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That is almost cruel considering the evidence. If Rome’s claims for such were subject to FDA scrutiny they would be fined for false advertising, as you yourself must know that the vast majority of Catholic souls who were baptized, and partake of the Eucharist, show little if any of the promised effect. Areas where baptized Catholics abound are actually the most liberal, but when such become born again we overall see very different results. Around here, baptized Catholic school kids are among the most indifferent to the gospel.

As for your question, while i do repent, including of things i never though were sin when i was a typical Catholic, the difference is a real believer repents, while Rome manifests the greatest degree of amoral adherents than Bible preaching evangelicals, while we do come short. We can however, trade names of notable holy people, but i dare say evangelicals have far more manifestly holy and fruitful “saints” than Rome has in relations to there respective sizes, in the last 400 years. I know not of a Catholic like Matthew Henry, with his exhaustive practical commentary on the Bible, or 8,000 hymn writer Fanny Crosby, and multitudes more like them, from Wesley to Spurgeon and more. If only the Reformation and then the Great Awakenings had happened earlier. The USA itself is much indebted to them.

As regards the Eucharist being the actually flesh and blood of Jesus:

1.The Jews were strictly enjoined NEVER to eat blood, the penalty being to be cut off from God’s people, “And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people” (Lv. 17:0). And that the apostles, far from being learned theologians, who might have understood what Rome proposes, were unlearned Jews, who (especially Peter) would voice concerns when troubled about things, even as they did at the last supper, (it is I?). A study of the gospels shows the disciples, Peter in particular, were not men who would just submit to eating human flesh and drinking blood without some protest and explanation, as is seen in Acts 10. Peter did not even want Jesus to wash his feet, but know he just drinks His blood? It is revealed that Peter was still following Kosher Law as far after the Lord’s supper as Acts 10 (9-16), in which he protested “Not so, Lord” (an oxymoron). How much more he, or one of the other apostles would have been aghast at the thought of actually ingesting the Lord’s corporeal flesh and drinking His blood! Peter did not even (initially) want the Lord to wash his feet (Jn. 13:6), never mind eat His flesh! Peter instead exhorts believers to “desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Pet 2:2).

2.The Jews were well acquainted with the use of symbolic language, with the O.T. often speaking of eating in a figurative manner. When the fearful Israelites exclaimed that the Promised Land was “a land that EATETH UP the inhabitants thereof;” or when Joshua exhorted the Israelites, “Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are BREAD for us” Num. 13:32; 14:9), it is not to be supposed that the land or the Israelites would become cannibals. And when Jeremiah proclaims, Your WORDS were found. and I ATE them. and your WORD was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” (15:16), or Ezekiel and Joghn are told, “EAT this SCROLL, and go, speak to the house of Israel” ( 3:1), “Take the SCROLL ... Take it and EAT it” (Ezek. 3:1; Rev. 10:8-9), it is not speaking of literal eating. In Jn. 6, it is likewise speaking of receiving the words of Christ in order to live (Mt. 4:4).

As relates to equating men with blood, the most analogous example is found in 2Sam. 23:15-17, wherein we read, “And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate! And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the LORD. And he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mighty men.” Here, David equates the thing gotten at the peril of the men’s life (blood representing life: Lv. 17:11), with that of their lives themselves. So it is in the Lord’s supper accounts. The Lord is holding up bread and wine as a “picture”” of Himself, illustrating that just as such life giving substances could be broken and poured out, respectively, so would His body be “broken,” and His precious sinless blood “pour out “ as the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn. 2:2; 4:10).

3. If John 6 is what Rome says it means, then according to v. 53, in order to have “life in you”, which comes by receiving the holy Spirit (Acts 10:43-47; 11:18; 15:7-9; Eph. 2:1, 5), and to receive the gift of eternal life, then we would see the apostles preaching to take part in the Lord supper in order to be born again, and be saved. Instead, they preached that we are believe on the Lord Jesus, which is what Jn. 6: 63 confirms is the meaning of v. 53. The apostles taught how one becomes born again, and so have “life in you” (Eph. 2:1, 5), is by believing the word of the gospel, that of Christ crucified and risen again (Eph. 1:13; Acts 10:43-47). For Jesus said, “It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Mt. 4:4). This is how Jesus “lived by” the Father” (John 6:57), not by physically consuming Him, but by doing His will in believing and obeying Him, which was Jesus’ “meat and drink” (Jn. 4:34).

The context of John 6 is that of men seeking physical food. Jesus had just fed them and they thought they had a good thing going, and wanted a (modern) Jesus who place the priority on constant physical satisfaction. Jesus instead tells them “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.” (John 6:27). Because they are “carnally minded,” who “mind the things of the flesh” (Rm. 8:5), and looking for the physical, then contrary to the women at the well in Jn. 4, when Jesus leads them to the higher spiritual using metaphorical language (living water: 4:10, 14 = Jesus, as living bread” in 6:51), their focus on a literal physical meaning restrains them perceiving it’s spiritual counterpart, and thus rather than telling others about the Messiah (4:28, 29), they will walk away with darkened minds (v. 66).

But as He did in Jn. 4, Jesus reveals the spiritual meaning of His metaphor, that as “I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me” (v. 6:57), which is by every word of God (Mt. 4:4), “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63). Peter rightly discern this, as he states, “thou hast the words of eternal life” which is entirely consistent with the testimony of Scripture elsewhere.

Jesus use of metaphors is consistent with the gospel of John in general in which there is constant contrast between that which is below vs. that which is above, between the temporal and the eternal, between the physical and the spiritual. In Jn. 6 Jesus points them to “food” that will give them eternal life, which is every place in John and elsewhere is by believing, not believing in a doctrine of transubstantiation, but in Christ, the Son of the living God, for which John gives many physical types.

In John 1:29, He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

In John 3, Jesus is the likened to the serpent in the wilderness (Num. 21) who must “be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal” (vs. 14, 15).

In John 4, Jesus is the living water, that “whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (v. 14).

In John 5, Jesus is the Divine Son of God “making himself equal with God”, and the prophesied Messiah (vs. 18, 39).

In John 6, Jesus is the bread of God “which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” “..that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day” (vs. 35,40). This bread is called His flesh, “which I will give for the life of the world” (v. 51). And as He is the “living bread,” and “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” so the soon to be crucified Christ is metaphorical bread and blood.

In John 10, Jesus is “the door of the sheep,”, and the good shepherd [who] giveth his life for the sheep”, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” vs. 7, 10, 11).

In John 12, He is the LORD who Isaiah saw high and lifted up in glory, when Isaiah uttered the prophecy which as given in it’s fulfilled sense in Jn. 6 (Is. 6:1-10; Jn. 12:34b-50). To God be the glory.

In John 15, Jesus is the true vine. Thus the use of metaphors in Jn. 6 to denote believing and living by the Word of God, and most essentially Christ, is consistent theologically, culturally and and grammatically, whereas eating something to gain eternal life is distinctively pagan. The Jewish passover did not impart life, and Jesus analogy in Jn. 6 was not to the passover, but the miraculous bread from Heaven, which gave physical life, which corresponds to spiritual life under the New Covenant.

4. If what Roman Catholicism asserts is what happened at the Lord’s Supper, that by means of transubstantiation the substance of bread and wine is actually changed, so that the bread and wine actually become the Lord’s body and blood though the sensory aspects of the earthly elements remain the same, then this would be a unique miracle. For in every miracle which the Lord and His followers did the water actually became wine, and it tasted like it; the sick were made well, and knew it. And if i am not mistaken, according to Roman Catholic doctrine the miracle of transubstantiation is not the same thing as in the incarnation of Christ.

5. “Not discerning the Lord’s body” in 1 Cor. 11 is not speaking about a failure to recognize that the elements of the Supper were actually the body and blood of Christ, but about a failure to effectually recognize others members of the body of Christ, The context is that some souls were commemorating the utterly selfless sacrifice of the Lord in an entirely selfish way, that of pigging out at the love feast of charity (Jude 1:12) while others members of the body of Christ were starving. This is what is meant by not discerning (or judging) the Lord’s body. And which body Paul elsewhere defines as the church (Eph_1:23,16; 4:4,12,16;_5:23,30; Col_1:18,22; 2:11,17,19; 3:15).

6. Unlike other major doctrines - and the RC doctrine of transubstantiation is a most major one - very little mention of the Lord’s supper is made, and no theology on the doctrine of transubstantiation and it’s salvific necessity. In contrast, the preaching of the gospel is presented as the means to gain eternal life, and effectually believing on the Lord Jesus Christ gives spiritual life (Acts 10”43-47; 11:18; 15:7-9; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:13; 2:1), and the theology behind it abundantly addressed. To God be the glory.

In summation, “the Lord’s body” referred to in the gospel accounts and the term “eating and drink in Jn. 6 is consistent with Biblical Jewish as well as Greek allegorical usage, and “this is my body” is no more literal than the water David held in his hand was “the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? And the Lord’s body in 1 Cor. 11 contextually represented the church. Those who are deceived into believing the carnal interpretation of Rome (which the lost souls in Jn. 6:66 did) may be said to have “eaten the fruit of lies” (Hos. 6:13), and which is another example of the abundant use of metaphors regarding eating.