a charge that in most instances rested upon a misunderstanding of writers such as Origen, Rhabanus Maurus, and others, and which was sophistically urged by the Calvinists against their Lutheran opponents during the Reformation.40

(2) Predicates based upon the sacramental union may be indiscriminately applied to the Body of our Lord and to the Eucharistic species. This rule is founded upon the unity of the Sacrament. Hence it is correct to say: “The Body of Christ is eaten by the faithful,” “The Sacred Body is carried around in procession,” etc.

(3) Such predicates as move along a middle line may be applied to the Eucharistic species only in an improper or a figurative sense. In doubtful cases it is best to follow the custom of the Church, the Fathers, and reputable theologians. The graphic formula to which Berengarius was compelled to subscribe, in 1079, was modeled upon the language of St. Chrysostom and other Fathers. Such expressions as, “The Body is commingled with the Blood,” or, “If the Blood freezes in the chalice,” are permissible, though in their literal and proper sense the affirmations contained therein apply to the species only.41

§2. Second Apparent Contradiction: The Spirit-like Mode of Existence of Christ’s Eucharistic Body

1. State of the Question

It is of faith that the Body of Christ is really, truly, and substantially present in the Holy Eucharist under the species of bread. It is also of faith that the Body of Christ is present in its entirety in the whole of the sacred Host and in each of its parts, in a manner similar to that in which the human soul is present in the body.

This teaching quite naturally gives rise to a difficulty: How can a material body exist after the manner of spirits (ad modum spirituum) without losing its quantity, form, etc.?

The difficulty is enhanced by the consideration that there is no question here of the Soul or the Divinity of Christ, but of His Body, which, with its head, trunk, and members, assumes a mode of existence spirit-like and independent of space. About such a mode of existence neither experience nor philosophy can give us the least information. Not even the glorified body of our Saviour after the Resurrection, though in more than one respect itself a “spiritual body,” can give us an inkling in regard to the mode of existence proper to the Eucharistic Body. Even the separability of quantity from substance42 gives us no clue to the solution of the present problem, since, according to the best-founded opinions,43 not only the substance of Christ’s Body, but its corporeal quantity is present within the diminutive limits of the Host and in each portion thereof. Varignon, Rossignol, Legrand, and other theologians have resorted to the explanation that Christ is present in diminished form and stature, in a sort of miniature body; while Oswald, Casajoana, Fernandez, and others assume with no better sense of fitness the mutual compenetration of the members of Christ’s Body to within the narrow compass of a pin-point. The Scholastics rejected both these opinions.44

The vagaries of the Cartesians, however, exceeded all bounds. This school was hard put to reconcile its theory of actual extension as the essence of material bodies with the dogma of the totality of the Real Presence. Descartes himself, in two letters to Père Mesland,45 expressed the opinion that only the Soul of Christ becomes present in the Eucharistic species, and that the identity of the Eucharistic Body with the heavenly Body of Christ is preserved by the identity of His Soul, which animates both bodies and their quantities. This monstrous notion was vigorously combated by Arnauld, Bossuet, Fabri, Viogné, and other contemporary theologians. The geometrician Varignon attempted to improve upon Descartes’ theory by suggesting that the consecration and the subsequent breaking of the Eucharistic species results in a true multiplication of the Eucharistic Bodies upon earth, faithful though greatly reduced miniature copies of their prototype.

The genuine teaching of Catholic theology as against these vagaries is voiced thus by St. Thomas: “Since the substance of Christ’s Body is not really deprived of its dimensive quantity and its other accidents, it follows that by reason of real concomitance the whole dimensive quantity of Christ’s Body and all its other accidents are in this Sacrament.”46

Here lies the second antinomy or apparent contradiction which we are attempting to solve. We must always remember that the mode of existence peculiar to the Eucharistic Body of Our Lord does not come within the scope of physics or mechanics, but belongs as strictly to the supernatural order as the virgin birth of Christ, His resurrection from a sealed tomb, His transfiguration, etc.47 There is a “mechanics of the supernatural,” the laws of which do not agree with those of ordinary human experience.48 It is necessary also, in solving the problem, to adhere firmly to the truth of the real and genuine corporeity of Christ’s Eucharistic Body. There is in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar neither a conversion of matter into spirit, nor a separation of dimensive quantity from substance. The problem may therefore be formulated thus: How can divisible and extended matter and a normally constituted organism exist in a spatially uncircumscribed manner, such as is peculiar to immaterial souls and pure spirits?

2. Scholastic Solution of the Problem

The Schoolmen (notably Suarez, Bellarmine, De Lugo, Ysambert, Lessius, and Billuart) offer the following solution: Quantity is either internal or external. Internal quantity (quantitas interna s. in actu primo) is that entity by virtue of which a corporeal substance merely possesses aptitudinal extension, i.e. the capability of being extended in tri-dimensional space. External quantity (quantitas externa s. in actu secundo), on the other hand, is the same entity in so far as it follows its natural tendency to occupy space and actually extends itself in the three dimensions. While aptitudinal extension or internal quantity is so bound up with the essences of bodies that its separability from them would involve a metaphysical contradiction, external quantity is only a natural consequence and effect, which can be suspended or withheld by the First Cause, so that the corporeal substance, retaining its internal quantity, does not actually extend itself into space.

a) Though in itself the mere substance of the Body of Christ could exist in the Blessed Sacrament without any quantity at all, just as the quantity of the bread exists without its substance,49 yet it is theologically certain that in matter of fact the Body is entirely present with its whole quantity.50 In other words, the sacred Body of Christ in the Holy Eucharist possesses internal but not external quantity. Both aptitudinal and actual extension are formal effects of quantity as such, though in a different way, the one primary and essential, the other secondary and non-essential. While the Body of Christ in the Eucharist is prevented by the First Cause from exercising its natural tendency to occupy space, it nevertheless exists wholly and full size, without however extending itself through space.51

By way of illustration we may refer to the miracle of the three children in the furnace. In preserving them from harm, God did not interfere with the essence of the fire into which they were cast, but merely suspended its natural effects. In a similar manner, He does not destroy the essence of quantity in the Holy Eucharist, but merely suspends one of its natural effects, i.e. extension in space.

b) What we have just said of bodies in general, applies also to organisms, for an organism is merely a body (a) composed of different organs or parts, (b) disposed in orderly fashion, and (c) subserving the functions of life. All three of these conditions are present in the Eucharistic Body of Christ, even though it lacks external quantity. Both in reality and notionally the internal disposition of the body precedes its external formation, which is bound to space and extends itself into it. “There is no confusion here,” says St. Bonaventure, “because, although the parts are not distinct according to their position in space, they are distinct according to their position in the whole, and consequently there is no confusion because there is position, which is the orderly arrangement of parts in a whole.”52

c) The profoundest treatment of the subject is offered by St. Thomas, who traces the mode of existence peculiar to the Eucharistic Body to Transubstantiation, for the reason that a thing must “be” such as it was in “becoming.” How does the Body of Christ become present in the Eucharist by Transubstantiation? The Angelic Doctor answers: “Since the substance of Christ’s Body is present on the altar by the power of this Sacrament [i.e. by virtue of the words of consecration], while its dimensive quantity is there concomitantly and as it were accidentally, therefore the dimensive quantity of Christ’s body is in this Sacrament not according to its proper manner [i.e. quantitatively, the whole in the whole and the individual parts in individual parts], but after the manner of substance, whose nature is to be whole in the whole, and whole in every part.”53 Since ex vi verborum only the substance of Christ’s Body is present, and not its quantity,54 therefore the Body is present after the manner of a substance and not after the manner of a quantity, and consequently the Body of Christ is present in the Sacred Host unextended and indivisible, entire in the whole Host and entire in each part thereof.

d) The above explanation quite naturally gives rise to the question: Can the Eucharistic Body of Christ be said to be present in space? The dogmatic teaching of the Church that the Body of Christ is really and truly present in the Sacred Host decides this question in the affirmative. Hence what we have said above on the spirit-like and invisible existence of that Body in the Eucharist, does not touch the Real Presence as such, but merely its mode of existence.

Philosophy distinguishes in creatures two modes of presence: (1) the circumscriptive and (2) the definitive. The first, the only mode of presence proper to bodies, is that by virtue of which an object is restricted to a defined portion of space in such wise that its various parts also occupy their corresponding positions in that space. From what we have said above it is evident that Christ’s Body is not circumscriptively present in the Sacred Host. “Christ’s Body is not in this sacrament circumscriptively,” says St. Thomas, “because it is not there according to the commensuration of its own quantity.”55

The second mode of presence, that properly belonging to spiritual beings, requires that the substance of a thing exist in its entirety in the whole of the space as well as whole and entire in each part of that space. This is the soul’s mode of presence in the human body. As it also applies to the Eucharistic Body, we may say that the Body of Christ is definitively present in the Sacred Host. But we should not be permitted to say that Christ’s Body is present only in one place, because, as a matter of fact, it is truly present in Heaven and on thousands of altars. It is in this sense that St. Thomas says that “Christ’s Body is not in this sacrament definitively, because then it would be only on the particular altar where this Sacrament is performed; whereas it is in Heaven under its own species, and on many other altars under the sacramental species.”56

3. Theological Corollaries

From the peculiar manner in which Christ’s Body is present in the Eucharist there follow certain interesting and important corollaries, the value of which, on the whole, does not exceed that of theological conclusions.

a) In the first place it is certain that the Eucharistic Body cannot be physically injured, not only because, being glorified, it is impassible, but likewise because of its sacramental mode of existence.57 Intimately connected with this quality is the imperceptibility of the Body. As it lacks actual extension, it does not fall under the senses. Can the human eye in the glorified state be capacitated for a supernatural vision of the Eucharistic Body? This question is answered in the affirmative by Vasquez58 and De Lugo,59 but in the negative by St. Thomas and Suarez.60 “Christ’s Body,” says the Angelic Doctor, “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 … 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.”61

b) Another theological conclusion of even greater importance, which is held by all Catholic divines with the sole exception of the Nominalist school, is that Christ in the Holy Eucharist is unable to use His limbs or to employ His external senses. The reason is that bodily movement and sense perception presuppose tri-dimensional extension (quantitas in loco s. externa), which the Eucharistic Body lacks. Hence, naturally speaking, Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament can neither see nor hear nor speak, nor move His own Body or those of others. Whether, by a new miracle, He could give back to Himself the supernatural use of sight and hearing, involves no intrinsic contradiction,62 but whether He actually exercises such sense functions is quite another question, which most theologians deny. Those few who affirm it, among them St. Bonaventure, Ysambert, Lessius, Tanner, and Franzelin, are compelled to assume a new miracle.63 Cardinal Cienfuegos, in a learned treatise entitled Vita Abscondita sub Speciebus Velata,64 argues that our Divine Saviour empowers His sacramental Body to see and hear, in order to be able to see and hear those who kneel before Him in adoration. As this assumption is not impossible and conforms both to the dignity of Christ’s sacred Humanity and the sublime purpose of the Blessed Sacrament, it may be entertained as “sententia probabilissima et pia.” However, Cardinal Franzelin, who thus qualifies it, rightly warns against the misunderstanding as if without this hypothesis the Eucharistic Body would be lifeless and stolid, or as if our Divine Lord would otherwise remain unacquainted with our inmost thoughts and prayers. He in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells, knows all things, past, present, and future, as man no less than as God, by a higher form of perception than that exercised through the bodily senses.

§3. Third Apparent Contradiction: The Simultaneous Existence of Christ in Heaven and in Many Places on Earth (Multilocation)

1. Multilocation Defined

In the natural order of things a body is restricted to one position in space (unilocatio). This is true also of every immaterial finite being (soul, spirit) which enters into relation with space.

a) If an object be conceived as simultaneously present in two, three, or more places, we have bilocation, trilocation, etc., as the case may be. Multilocation, though outside of the natural order, involves no intrinsic contradiction. The objection that “no being can exist separated from itself or with local distances between its various selves” is a sophism; for multilocation does not multiply the object but only its external relation to and presence in space. Multilocation may therefore be defined as “the simultaneous presence of an object in several places.”

b) An object may be simultaneously present in several places in one of four different ways: (α) It may be definitively present with its substance not only in one particular point of space, but continuously beyond that point throughout a certain determinate portion of space, as the soul in the body — continuous multilocation or replication (multilocatio continua s. replicatio). (β) It may be definitively and simultaneously present in several separate places — discontinuous multilocation (multilocatio discreta rei definitive praesentis). (γ) An object existing circumscriptively, i.e. a body in its natural state, may exist simultaneously in different places — discontinuous circumscriptive multilocation. (δ) A body may exist circumscriptively in one place and definitively in another — mixed multilocation. The three last-mentioned species are plainly supernatural and can be brought about only by a miracle.

2. The Multilocation of the Body of Christ in Heaven and Upon Thousands of Altars Throughout the World

In the mystery of the Holy Eucharist we have exemplified all these different species of multilocation, with one exception.

There is, in the first place, continuous multilocation or replication. For the Body of Christ is present in the Sacred Host per replicationem continuam, i.e. it is totally present, as the soul in the body, in each part of the continuous and as yet unbroken Host, and also totally present throughout the whole Host.

There is, in the second place, discontinuous multilocation, as Christ is present not only in one Host, but in numberless separate Hosts, whether in the ciborium or upon different altars. There are as many consecrated Hosts as particles of bread were consecrated, and yet it is one and the same Body of Christ that is really and truly present in them all.

There is, third, mixed multilocation, since Christ with His natural dimensions reigns in Heaven, whence He does not depart, and at the same time dwells in sacramental presence on numberless altars throughout the world.

It is an article of faith that the Eucharistic Body of Christ is endowed with these three kinds of multilocation. The fact of the Eucharistic multilocation proves that it is possible. The Tridentine Council says: “For neither are these things mutually repugnant, — that our Saviour Himself always sitteth at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, according to the natural mode of existing [circumscriptive], and that, nevertheless, He be, in many other places, sacramentally present [definitive] to us in His own substance, by a manner of existing which, though we can scarcely express it in words, yet by the understanding illuminated by faith, we can conceive, and ought most firmly to believe, to be possible unto God.”65 Encouraged by this pronouncement, speculative theology, with due precaution against the disturbing influence of the imagination, attempts to clear up the mystery with the torch of philosophy and to show at least that multilocation involves no intrinsic contradiction.

3. The Philosophic Possibility of Multilocation

Though the fourth species of multilocation is not verified in the Holy Eucharist, it will be necessary to discuss it in connection with the other three, for the reason that its denial involves a denial of mixed multilocation and, besides, it seems to have played a role in the lives of some saints.

a) The continuous definitive multilocation, also called replication, whereby the Body of Christ is totally present in each part of the continuous and as yet unbroken Host, and also totally present throughout the whole Host, is easiest to understand because it has a splendid analogy in the presence of the human soul in the body.66 The soul is present with the totality of its substance in each part of the body, in the head, the trunk, the feet, the arms, etc. It is true that in the Eucharist there is a replication not only of the soul, but also and principally of the Body, whose natural manner of existence is not spiritual but circumscriptive; but it is made somewhat intelligible to us by the proof that God in His omnipotence can supernaturally impart to a body such a spirit-like, unextended, spatially uncircumscribed mode of presence as is natural to the soul in regard to the human body.

b) The intrinsic possibility of discontinuous multilocation is based on the non-repugnance of continuous multilocation. Just as the soul does not become two individuals in consequence of its dwelling whole and entire in the head as well as in the toes of a man, the Body of Christ in the Eucharist does not become several individuals in consequence of the fact that it dwells simultaneously in tabernacles at Rome, Paris, London, and Jerusalem.67

c) The difficulty becomes more complicated if we consider that Christ with His natural dimensions reigns in Heaven and at the same time dwells with His sacramental presence in numberless hosts on earth. Is such a mixed multilocation possible? This would be but one more marvel of God’s omnipotence, because the circumscriptive mode of presence is as natural to the celestial Christ as the definitive mode of presence is supernatural. Since the celestial Christ, despite His natural form, is individually identical with the Christ who is present in numberless Hosts on earth, there can be no contradiction in the fact that He retains His natural dimensional relations in Heaven and at the same time dwells sacramentally on earth; for a different mode of existence no more destroys the individual unity and identity of a subject than a difference of presence in space.68

d) We might pass over the fourth and last species of multilocation (multilocatio circumscriptiva) as foreign to our subject, were it not for the circumstance that a discussion of it is apt to throw some light on the Holy Eucharist.

De Lugo69 shows that nearly all the objections raised against circumscriptive multilocation can be urged also against definitive multilocation. It is advisable, too, to pay some attention to the many cases of bilocation occurring in the legends of the saints — some no doubt nothing more than subjective apparitions, others hardly explicable otherwise than by circumscriptive multilocation, such as the appearance of Christ in person to St. Paul before the gates of Damascus.70 St. Thomas and other eminent theologians do not hesitate to admit that circumscriptive multilocation involves open contradictions,71 while Alexander of Hales, Duns Scotus,72 Bellarmine, Suarez, and De Lugo maintain its intrinsic possibility. The controversy is still unsettled.

α) If there were question of the vagaries of many Nominalists, as, e.g., that a bilocated person could be living in Rome and at the same time dying in Naples, the impossibility would be obvious, and we should have to thank the Thomists for bringing about a reaction, though they undoubtedly went too far in denying the possibility of circumscriptive multilocation altogether.73

β) In order to clear up the existing confusion on the subject it is necessary to draw a clear-cut distinction between two different groups of determinations. Some belong to a bilocated individual absolutely, i.e. without regard to external circumstances (e.g., life, intelligence, reason, health), while others belong to him only in a relative manner, i.e. in consideration of external and local circumstances (e.g., position of the body in regard to the direction of the wind, difference in temperature). The leading principle with regard to all these determinations is thus set forth by Cardinal Bellarmine: “It should be noted that one body which is present in different places has one substantial existence, but many local existences. Whence it happens that all those [determinations] must be multiplied which follow the esse locale, not however those which originate elsewhere than in the esse locale.”74 It is quite evident, as regards the first group of determinants, that a bilocated individual cannot simultaneously assume into himself intrinsically contradictory determinants, for because of the absolute identity of the subject with itself, its intrinsic properties follow the substance, not the place in which it exists, and hence a person simultaneously present in London and Paris cannot be living in good health in one city and dying in the other, for this would involve an intrinsic contradiction.

The case is different with the second group of determinants, i.e. those depending on local conditions. As these approach the bilocated subject from without, and do not affect his substance, there is no intrinsic contradiction involved in the assertion that a number of them that are contradictory to one another may affect the same individual simultaneously, though in a different respect (sub diverso respectu). Thus we find no contradiction in the legend that the countenance of St. Alphonsus in Sant’Agata was turned to the north, while in Naples it looked towards the south. As for the apprehension that admitting the possibility of circumscriptive multilocation would endanger our certainty regarding the real distinction between homogeneous natural bodies, this is unfounded, for a miracle is never to be presumed except on the strictest evidence, and we perceive the difference between similarly constituted bodies not only from their different positions in space, but likewise and mainly from the differences existing in their individual determinants, properties, and accidents.75

Readings: St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 75 sqq.; Contra Gent., IV, 62 sqq. — Billuart, De Eucharistia, diss. 1, art. 5 sqq. — Suarez, De Eucharistia, disp. 47. — Bellarmine, De Eucharistia, III, 18 sqq. — Lessius, De Perfect. Moribusque Divinis, XII, 16. — De Lugo, De Eucharistia, disp. 5 sq., 8 sqq. Among modern authors: Fr. X. Wildt, Explanatio Mirabilium, quae Divina Potentia in Eucharistiae Sacramento Operantur, Bonn 1868; G. Reinhold, Die Lehre von der Örtlichen Gegenwart Christi in der Eucharistie beim hl. Thomas von Aquin, Vienna 1893; Oswald, Die dogmatische Lehre von den hl. Sakramenten, Vol. I, 5th ed., §9-10, Münster 1894; Scheeben, Die Mysterien des Christentums, 3rd ed., §69 sqq., Freiburg 1912; Heinrich-Gutberlet, Dogmatische Theologie, Vol. IX, §538 sqq., Mayence 1901; N. Gihr, Die hl. Sakramente der kath. Kirche, Vol. I, 2nd ed., §62 sqq., Freiburg 1902; D. Coghlan, De SS. Eucharistia, Dublin 1913; J. M. Piccirelli, S.J., Disquisitio Dogmatica, Critica, Scholastica, Polemica de Catholico Intellectu Dogmatis Transsubstantiationis, Naples 1912.

Footnotes

  1. Cfr. N. Gihr, Die hl. Sakramente der kath. Kirche, Vol. I, 2nd ed., §56. ↩

  2. Conc. Trid., Sess. XIII, can. 2. ↩

  3. See above, Ch. III, §2. ↩

  4. Suarez, Toletus, De Lugo, and others declare this to be a “propositio fidei.” Their opinion is not shared by the majority of theologians, but all without exception defend it as absolutely certain. The proof of this assertion will be found in Theoph. Raynaud, S.J., Exuviae Panis et Vini, Lyons 1665. ↩

  5. This is held by A. Leray, Le Dogme de l’Eucharistie, Paris 1900. ↩

  6. Form, figure, etc. ↩

  7. Impassibility, spirituality, etc. See Eschatology. ↩

  8. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 77, art. 1: “Manifestum est autem quod huiusmodi accidentia non sunt in substantia corporis et sanguinis Christi sicut in subiecto, quia substantia humani corporis nullo modo potest his accidentibus affici, neque etiam est possibile quod corpus Christi gloriosum et impassibile existens alteretur ad suscipiendas huiusmodi qualitates.” ↩

  9. See above, Ch. II, Thesis 4. ↩

  10. Schell, Dogmatik, Vol. III, 2, p. 535, Paderborn 1892. ↩

  11. “Art. 1. Substantia panis materialis et similiter substantia vini materialis remanent in sacramento altaris.” — “Art. 2. Accidentia panis non manent sine subiecto in eodem sacramento.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 581 sq.) ↩

  12. Cfr. Hardouin, Coll. Conc., Vol. VIII, p. 404. ↩

  13. “Accidentia panis manent sine subiecto.” ↩

  14. Conc. Trident., Sess. XIII, can. 2: “Si quis … negaverit conversionem totius substantiae panis in corpus et totius substantiae vini in sanguinem, manentibus dumtaxat speciebus panis et vini, … anathema sit.” ↩

  15. Catech. Rom., De Euchar., qu. 26: “Ac panis quidem et vini accidentia omnia licet videre, quae tamen nulli substantiae inhaerent, sed per se ipsa constant.” ↩

  16. Ibid., qu. 43: “Quoniam ea accidentia Christi corpori et sanguini inhaerere non possunt, relinquitur, ut super omnem naturae ordinem ipsa se, nulla alia re nisa, sustentent: haec perpetua et constans fuit catholicae Ecclesiae doctrina.” Lately Dr. D. Coghlan has defended the opinion that the condemnation of Wiclif’s second proposition does not oblige us to hold that the accidents have, after the consecration, no subject whatever (De SS. Eucharistia, Dublin 1913). For a criticism of this view see the Irish Eccles. Record, 1913, pp. 437 sqq. ↩

  17. Cfr. Theodoret, Dial., II (Migne, P.G., LXXXIII, 168); Pseudo-Chrysostom, Ep. ad Cæsar. (Migne, P.G., LII, 758); Ephraem of Antioch, in Migne, P.G., LXXXVI, 2080. ↩

  18. Theodoret, Dial., II (Migne, P.G., LXXXIII, 168). ↩

  19. E. Maignan, Philosophia Sacra, Vol. I, c. 22. ↩

  20. “Eucharistiae accidentia non accidentia realia, sed merae illusiones et praestigia oculorum sunt.” ↩

  21. For a fuller discussion of the Cartesian theory see Billuart, De Eucharistia, diss. 1, art. 6, §2. The history of the controversy may be studied in Theoph. Raynaud, S.J., Exuviae Panis et Vini (Opera, Vol. VI, pp. 419 sqq.), Lyons 1665, and I. Salier, O.M., Historia Scholastica de Speciebus Eucharisticis, Lyons 1687. ↩

  22. Conc. Trid., Sess. XIII, can. 2. ↩

  23. Witasse, strangely enough, sings a hymn of praise to Providence for having preserved the Tridentine Council, as well as the Fourth Council of the Lateran before it (Cap. “Firmiter,” apud Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 430), from the terrible mistake of employing the term “accidentia” instead of “species.” ↩

  24. Cfr. Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 666 sq. ↩

  25. Suarez, Metaph., disp. 7, sect. 1. ↩

  26. Aristotle, Metaph., VI, 3 (ed. Bekker, B. 1029, a, 13). ↩

  27. Cfr. Palmieri, Instit. Philos., Vol. I, pp. 366 sqq., Rome 1874; Gutberlet, Allgemeine Metaphysik, 4th ed., pp. 62 sqq., Münster 1906; P. Coffey, Ontology, pp. 240 sqq., London 1914. ↩

  28. Leibniz, Systema Theol., c. 48 sq., Paris 1719. On the separability of absolute accidents from their underlying subjects see further T. Pesch, S.J., Philosophia Naturalis, pp. 399 sqq., 2nd ed., Freiburg 1897; J. Rickaby, S.J., General Metaphysics, pp. 267 sqq., New York 1890; H. Haan, S.J., Philosophia Naturalis, pp. 19 sqq., Freiburg 1894. ↩

  29. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 77, art. 2: “Necesse est dicere, accidentia alia, quae remanent in hoc sacramento, esse sicut in subiecto in quantitate dimensiva panis vel vini remanente: primo quidem per hoc quod ad sensum apparet, quantum ibi coloratum et aliis accidentibus affectum, nec in talibus sensus decipitur; secundo quia prima dispositio materiae est quantitas dimensiva; … tertio quia … quantitas dimensiva est quoddam individuationis principium.” Cfr. also the theory that colors and sounds as such are not inherent in bodies but have their objective raison d’être in the undulations of the ether (Gutberlet, Psychologie, 4th ed., pp. 14 sqq., Münster 1904). ↩

  30. Franzelin, De Eucharistia, thes. 12. ↩

  31. Tongiorgi, Cosmologia, n. 237. ↩

  32. Palmieri, Instit. Philos., Vol. II, pp. 182 sqq., Rome 1875. ↩

  33. T. Pesch, Inst. Phil. Nat., 2nd ed., p. 401, Freiburg 1897. Cfr. G. C. Ubaghs, Du Dynamisme dans ses Rapports avec la Sainte Eucharistie, Louvain 1861. ↩

  34. Cfr. Gutberlet, Naturphilosophie, 3rd ed., pp. 5 sqq., Münster 1900. ↩

  35. On predication in general see Pohle-Preuss, Christology, pp. 186 sqq. ↩

  36. This view was defended by Duns Scotus. ↩

  37. See above, Ch. IV, §2. ↩

  38. This is more fully explained by De Lugo, De Euchar., disp. 6, sect. 1 sqq. ↩

  39. See Pohle-Preuss, Christology, pp. 184 sqq. ↩

  40. Cfr. C. M. Pfaff, De Stercoranistis, Tübingen 1750. For further bibliographical data see the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. XI, p. 86. ↩

  41. Cfr. De Lugo, De Euchar., disp. 6, sect. 3; Heinrich-Gutberlet, Dogmat. Theol., Vol. IX, §542. ↩

  42. See above, §1. ↩

  43. Against Durandus. ↩

  44. Cfr. St. Bonaventure, Comment. in Sent., IV, dist. 10, p. 1, qu. 2: “Quamvis substantia possit abstrahi a quantitate, tamen quod corpus vivat et sit organicum et non sit quantum, hoc nec esse nec intellegi potest.” Toletus says (Comment. in S. Th., III, qu. 76, art. 4): “Ista sententia conatur mysterium ad suum captum trahere, in quo decipitur, quia corpus Christi esset modo ridiculo.” ↩

  45. Descartes, ed. Emery, Paris 1811. Cfr. K. Sauben, Nouvelle Théologie Dogmatique, Vol. VII, pp. 118 sqq., Paris 1905. ↩

  46. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 76, art. 4: “Quia substantia corporis Christi realiter non dividitur a sua quantitate dimensiva et ab aliis accidentibus, inde est quod ex vi realis concomitantiae est in hoc sacramento tota quantitas dimensiva corporis Christi et omnia accidentia eius.” ↩

  47. Cfr. 1 Cor. XV, 36 sqq. ↩

  48. Cfr. Bellarmine, De Eucharistia, III, 6. ↩

  49. See above, §1. ↩

  50. See above, no. 1. ↩

  51. The trite objection: “Corpus Christi in Eucharistia foret sine quantitate,” is answered by Billuart as follows (De Eucharistia, diss. 1, art. 4, §3): the primary effect of quantity is extension and coordination of parts in relation to itself and the whole; the secondary effect is extension and coordination of parts in relation to place. It is prior for quantity to be extended in itself than to be extended in place, or to be impenetrable, divisible, etc. This secondary effect of quantity can be divinely separated from it, as in fact it was separated when Christ came forth from the closed womb of the Virgin and from the sepulcher without the stone being rolled away, and when He entered to the disciples through closed doors. And so it is separated in the Eucharist. ↩

  52. St. Bonaventure, Comment. in Sent., IV, dist. 10, p. 1, qu. 4: “Non est ibi confusio, quia etsi partes non distinguantur secundum positionem in loco, distinguuntur tamen secundum positionem in toto, et ideo non est ibi confusio, quia est ibi positio, quae est ordinatio partium in toto.” Cfr. Franzelin, De Eucharistia, thes. 11. For the solution of this and other dialectic difficulties see Tepe, Inst. Theol., Vol. IV, pp. 243 sqq. ↩

  53. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 76, art. 4, ad 1. ↩

  54. Cfr. Conc. Trident., Sess. XIII, cap. 4. ↩

  55. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 76, art. 5, ad 1: “Patet quod corpus Christi non est in hoc sacramento circumscriptive, quia non est ibi secundum commensurationem propriae quantitatis.” Cfr. Gihr, Die hl. Sakramente der kath. Kirche, Vol. I, 2nd ed., §62. ↩

  56. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 76, art. 5, ad 1: “Corpus Christi non est in hoc sacramento definitive, quia sic non esset alibi quam in hoc altari, ubi conficitur hoc sacramentum, quum tamen sit in coelo in propria specie et in multis aliis altaribus sub specie sacramenti.” Cfr. G. Reinhold, Die Lehre von der Örtlichen Gegenwart Christi in der Eucharistie beim hl. Thomas von Aquin, Vienna 1893. ↩

  57. Cfr. Suarez, De Eucharistia, disp. 53, sect. 2. ↩

  58. Vasquez, Comment. in Summam Theol., III, disp. 191, c. 2. ↩

  59. De Lugo, De Eucharistia, disp. 9, sect. 2, n. 20 sqq. ↩

  60. Suarez, De Eucharistia, disp. 53, sect. 4. ↩

  61. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 76, art. 7. ↩

  62. Cfr. Suarez, De Eucharistia, disp. 53, sect. 3. ↩

  63. St. Bonaventure says (Comment. in Sent., IV, dist. 10, p. 1, qu. 2): “Corpus Christi sive Christus ibi videt et audit, quamvis non loquatur, ne deprehendatur.” ↩

  64. Published in Rome, A.D. 1728. ↩

  65. Conc. Trid., Sess. XIII, cap. 1: “Neque enim haec inter se repugnant, ut ipse Salvator noster semper ad dextram Patris in coelis assideat iuxta modum existendi naturalem [i.e. circumscriptive], et ut multis nihilominus aliis in locis sacramentaliter praesens [i.e. definitive] sua substantia nobis adsit ea existendi ratione, quam etsi verbis exprimere vix possumus, possibilem tamen esse Deo cogitatione per fidem illustrata assequi possumus et constantissime credere debemus.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 874). ↩

  66. See above, Ch. II, Thesis 4. ↩

  67. The objections against the multilocatio discreta in general are well treated by H. Haan, S.J., Philosophia Naturalis, pp. 44 sqq., Freiburg 1906, and by Tilmann Pesch, S.J., Philosophia Naturalis, 2nd ed., pp. 517 sq., Freiburg 1897. ↩

  68. See above, no. 1. ↩

  69. De Lugo, De Eucharistia, disp. 5, sect. 1, n. 15. ↩

  70. Cfr. Bellarmine, De Eucharistia, III, 3. ↩

  71. St. Thomas, Comment. in Sent., IV, dist. 44, qu. 2, art. 2; Quodlib., IV, qu. 3, art. 2. See also Henry of Ghent, Capreolus, Francis of Ferrara, Vasquez, Sylvester Maurus, et al. ↩

  72. Duns Scotus, Comment. in Sent., IV, dist. 10. ↩

  73. As an example of a grievous aberration we may cite Coninck, Comment. in Summam Theol., III, disp. 45, art. 24, n. 6, who imagined that a replicated man could be burned to death and die, sin and be damned, in one place, while in another he could live, merit, and be saved — “for this,” he strangely argued, “does not lie outside the absolute power of God, since it is equivalent to two men.” ↩

  74. Bellarmine, De Eucharistia, III, 4: “Notandum est, unum corpus in pluribus locis positum habere unum esse substantiale, sed multa esse localia. Ex qua fit ut illa omnia multiplicari debeant, quae consequuntur esse locale, illa autem non multiplicentur, quae proveniunt aliunde quam ex esse locali.” ↩

  75. Cfr. Gutberlet, Allgemeine Metaphysik, 4th ed., §30, Münster 1906. ↩