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The chief mark in the attitude of the authorities of the Church of Rome since the time of the Council of Trent has been their careful adherence to the decrees of that Council. It has been held necessary to maintain undeviatingly the doctrine of Transubstantiation and that the Eucharist is a real and proper sacrifice. Very varying opinions as to the character of the sacrifice have been left uncondemned. No censure has been passed on opinions which have minimised or eliminated the idea of destruction, or on those which have maximised it; on opinions which have ignored or made little of the heavenly offering of Christ, or on those which have strongly emphasised it and the connection of it with the Eucharist. Ideas about the Eucharistic presence of a somewhat different character and tending in somewhat different directions in regard to the continuance and nature of the accidents and to the spiritual manner wherein the body of Christ is present have not been suppressed. On the other hand, the rejection by the Council of Pistoia of that element in the sacrifice whereby the celebrant is able to make special application of its fruits, the attempt of the same Council to avoid the affirmation of Transubstantiation, the opinion ascribed to Rosmini with its apparent modification of the same doctrine, the endeavour of the extreme section of the “Liberal” theologians who have become known as the Modernists to utilise critical hypotheses and philosophical theories as a way of attaching a changed meaning to the doctrine of the Eucharist, have all met with condemnation. There does not appear to have been any desire on the part of the authorities to elaborate further definitions, or to exact too closely particular interpretations of the words of the Tridentine decrees, or to press too hardly the philosophy accepted by those who framed them, provided that philosophical opinions be not made a screen for the rejection of the theology which they were drawn up to teach. On this subject, alike in what it said and in what it did not say, the Council of Trent has been taken and used as the standard.