I am Catholic, yet I actually drink 'wine' and eat a sanctified 'host'. It's representative you know, and based on Jesus' words to his disciples at the Last Supper. The priest doesn't slit his wrist and add real blood to the wine!
I have heard stories of Rabbis who circumcise babies with thir teeth. In fact there are a couple of FReepers who have had their children circumcised this way.
My point is that no matter how strange a custom may seem to you, you yourself have customs that seem just as strange to someone else.
NO! It Is The True Body, Not A Symbol! Besides if it was just symbolic we'd be giving the children wine and they'd shut us down PRONTO.
"I am Catholic, yet I actually drink 'wine' and eat a sanctified 'host'. It's representative you know, and based on Jesus' words to his disciples at the Last Supper. The priest doesn't slit his wrist and add real blood to the wine!"
Ahem - - - It's not "representative" in Catholic Church doctrine. In fact, you are apostate if you hold such a Protestant belief!
You are required to believe that it is His blood and His flesh you are drinking and eating. That's what millions of Christians were slaughtered about in the late middle ages and Renaissance. They didn't believe it, so they were called "heretics"..
If you believe that you are a heretic.
You don't drink wine, you drink the Blood of the living Christ under the appearance of wine, and you eat his living Body under the appearance of bread. The word "host" comes from the Latin word meaning "victim", BTW.
I don't really see what connection Catholic beliefs regarding Holy Communion have with slicing open a baby's head and letting the blood run down his face, however. Catholics (contrary to the false representations some of our enemies make about us) do not believe Christ is being injured, killed, or "re-sacrificed" when the Mass is offered.
The presence of Christ by the power of his word and the Holy Spirit
1373 "Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us," is present in many ways to his Church:197 in his word, in his Church's prayer, "where two or three are gathered in my name,"199 in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned,199 in the sacraments of which he is the author, in the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the person of the minister. But "he is present . . . most especially in the Eucharistic species."200
1374 The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend."201 In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained."202 "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."203
1375 It is by the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament. The Church Fathers strongly affirmed the faith of the Church in the efficacy of the Word of Christ and of the action of the Holy Spirit to bring about this conversion. Thus St. John Chrysostom declares:
It is not man that causes the things offered to become the Body and Blood of Christ, but he who was crucified for us, Christ himself. The priest, in the role of Christ, pronounces these words, but their power and grace are God's. This is my body, he says. This word transforms the things offered.204
And St. Ambrose says about this conversion:
Be convinced that this is not what nature has formed, but what the blessing has consecrated. The power of the blessing prevails over that of nature, because by the blessing nature itself is changed. . . . Could not Christ's word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before? It is no less a feat to give things their original nature than to change their nature.205
1376 The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by 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. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation."206
1377 The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist. Christ is present whole and entire in each of the species and whole and entire in each of their parts, in such a way that the breaking of the bread does not divide Christ.207
1378 Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. "The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession."208
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm#1373