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"Of course, Card Ratzinger did not say what Kosta reread him to have said. No Catholic ever thought First Comunion/Eucharist immediately transformed us into Christ-like beings."

Now you see, I read him to be saying just that, as did Kosta and Mount Athos at a minimum saw how his writing could be read that way. To tell you the truth, my reading was influenced no doubt by what the nuns taught us as children back in the pre Vatican II days. I remember Sister Mary Whoever telling us that after communion our souls were perfectly white and that if we got hit by a bus crossing the street after Mass, we'd go straight to heaven. Of course, we were maybe 8 years old and she was no theologian, but it appears that at least the image stuck in one little Greek boy.

I see your point about the rejection of grace; that's Orthodox and I had always assumed that an "orthodox belief" in the nature of the Eucharist was necessary for its salvic properties to be efficacious (otherwise "unworthy" reception?).

What about +Ratzinger's comments on the Eucharist as "the" or "a" defining element of the Church, and is he using the term the same way Father Thomas is, which is to say expansively?

I remember Sister Mary Whoever telling us that after communion our souls were perfectly white and that if we got hit by a bus crossing the street after Mass, we'd go straight to heaven. Of course, we were maybe 8 years old and she was no theologian, but it appears that at least the image stuck in one little Greek boy.

*LOL Sister Mary W. was a pretty good theologian. I can't imagine a young Kolokotronis, no doubt having gone to Confession the day before Eucharist, dying post-Eucharist and not going to Heaven immediately(unless you were as bad an 8 y.o. as me)

Seriously, I understand your point. I was told the same thing about Confession and the salient truth one can't gain Heaven without Sanctifying Grace in their soul underlies the colloquial theology we learned from Nuns and Priests back then.

What about +Ratzinger's comments on the Eucharist as "the" or "a" defining element of the Church,..

*I learned that, in its essence, the Church is all about Christ; that the Eucharist is all about Christ; that our Sacramental union with Him in Communion is how we become the men God intended us to be, men filed with Sanctifying Grace becoming ever more Christ-like while retaining our unique manhoods, personalties etc.

What about +Ratzinger's comments on the Eucharist as "the" or "a" defining element of the Church, and is he using the term the same way Father Thomas is, which is to say expansively?

That is the position of the Patristic church. Zizioulas says it even more emphatically. Eucharist--the communion event--constitutes the church. It is not an act of a pre-existing church.

But for Ratzinger, the meaning of communion is to become like Christ. It is tied to history and the imitatio Christi--how we will live our life in this world in relation to others. It is how we experience and understand Christology.

For Zizioulas, communion is the action of the Holy Spirit and a preview of the future eschata--our life at the end of history. We are defined by who we will be and not through some moral attainment. This is the realm of Pneumatology.

And perhaps the benefit of ecumenism is a synthesis of these two approaches.