[Mad Dawg]

Transubstantiation was arguably in question for 900 years when the writings of two monks Radbertus and Ratranmus argued the issue.

I'm afraid, as you know, HarleyD, that I think this statement is NOT untrue but IS misleading.

There are several way in which it would be right to say that "Transubstantiation was in question ...". Two come to my feeble mind.

There is the question of whether the Church, more or less univocally, believed and taught that Christ was "really" or "Truly" or some such vague adverb present in the bread and wine once they were prayed over. Against that could be some ideas like "memorial only" or "present in the believer who partakes" or "bestowing certain gifts of grace somehow or another". I would suggest that the Church generally said He was present. And to that extent I would say the questionable character of the dogma is not all that important.

I think the more accurate assessment of the statement is that the Church could more or less agree that Jesus was "really" (or the rest of the adverbs) present, but she could still debate HOW one ought to talk about that presence, bearing in mind that, as a rule, the body looks and tastes like bread and the blood look and tastes like wine. And in that sense there was, and in some respects, especially with us and our Eastern bros, still is discussion. Transubstantiation as an explanation of the putatively undisputed "real" (or the rest) presence was debated, while the presence of Christ and the "fact" of some change in the gifts was generally agreed upon.

It's sorta kinda a little bit like Christology. There is little if any debate about saying "Jesus is Kyrios" but lots of debate — Nicea-Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon — about how we can talk about that, about what it means in detail.

So I would say that we can make SOMETHING, but not too much of the delayed decision on Transubstantiation.

It just ain't that easy to say how much authority Aristotelian Realism has in Church Theology, but I think it's easier to construe, say, Justin as saying that He's present in the whatever-it-is that was indisputably bread and wine before the service started.

[HarleyD]

I'm afraid, as you know, HarleyD, that I think this statement is NOT untrue but IS misleading. ..I think the more accurate assessment of the statement is that the Church could more or less agree that Jesus was "really" (or the rest of the adverbs) present, but she could still debate HOW one ought to talk about that presence

I would simply point to the 4th Lateran Council of 1215 which states:

In which there is the same priest and sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed (transsubstantiatio) by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us. And this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors.

The Council doesn't talk about how transsubstantiation occurs, only that it does.

Since we are dwelling on the 1215 Council, I would also point out that the Council from the chair of Peter, decided that Jews and Catholics should dress differently, taxes to the Church should be paid before taxes to the country, and prior to calling a physician one should contact a priest. If Catholics were to read some of these Council's infallible edicts, they probably would become Protestants.