[OLD REGGIE]

Ask any lay Catholic you know if the eucharist becomes the actual body and blood of Christ and you’ll see what Catholics believe.

Frankly, most lay Catholics don't believe in the real presence.

[presently no screen name]

Frankly, most lay Catholics don't believe in the real presence.

Then there is some hope for them.

[BlueDragon]

Frankly, most lay Catholics don't believe in the real presence.

John Calvin believed in the Real Presence, just not the words "flesh & blood" coupled along with it. That confirmed him a heretic in papal eyes.

He spoke of experiencing it, but not being able to properly describe it.

So I wonder. If he truly did partake of the essence of it, but had difficulty agreeing with the extent that the formulaic and fervently insisted upon orthodox/catholic wordings used to describe it, then how could he be so far wrong--- if the Lord Himself did indeed (by deep mystery?) did inhabit the offering?

http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jan1969/v25-4-bookreview7.htm

Calvin, says McDonnell, subsumes "the union with Christ through the Eucharist under the more general union with Christ through faith," without at the same time canceling a doctrine of the real presence (p. 180). Participation in Christ, union with him, is the perpetual eating of which the eucharistic eating is a special instance. Calvin's objection to Roman Catholic and Lutheran explanations of the real presence is not to deny the real presence. "None of the Reformers defended it (the real presence) more forcibly than Calvin" (p. 224). While excluding a crass notion of substance, Calvin insists that Christ is substantially present in the eucharist. Calvin's concept of substance "... is self-consciously not philosophical but rather biblical, and signifies the profound reality of the person of the Redeemer and Mediator" (p. 247). The bread and wine set apart for the mystery are different from ordinary bread and wine, but that difference is one of use to which the elements are consecrated.

I find this last sentence, [among what sippets I'm quoting here] perhaps key to much

The words of consecration are directed to the congregation, in whom faith is engendered and strengthened, not to the elements.

If it be in any way the flesh & blood, (mystical or no) after consecration, I do not believe that any form of "transubstantiation" or as Calvin perhaps put it(?) "substantially present" occurs without the sanctifying acceptance of believers, together in unison if at all possible, partaking of it.

Any left-overs can be utilized normally. That's what they did with the left-over bread in the earliest years of the church in Rome, isn't it? Took the left-overs home, distributed it to those who had need or could make use of it, and ate it like normal bread?

It wasn't sacrilege, then to dispose of the remaining ordinary parts of the bread or wine in such manner... Though there are ancient reports of various converts saying such as "I go to so-and-so's, the bread there is much better" etc., which hints at showing, that even wa-aay back, not all actually received, or in the least perceived or took note that they did, in their own spirit or soul.