IX

The doctrine of the Eucharist has not been wholly untouched by the “Liberal” movement which has been a marked feature of the life of the Church of Rome in the early years of the twentieth century. For the most part the discussions raised by this movement have concerned questions relating to the institution and history of the Sacrament rather than the subject of doctrine; but these discussions have not been without doctrinal results.

In the most moderate section of those theologians to whom the “Liberal” movement has been due may be placed M. P. Pourrat, Professor of Theology in the Seminary at Lyons, M. J. Tixeront, Dean of the Catholic Faculty of Theology at Lyons, and Mgr. Pierre Batiffol, formerly Rector of the Catholic Institute at Toulouse, who has ceased to hold his office in consequence of action resulting from the Encyclical On the Teaching of the Modernists issued in 1907 by Pope Pius X. M. Pourrat in his book The Theology of the Sacraments, published in 1906, maintained that “not all the Sacraments were given to the Church by the Saviour fully constituted,” and that the form taken by some of them was due to a process of development; but that Baptism and the Eucharist were completely explained by our Lord, so that the Church at the first had full and complete knowledge of these two rites, and so that “Jesus directly and explicitly instituted Baptism and the Eucharist, and directly but implicitly instituted the other five Sacraments”. M. Tixeront in his Ante-Nicene Theology, published in 1904 as the first volume of a contemplated History of Dogma, referred to the Eucharist as personally instituted by our Lord; and in the course of the book treated scantily, but with considerable power of touching the main point, teaching about the Eucharist found in a few writers of the ante-Nicene Church, noticing among other matters characteristic features of the doctrine of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Mgr. Batiffol in his book The Eucharist, the Real Presence, and Transubstantiation, published in 1905, ascribed the institution of the Eucharist to the personal ministry of our Lord, and supplied a history of the salient points in the development of the doctrine of Transubstantiation as defined by the Council of Trent, in which he showed great skill and honesty and courage in disentangling and stating the different lines of thought which have been found within the Church. None of these writers appear to have questioned the definitions of the Council of Trent; and in stating that the Church has affirmed “the conversion of the substance of the bread and the substance of the wine into the body and blood under the continuance of the appearances or species of bread and wine,” Mgr. Batiffol seems to be declaring that which he himself believes.

Among the more extreme promoters of the “Liberal” movement are to be numbered M. Alfred Loisy, M. Edward le Roy, and the Italian priests who published anonymously a letter entitled What we want. In considering this more extreme group, it may be convenient to state first the opinions of M. Loisy expressed before the publication of the Syllabus and Encyclical of Pope Pius X., then those of M. le Roy and of the group of Italian priests also prior to the Syllabus and Encyclical, then the statements of the Pope bearing on the subject, and lastly the teaching of M. Loisy since the Syllabus and the Encyclical appeared.

M. Loisy published The Gospel and the Church in 1902, and Round about a Little Book and The Fourth Gospel in 1903. In The Gospel and the Church he wrote:—

“Jesus in the course of His ministry did not either prescribe to His Apostles or Himself practise any rule of outward worship which has characterised the Gospel as religion. He no more laid down a rule for the progress of Christian worship than He made formal rules for the constitution and doctrines of the Church.… The Eucharistic Supper appears then as the symbol of the kingdom which the sacrifice of Jesus was to bring. The Eucharist, on the day of its first celebration, signified rather the abrogation of the ancient worship and the near approach of the kingdom than the institution of a new worship; the outlook of Jesus did not directly embrace the idea of a new religion, of a Church to be founded, but always the idea of the kingdom of heaven to be realised. It was the Church which came into the world, and which by the force of circumstances placed itself more and more outside Judaism. By it Christianity became a distinct religion, independent and complete; as a religion, it needed a worship, and it had one. It had such a worship as its origins permitted or commanded it to have. This worship was at first imitated from Judaism insofar as it had outward forms of prayer, and also certain important rites such as Baptism, anointing with oil, and the laying on of hands. The chief act, the Eucharistic meal, was indeed the work of Jesus. This was, in the Church of the Gentiles, the great mystery, without which it would not have been considered that Christianity was a complete religion. There was already an organised worship in the apostolic communities, and the readiness with which it constituted itself shows clearly that it corresponded to a close and unavoidable necessity of a new establishment. The impossibility of gaining converts to a religion without outward forms and without sanctifying actions was complete; it was necessary for Christianity to be a worship or else cease to exist. Therefore it was in its origin the most living worship which can be imagined. Let us try only to realise the Baptisms with the laying on of hands and the outward manifestations of the divine Spirit, the breaking of the bread and the meal at which they perceived the presence of the Master who had left the earth, the songs of thanksgiving which flew from their hearts, the signs, sometimes strange, of an overflowing enthusiasm. Is it not true that, if there is there no cold and abstract belief, there is no more any rite which is simply symbolic and as the material expression of that belief? All is living, both the faith and the rites, both the Baptism and the breaking of the bread; the Baptism is the Spirit, and the Eucharist is Christ. No one considers the sign, no one speaks of the physical efficacy of the Sacrament in Baptism or of Transubstantiation in the Eucharist; but what they believe and say comes very near to these theological assertions. The worship of this age cannot be defined; it is a kind of spiritual realism which knows nothing of mere symbols, which is essentially sacramental by the place which the rite holds as the means of conveying the Spirit and the instrument of divine life. St. Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel are witnesses.… In matters of worship, the religious feeling of the main body of Christians always preceded the doctrinal definitions of the Church on the object of the worship. This fact is full of significance; it shows the law which cries out for a worship appropriate to all the circumstances of life and to the character of the believing people. The real communion with Christ in the Eucharist was as imperiously demanded by the Christian conscience as the divinity of Jesus; but the divinity of Christ is not a dogma conceived in the spirit of Jewish theology, and the Eucharist is no more a Jewish rite.… The primitive Church knew only two principal Sacraments, Baptism, with which Confirmation was connected, and the Eucharist; the number of the lesser Sacraments was undetermined. This want of determination would be inexplicable if Christ in the course of His mortal life had directed the attention of His disciples to seven distinct rites, destined to be the foundation of Christian worship in all the centuries. The Sacraments were born from a thought and an intention of Jesus, interpreted by the Apostles and by their successors in the light and under the pressure of circumstances and facts.… The development of the Eucharist has been above every thing theological and liturgical. The basis of the doctrine and of the rite has been no more different than in the case of Baptism. The Supper of the first Christians was a memorial of the passion and an anticipation of the Messianic feast, at which Jesus was present. There was no very marked difference between the Pauline conception of the Eucharist and the idea which is held to-day by simple Christians, strangers to the speculations of theological knowledge (gnose), who believe that they enter into real communion with the divine Christ by their reception of the consecrated bread. Christian worship was developed wholly round the Eucharistic Supper. The simple blessing and distribution of the bread and the wine, separated from the agape, surrounded by readings and prayers and hymns, became the sacrifice of the Mass. Since the death of Christ was regarded as a sacrifice, the act commemorating His death had to share in the same character. The liturgical rite also helped to give it this sacrificial character by the actual oblation of the bread and the wine with the reception of consecrated food (mets sanctifiés) by all the faithful, as in the ancient sacrifices. Hence emerged the idea of a commemorative sacrifice, which simply perpetuated that of the cross without taking away anything from its meaning and value, and which was offered for all the intentions which the common prayer of the Church included, interests spiritual and temporal, the salvation of the living and the dead. The Christian feeling which guarded in one sense the divinity of Jesus against certain speculations of learned metaphysics, protected the Eucharist from those of an abstract symbolism. And, as the development of Penance ended by bringing about confessions of devotion, so the development of the rite of the Eucharist came to private Masses for priests and to Communions of devotion for the faithful.”

On the reading of The Gospel and the Church being prohibited by the Archbishop of Paris and other bishops, M. Loisy explained some parts of his meaning more fully in the work Round about a Little Book. Some of his explanations had to do with the Eucharist. In regard to it he wrote:—

“It is still easily seen in the New Testament that the Church was founded and that the Sacraments were instituted, properly speaking, only by the glorified Saviour. It follows that the institution of the Church and the Sacraments by Christ is, like the glorifying of Jesus, an object of faith, not of historical demonstration.… The Council [of Trent] decreed that Christ is actually and wholly present in the Eucharist; that the substance of the bread and of the wine does not remain under the species after the consecration, but that there is a Transubstantiation, that is, a change, by the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, of Christ; that the Mass is a real sacrifice instituted by the Saviour; that the Apostles were made priests by the words, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me’; and that Jesus thus instituted a visible and perpetual priesthood. Here are views of faith, … and of a faith which is defined according to the philosophical ideas of the Middle Ages. Do you think that the Apostles, during the Last Supper, had a clear-cut idea of Transubstantiation, of the presence of the whole Christ under the species of bread and wine, that they knew that henceforth they were priests who should fill the place in the new covenant of the priesthood of Aaron and the ministry of the Levites? And ourselves, do we now know as well as the fathers of Trent what is substance and what is accident, and can we form an idea of a bodily substance without appearance and an appearance without substance as easily as they did? Is it not clear that the philosophical definition of the real presence was slowly elaborated and finally defined in view of heresies which tended more or less to make the Sacrament a mere symbol, and that the reality of the sacrifice of the Mass ought to be understood in connection with a particular idea of sacrifice, which the theologians logians themselves had some difficulty in explaining?… I cannot here go into the criticism of the accounts of the Last Supper. The most complete is that of St. Paul, but, when one examines it closely, it is very difficult to distinguish exactly what may come from the primitive tradition, what may be the relation of the Last Supper according to those who were present at it, from the theological and moral commentary of the Apostle. St. Paul is the theologian of the cross, of the atoning death; and he plainly interprets the Supper as commemorative of the death according to his theory of universal redemption.”

After a brief discussion of the accounts of the institution, of the discourse in the sixth chapter of the Fourth Gospel, and of the appearances of our Lord after His death, M. Loisy goes on:—

“This discourse [that is, the discourse in the sixth chapter of the Fourth Gospel] takes the place in the Fourth Gospel of the simple account of the Supper which John has not wished to reproduce. Let us listen here to the voice of Christ glorified, the voice of the Church and of the Christian faith. He completes the accounts of the resurrection, because he makes us see in the immortal Christ the Eucharistic Christ, the bread of life. Here then, from the point of view of history, the faith in the Eucharist is attested almost by the same testimonies and in the same way as the faith in the resurrection; the two were born together and were together established by the same causes, the preceding faith in Jesus as Messiah and the appearances which followed the passion; the faithful ones of Jesus received at the same time the persuasion that their Master was ever living and that He was with them, among them (avec eux, à eux), in the breaking of the bread; and, as the faith in Jesus as the Messiah supported the faith in Jesus as immortal, so the recollection of the Last Supper supported and decided the faith in Jesus present in the breaking of the bread.”

In the treatise The Fourth Gospel M. Loisy explained at length his theory that this Gospel was never intended as an account of historical facts, but is an allegorical presentation in the form of events and discourses of what Christian faith had come to believe. From this point of view he writes:—

“The Johannine conception of the Eucharist corresponds to that of Baptism. We have seen above the reasons which explain the anticipation of the Eucharistic Supper in the multiplication of the loaves. The thought of the Eucharist does not cease to inspire the Johannine account of the Last Supper; it is called back in the passion, together with Baptism, by the water and the blood which flowed from the side of Jesus. The connection of the Eucharist with the passover and the death of the Saviour is not out of sight in the Fourth Gospel; the presentation of it is different from that in the Synoptics and in St. Paul, since it is subordinated to the general idea of the spiritual life which is maintained by union with Christ, and which is manifested in love. In the account of the multiplication of the loaves as well as in that of the Last Supper, the Evangelist thinks of the agape at the same time as of the Eucharist, and, thinking of the agape, he thinks of love, of which the agape both in name and in fact is the traditional expression. He places together in his symbolic view the bread and the wine, merely signs of invisible realities, the flesh and the blood of Christ, represented directly by the bread and wine, the spirit and the life which are the flesh and blood of the glorious Christ, the communion in the spirit and in the life, which is effected in the reception of the bread and wine, flesh and blood of Christ, the manifestation of the spirit and of the life in Christian love, a manifestation which has its act and its mystery, its sensible representation and its source in the agape-Eucharist. The thought of death is no more absent than that of love; the Eucharist is a gift, it is Christ who is given; on the side of Christ it is love, and the love of Him who has given His life for His friends, it is love even unto death; and it unites the faithful in that fulness of love which becomes their law. But the death of Jesus is not considered in itself as something to be remembered, or even as an expiatory sacrifice as a source of gain; it is above all a proof of love; on this title it retains its commemorative place in the Sacrament of love.

“These are the ideas which the discourse on the bread of life and the discourse after the Supper sum up. It is of importance to observe carefully the connection and the bearing, if we are not to maim the meaning of these important passages. Thus, it cannot be said without many qualifications that the Eucharistic doctrine of John is dominated by the recollection of the multiplication of the loaves, while that of Paul is dominated by the recollection of the Last Supper; that John separates the Eucharist from the passion, and that he makes it a happy meal in which Jesus appears as the principle of life, while Paul preserves the connection with the Last Supper and the death of Jesus; that John neglects almost wholly the recollection of the passover, while Paul gives force to it. All these antitheses have more appearance than reality. The author of the Fourth Gospel sees in the multiplication of the loaves a symbol of the Eucharist, but his picture of the Last Supper is no less Eucharistic, if we notice carefully, than the accounts and discourse of the sixth chapter, he realises also the Eucharist as a memorial of the death of Christ, and he bases the teaching of the Last Supper on these two ideas, the death and love, the passion and the agape-love-Eucharist; as he associates the typical character of the passover directly with the account of the passion, he thus retains, however less definitely expressed, the connection of the Eucharist with the paschal feast. Has he not also taken pains to note that the multiplication of the loaves happened near the passover? What is true is that in the Fourth Gospel the death of Christ has not the same significance; it does not inspire the kind of natural horror which we feel in the Synoptics; it is not, as in Paul, the foundation of the whole teaching; in itself it is only the will of the Father and, as the act of Christ, a proof of love; the thought of the Evangelist has become accustomed to it, and he has treated it in such a way that it is not at all terrifying or disquieting; Christ speaks of it and passes through it with such calmness that the reader only receives an impression of life; the idea of life clearly outweighs that of death, and the death is only the condition of life.

“This view of Baptism and the Eucharist inaugurates the doctrine of the Sacraments. Baptism and the Supper are the two Christian mysteries, the two essential acts of worship and two elements of the faith. The Johannine Gospel and First Epistle associate them still more directly than Paul had done. They are represented together in the water and the blood which are the object of so solemn a witness in the account of the passion; they return again joined to the Spirit in the First Epistle; they are, with the Spirit and by the Spirit, the inheritance which Christ has left to those who are His; and in the thought of the Evangelist Christian Baptism corresponds to the baptism of Jesus, the Eucharist to His death; by the water the Spirit comes; by the blood comes life, the fruit of the death; the one completes the other, and the two are the means by which the Spirit comes; but the water communicates, the blood preserves, the life of the Spirit; the two extremities of the career of Christ mark the two poles between which the spiritual life of the Christian has its course.”

“If Jesus said … that the Spirit alone quickens and that the flesh profits nothing, this is not to retract what He had said before, and to give to His disciples an explanation which could also wholly remove the scandal of the multitude, but to show that the Eucharistic flesh and blood are communicated ‘spiritually,’ not by faith or by a mere influence of the divine Spirit, but as spiritualised in the glorifying of Christ.”

“The antithesis [in ‘My words are spirit, they are life’] is not between the letter and the idea hidden under the letter, between the metaphor and the abstract truth, but between the spiritual and life-giving reality of the communion with Jesus, communion which had its effective symbol and its earthly consummation in the Eucharist, and the wholly material way in which the Jews understood the teaching of the Saviour and the Christian Sacrament.”

In 1907 an open letter was addressed to Pope Pius X. by a group of Italian priests and privately printed and circulated under the title Quello che Vogliamo. A translation of it was published and publicly sold in England entitled What we want. It contained the following passage relating to the Eucharist:—

“To explain the Eucharistic mystery, we cannot … adopt the theory of Transubstantiation, unless no one is to understand. But we shall say that the faithful after the words of consecration, while with the senses of their bodily life they will see only bread and wine, will yet with the soul by means of a superphenomenal experience—of faith, in short—be in contact with the real and living Christ, who, before He died, gathered His disciples to a fraternal feast to communicate to them for the last time the ‘bread of eternal life,’ will be in contact with the Christ suspended on the cross, the Victim of justice and of peace.”

This statement had much in common with the passages already quoted from M. Loisy, and with the treatment of the Eucharist by M. le Roy in his Dogma and Criticism, which also appeared in 1907.

In this work M. le Roy wrote as follows on the subject of Eucharistic doctrine:—

“I shall say the same about the real presence. The doctrine does not at all commit me to a theory of that presence, nor does it teach me in what the presence consists. But the doctrine tells me very clearly that the presence must not be understood in some of the ways which have formerly been suggested, for instance, the consecrated host must not be held to be merely a symbol or figure of Jesus.”

“Is it more difficult for common sense to admit the resurrection in spite of the continuance of the body in the tomb than to admit the Trinity or the unlimited multiplication of the sacramental body?”

“I do not think that I am rash in maintaining that a body, however distant, makes its presence known by its perceptible effects, even though it habitually be not perceived; if there is no perceptible effect, I should say without hesitation that the body does not exist, for matter is not in itself. As for the presence of God in everything, I repeat with St. Paul and with the fathers of the Vatican, ‘the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made’; and I add moreover that the fulness of that presence cannot be defined except in terms of action (in the same sense as the divine personality) if we wish to avoid the error of pantheism. And this last resource is the only one which allows us certainly to grasp the fact of the real presence in the Eucharist, since as to this there is no perception or possibility of perception, in any degree or under any form. Consider for a minute! Who would dare to say that the statements of Trent relating to the Eucharist ought to be understood as dogmas according to the propositions of philosophy in the technical sense of the word? Who would dare to say, for instance, that the second canon of the thirteenth session imposes on the faith of the faithful the scholastic theory of matter or any theory at all on the relation between substance and accidents? The use of the word Transubstantiation does not imply anything of all this, nor does it imply that the idea of substance elaborated by the schoolmen is in any way necessarily connected with the revealed doctrine. The word simply means that we continue to perceive the bread and the wine, that the most penetrating scientific methods of analysis do not enable us to perceive anything else, and that nevertheless we ought not to behave in the presence of the consecrated host in any such way as we should behave in the presence of bread and wine, because it has become something of which this change of relation and conduct is the consequence reasonably obligatory on us. ‘Let us notice first,’ says M. Sertillanges, ‘that the definition quoted says nothing about accidents; it uses the word species, a word which our catechisms uniformly translate by the word appearances. Is not this to show that there is not involved any philosophy properly so called? Where shall we be, if we are to impose to-day on everybody in the name of dogma the division of being into categories, the actual distinction between substance and accidents, a theory of place, a theory of absolute or local quantity, and so on? Who should we allow to make his Easter?’ The same writer says again, ‘How is a plain man to behave in relation to a dogma which he is bound to hold, of which he ought therefore to know the meaning, if the formula in which the meaning is expressed has an aim which he cannot understand? The positive side of the dogma ought to be accessible to all the world; the anathemas can only have their place in a system because they are addressed, so far as they are so placed, to those believers among whom the system is in vogue.’ If the word substance in the definitions of Trent is interpreted in a properly philosophic sense, the definitions will have nothing to do with all the world, but only with those who accept the principles and ideas of that scholastic philosophy which was commonly professed at the time of the Council, and moreover for these they have only a negative meaning, proscribing certain theories without directly imposing any other. It is then elsewhere that we ought to look for the positive meaning of the doctrine which ought to be accepted by all.

“From the point of view of history, it is quite certain that the fathers of Trent professed the scholastic philosophy; on the methods of that philosophy they thought out the dogma, and in its language they expressed themselves. But the psychology of a council is one thing; the judicial force of its decrees as an official teaching proposition of the Church is another thing. Do not let us confuse the vehicle of the faith with its object. We must not fasten on the ideology any more than on the terminology of the definition; ‘is not the body,’ says the Gospel, ‘more than raiment?’ What we must look for is the real direction of the intention of the definition. Now let us consider the decrees of Trent from this point of view. It is unquestionable that the fathers of the Council never dreamed of canonising one philosophy in opposition to another. The scholastic philosophy was the only philosophy with which they were acquainted, the only philosophy in vogue among them, one might almost say the only philosophy which existed in their time. They therefore made use of it, as they spoke the language of their time, but without their attention being fastened on it. We can say that the philosophy was not the point, that it was something else at which they were aiming. From this it results that, whatever might be the learned interpretation which they on their part assigned to the word substance, we ought to understand it—we, I say—in a sense pragmatically clear and intellectually obscure, which is enough to signify that there is a gift, and which leaves the door open for all the researches of theory.”

In a note M. le Roy stated no less definitely his view of the sense in which he regarded the decrees of the Council of Trent as binding:—

“Neither the words nor the ideas are imposed on faith, but the reality which they signify and clothe in expressions which are human and therefore inadequate and incomplete.”

By a decree dated 26th July, 1907, the Congregation of the Index placed this book of M. le Roy, together with four other works three French and one Italian, also regarded as of an extreme “Liberal” character, in the list of condemned and prohibited books.

On 3rd July, 1907, the Congregation of the Inquisition agreed on a Syllabus of sixty-five condemned propositions; and on the following day this Syllabus was confirmed by Pope Pius X. Five of the propositions thus condemned contained teaching bearing on the Eucharist held by or ascribed to theologians of the “Liberal” school. They were as follows:—

“39. The opinions concerning the origin of the Sacraments with which the fathers of Trent were imbued and which certainly influenced their dogmatic canons are very different from those which now rightly obtain among historians who examine into Christianity.

“40. The Sacraments had their origin in the fact that the Apostles and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances and events, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.

“41. The Sacraments are merely intended to bring before the mind of man the ever beneficent presence of the Creator.

“45. Not everything which Paul narrates concerning the institution of the Eucharist is to be taken historically.

“49. As the Christian Supper gradually assumed the nature of a liturgical action, those who were wont to preside at the Supper acquired the sacerdotal character.”

The Syllabus was followed by the Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius X., dated 14th September, 1907, beginning Pascendi dominici gregis and entitled On the Teaching of the Modernists. This Letter contained the following passage:—

“Concerning worship it would not be necessary to say much, if it were not that the Sacraments come under this head, and that the gravest errors of the Modernists relate to them. The Modernists regard worship as the result of a twofold impulse or need; for, as we have seen, everything in their system is explained by inward impulses or needs. In the present case, the first need is that of giving some sensible manifestation to religion; the second is that of expressing it, which could not be done without some sensible form and consecrating acts, and these are called Sacraments. But for the Modernists Sacraments are bare symbols or signs, although not without efficacy, an efficacy, they tell us, like that of certain phrases commonly said to have caught the popular ear, inasmuch as they have the power of putting certain ideas into circulation, and of making a marked impression on the mind. What these phrases are to the ideas, that the Sacraments are to the religious sense, that and nothing more. They would express their mind more clearly if they were to affirm that the Sacraments were instituted solely to foster faith. But this has been condemned by the Council of Trent, ‘If any one say that these Sacraments were instituted solely to foster faith, let him be anathema’.”

It is obvious that in the condemnations of the Syllabus and the Encyclical the opinions expressed by M. Loisy were largely in view. This was recognised by M. Loisy himself. In 1908 he published a book entitled Simple Reflections on the Decree of the Holy Office Lamentabili sane exitu and on the Encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, and a huge treatise, the work of years, on The Synoptic Gospels. In the Reflections he commented on the propositions condemned in the Syllabus one by one. As to the influence on the Tridentine divines of views about the origin of the Sacraments asserted to be now discredited, he said that, the facts being so, they could not be honestly denied by those who knew them. As to the origin of the Sacraments being an interpretation by the Apostles and their successors of an idea and intention of Christ, he wrote:—

“Taken exactly, as the Holy Office understood it, this statement is inaccurate, for Jesus had not any idea or intention in regard to the Sacraments of the Church. But the Church none the less organised her sacramental system in consequence of certain postulates in the Gospels (données évangéliques) or traditional events, the baptism of John, the recollection of the Last Supper, the mission of the Apostles.”

As to the alleged view that the Sacraments are only a means of bringing to mind the presence of God, he explained that his point had been to repudiate such a notion as that the Sacraments are “a magical means of grace intervening between God and man”. As to the unhistorical character of the account of the institution of the Eucharist in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, he said:—

“Neither the words ‘This is My body’ nor the words ‘This is My blood’ belong to the primitive tradition about the Last Supper. Jesus only gave the bread and the wine to His disciples, saying to them that He would not eat or drink with them again henceforth except in the feast of the kingdom of heaven.”

On the forty-ninth proposition he simply re-asserted his view that the Supper gradually became a liturgical action, and the presidents gradually became priests and bishops.

M. Loisy’s Reflections also contained comments on the Encyclical. In the course of these he said:—

“Sacraments do not only arouse the remembrance of saving truths, but they suggest moral impressions in connection with their proper object. It is difficult to see in what way general considerations on the necessity of religious rites can be among the gravest errors; for a long time past Catholic apologists have laid stress on them to prove the necessity of outward and public worship, and certainly no one pretends that the institution of sensible signs, like the Sacraments, does not correspond to any need of human nature but proceeds only from the arbitrary will of Him who established them.”

In the parts relating to the Eucharist in his book The Synoptic Gospels M. Loisy explained and defended his view that at the Last Supper our Lord gave to His disciples bread and wine, and said “I will not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall come” with reference to His contemplated feast with His disciples on the establishment of the Messianic kingdom of God, and that the gradual and unhistorical enlargement of the accounts of this event may be traced through the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the shorter text of St. Luke, St. Mark, St. Matthew, and the longer text of St. Luke. The original Eucharistic idea was that of the presence of Christ at a common meal in the kingdom. This was closely connected with the thought of the glorified Christ present with His disciples after His death by virtue of that abiding life of which the accounts of His appearances in His risen state are the witness. St. Paul, in consequence of his view of the Person and the work of Christ, added the idea of the memorial of the Crucified, who had given His body and shed His blood for the salvation of the world. The Fourth Gospel shows a further addition in the synthesis of Communion and sacrifice on the lines of the usual ancient ideas of the connection between sacrifice and communion with deity. Thus was reached the conception of the Eucharist as at once the memorial of a sacrifice which is itself a sacrifice, and the means of the Communion of Christians with their Lord.

The writing of the Reflections and the publication of the long contemplated The Synoptic Gospels were obviously acts of defiance of the authorities of Rome. There is no doubt that M. Loisy intended them to be so. The reply of the authorities quickly followed. On 7th March, 1908, M. Loisy was excommunicated with the greater excommunication by name and in person, and declared to be subject to the penalties inflicted on those publicly excommunicated, and sentenced to be avoided by all.

To the instances which have been given of teaching of “Liberal” Roman Catholics abroad it may be well to add a passage of a different kind from the English writer Father George Tyrrell, whose attempt to frame a new apologetic theology led to his exclusion from the Society of Jesus and his eventual excommunication. The essay from which it is taken was originally written in 1899, and later formed part of the book entitled The Faith of the Millions. It was reprinted in 1907 in the work Through Scylla and Charybdis, or the Old Theology and the New; and Father Tyrrell then stated that it marked “a turning-point in” his “own theological experience,” and gave “as it were in a brief compendium or analytical index” the main features of all his thought since it was first written. In developing a contention as to “the abstract character of certain theological conclusions, and the superiority of the concrete language of revelation as a guide to truth,” he wrote:—

“When we are told that Christ’s sacramental body is not referred to space ratione sui, but only ratione accidentis; that it is not moved when the species are carried in procession; that we are not nearer to it at the altar than at the North Pole; we can only say that this ‘ratione sui’ consideration does not concern us, nor is it any part of God’s revelation. It does well to remind us that our Lord’s body is not to be thought of carnally and grossly; that our natural imagination of this mystery is necessarily childish and inadequate. But it does not give us a more, but, if anything, a less adequate conception of it. ‘This is My body’ is nearer the mark than metaphysics can ever hope to come; and, of the two superstitions, that of the peasant who is too literally anthropomorphic is less than that of the philosopher who should imagine his part of the truth to be the whole.

“Again, what is called the Hidden Life of our Lord in the Sacrament is a thought upon which the faith and devotion of many saints and holy persons has fed itself for centuries; yet it is one with which a narrow metaphysic plays havoc very disastrously. The notion of the loneliness, the sorrows, and disappointments of the neglected Prisoner of Love in the Tabernacle may be crude and simple; but it is assuredly nearer the truth than the notion of a now passionless and apathetic Christ, who suffered these things by foresight two thousand years ago, and whose irrevocable pains cannot possibly be increased or lessened by any conduct of ours. I have more than once known all the joy and reality taken out of a life that fed on devotion to the sacramental presence by such a flash of theological illumination; and have seen Magdalens left weeping at empty tombs and crying, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him’.”