{"id":3634,"date":"2006-03-29T08:15:53","date_gmt":"2006-03-29T08:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/help-an-evangelist.html"},"modified":"2006-03-29T08:15:53","modified_gmt":"2006-03-29T08:15:53","slug":"help-an-evangelist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/help-an-evangelist.html","title":{"rendered":"Help an evangelist!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A young Irish woman has a question:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Last night, a young person showed up on my doorstep and asked if we could talk. For about six weeks, this person, who is a cradle Catholic, suddenly finds herself at odds with the Church on the nature of the Eucharist. Her question has a bit of an odd angle (at least one that I’m unaccustomed to looking at it from) so I thought I’d put the question out there and see if anyone else has an idea on how best to approach it.<\/p>\n

She doesn’t have a big problem with the Eucharist being the body of Christ. Her problem is with the Church saying that it is no longer bread. I told her that once the bread is consecrated, the substance changes although the appearance of bread remains. Hence, if you put the Eucharist under a microscope or do a chemical analysis (apart from certain miracles of the Eucharist) you will find the chemical composition and etc. to match that of bread.<\/p>\n

Now, this young woman is a scientist–she is brilliant. She kept saying, ‘so it is still bread.’ I said, ‘It is now the bread of life, the blood of Christ.’ She said, ‘But it is still bread. The church seems to be saying that it is no longer bread, and if that is the case, it’s like calling a square a circle and I can’t be Catholic.’<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m gonig to send you over there to answer the questions and discuss<\/a><\/p>\n

Pulling something from the comments over there – one commentor recommended a book Why Matter Matters: Philosophical and Scriptural Reflections on the Sacraments<\/a> by David Lang (edited by Michael Dubruiel)..which deals with exactly this issue, not only in regard to Eucharist, but all the sacraments – why  water, why oil, why man and woman, etc…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A young Irish woman has a question: Last night, a young person showed up on my doorstep and asked if we could talk. For about six weeks, this person, who is a cradle Catholic, suddenly finds herself at odds with the Church on the nature of the Eucharist. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}