This is a huge, unwarranted jump, since every Catholic believes that the Eucharist is Jesus' Real Body "in a certain manner." That is, not in every manner.
How can this Eucharist be His Real Body and yet ""in a certain manner"? Well, think of this.
But the Church --- and Augustine and Justin Martyr, believing in the words of Christ --- assents that we are receiving His real, entire Self, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.
That's why this is not cannibalism. Cannibals eat dead body parts. We eat not parts, but the whole Christ --- all of us hundreds of millions who eat His Body and drink His Blood around the world --- and alive.
Maybe Petrosius or some other knowledgeable FReeper will explain the difference between substance and accidents.
For now, I just want to say: your misunderstanding of what Justin and Augustine and the Catholic Church believe about the Eucharist, is not surprising to me at all. The whole thing rests entirely on faith, and not in some supposed intellectual "grasp" of what we cannot grasp: of a visitation from the Supreme Being beyond time and space, Who presents His very Self to us under the appearance of Bread and Wine and says, "Eat and Drink".
Christ says "This is My Body."
I say "Amen."
That's it. You say "Amen" or you walk away.
>> Christ says “This is My Body.” <<
.
Had you quoted the entire statement, it would have made it plain that it is not his body, but a remembrance of what was done to his body for us. He would not have us break a commandment.
(obviously, it was being broken by his body that moment)
“It seems you are saying that all of Augustine’s exceptionally clear, explicit statements about Christ’s Real, Eucharistic Body (the first, second, and third paragraph-long quotes) are nullified because he used the four words “In a certain manner.””
They’re nullified because it’s common sense to assume that when the writer tells us that his language is symbolic, as shown in the very same sermons where he asserts they are the body of Christ, that we ought to take them as symbolic too.
From sermon 227:
“I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lords Table. . . . That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ (Ser. 227)”
Also from sermon 227:
What you can see passes away, but the invisible reality signified does not pass away, but remains. Look, its received, its eaten, its consumed. Is the body of Christ consumed, is the Church of Christ consumed, are the members of Christ consumed? Perish the thought! Here they are being purified, there they will be crowned with the victors laurels. So what is signified will remain eternally, although the thing that signifies it seems to pass away.”
You can’t be more explicit than that. And this isn’t two different sermons here. It’s the same one.
The rest of your post doesn’t touch upon any of the actual specifics of any of the quotes, but seems to pass over them in silence while seeming to be some kind of an answer to them.