“...It makes no sense to me...”
I also made a similar point as well on another thread. Why go for the throat of your fellow Christians when they are being beheaded?
The Catholic belief in the real presence need not be attacked - let us believe in peace and we have history and scripture to back us up, as well.
Would the virulent condemnation of Jewish belief (attack for not beliving in Jesus) be appropriate? Of course not. Attacking Christian’s core beliefs when people are dying for the faith is not OK.
Why do you care? Let Catholics be Catholic in peace. Trying to undermine someone else’s beliefs with lies is not Christian.
The Church Fathers ALL taught the real presence of Christ in the eucharist. They were not the precursors of the protestants; they had nothing to protest.
According to protestants, doctrine does not develop, so the whole premise is already just an attack, they don’t even really believe it themselves.
St. John Henry Newman ora pro nobis
St. Francis de Sales ora pro nobis
And you would be wrong...more catholic propaganda you've been lead to believe. So if you're wrong on your "all inclusive" statement regarding the ECFs on the Eucharist....why should we believe anything else you say.
Some dissenting ECFs.
3.Augustine says Christ's words in John 6 about his body and blood are figurative. "If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. 'Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,' says Christ, 'and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.' This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us."--(Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 3:16:24)
2.Clement of Alexandria said the bread and wine were symbols, metaphor. "Elsewhere the Lord, in the Gospel according to John, brought this out by symbols, when He said: 'Eat ye my flesh, and drink my blood,' describing distinctly by metaphor the drinkable properties of faith and the promise, by means of which the Church, like a human being consisting of many members, is refreshed and grows, is welded together and compacted of both,--of faith, which is the body, and of hope, which is the soul; as also the Lord of flesh and blood. For in reality the blood of faith is hope, in which faith is held as by a vital principle."--(Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 1:6)
4.Eusebius (263-339)1.Eusebius says the Communion is 'only the bread and wine,' "And the fulfilment of the oracle is truly wondrous, to one who recognizes how our Saviour Jesus the Christ of God even now performs through His ministers even today sacrifices after the manner of Melchizedek's. For just as he, who was priest of the Gentiles, is not represented as offering outward sacrifices, but as blessing Abraham only with wine and bread, in exactly the same way our Lord and Saviour Himself first, and then all His priests among all nations, perform the spiritual sacrifice according to the customs of the Church, and with wine and bread darkly express the mysteries of His Body and saving Blood." (Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica, 5:3)
6.Tertullian (155-220)1.Tertullian says the communion bread represents Christ's body. "Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the 'beggarly elements' of the Creator." (Tertullian, Against Marcion, 1:14)