Replies

As recently posted, thus Catholicism labors to explain how they consume "the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he "poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,"(CCC 1365) with His human body and human soul, with His bodily organs and limbs and with His human mind, will and feelings. (John A. Hardon, S.J., Part I: Eucharistic Doctrine on the Real Presence) Thus the statement, "Consequently, eating and drinking are to be understood of the actual partaking of Christ in person, hence literally.” (Catholic Encyclopedia>The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist) the same body that was crucified, which was manifestly physical, that looked, smelled, and would taste and test as being physical;

Yet not as a body "sensible, visible, tangible, or extended, although it is such in heaven," but under a "new mode of being,"(John A. Hardon, S.J., Doctrine of the Real Presence in the Encyclical "Mediator Dei") so that the Eucharist being "the true and proper and lifegiving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ," "the very body which he gave up for us on the cross," etc. does not mean the bread and wine are literally transformed into actual literal human flesh, thus "If you took the consecrated host to a laboratory it would be chemically shown to be bread, not human flesh." (Dwight Longenecker, "Explaining Transubstantiation")

For it is imagined that at the words by the priest of the “consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood,” thus becoming the “true Body of Christ and his true Blood,” (CCC 1376; 1381) having been “substantially changed into the true and proper and lifegiving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord,” being corporeally present whole and entire in His physical "reality.” (Mysterium Fidei, Encyclical of Pope Paul VI, 1965)

Thus for all their talk about actual partaking of Christ in person, hence literally, they do not literally consume the actual bloody flesh as manifest in the incarnation, which manifest physicality John emphasizes in contrast to a docetist or gnostic Christ who appears to be something he is not, as is the case with the wafer and wine christ, in contrast to the Christ of the incarnation, "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; For the life was manifested, and we have seen " (1 John 1:1,2 ) And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (1 John 5:8)

While within Docetism and or Gnosticism it seems they had the belief that what Christ looked and behaved like, as manifestly being incarnated with a tangible real body of flesh and blood, was not real (Christ being a sort of phantom but looking human), in Catholicism you have the belief that (in transubstantiation) what Christ looks, feels, tastes and would test as (bread and wine), is not the reality (Christ's corporeal body and blood only looking like and otherwise materially evidencing themselves to be bread and wine). And conversely, that the bread and wine is no longer real but only looks, feels, tastes, etc. like the real thing. A Knights of Columbus article asserts (in its sophistry), "the Most Holy Eucharist not only looks like something it isn’t (that is, bread and wine), but also tastes, smells, feels, and in all ways appears to be what it isn’t." (The Holy Eucharist BY Bernard Mulcahy, O.P., p. 22) "Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, must firmly maintain that in objective reality, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the consecration, so that the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus from that moment on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine." - Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 2003

Which hosts looks smells, and taste and would test as being bread and wine, yet which actually has ceased to actually exist at that point, being transubstantiated by the real body and blood of Christ, fully in both, even to subatomic particles ("the substance of the bread cannot remain after the consecration: "Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ Article 2 "On the altar are the body and blood of Christ; the bread and wine no longer exist but have been totally changed into the body and blood of the Saviour... - https://www.ewtn.com/library/Doctrine/EUCHCHNG.HTM), Until the non-existent host shows decay. (CCC 1377: "The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist." "...that is, until the Eucharist is digested, physically destroyed, or decays by some natural process." ibid, Mulcahy, p. 32) At which point it seems that neither the decaying bread or wine nor the body and blood of Christ really exist in that time and place. (Summa Theologiae, Question 77)

Which is the "literal" understanding of the Lord's supper. More by God's grace.