U.S. bishops hope National Eucharistic Congress can increase faith in the sacrament

Can Catholic bishops in the United States revive the Church’s devotion to the Eucharistic?

This is the central focus of the National Eucharist Congress taking place at the Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indianapolis.

Tens of thousands of Catholics converged at the stadium for five-day gathering on Wednesday, for what the bishops hope will spur a Eucharistic revival.

“We know that such revival, while it is always accompanied by sacramental devotion, must extend beyond devotional practices as well,” Cardinal Christophe Pierre – Pope Francis’s representative to the country – told participants at the opening.

“When we are truly ‘revived’ by the Eucharist, then our encounter with Christ’s real presence in the Sacrament opens us to an encounter with Him in the rest of life,” Pierre said.

Statistics show that belief in the Church’s teachings on the Eucharist have been falling for years among Catholics in the United States.

A 2019 poll by the Pew Research Center found only one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with the Church’s teaching that the Eucharist is body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.

In addition to asking Catholics what they believe about the Eucharist, the Pew survey also included a question that tested whether Catholics know what the church teaches on the subject.

“Most Catholics who believe that the bread and wine are symbolic do not know that the church holds that transubstantiation occurs. Overall, 43 percent of Catholics believe that the bread and wine are symbolic and also that this reflects the position of the church. Still, one-in-five Catholics (22 percent) reject the idea of transubstantiation, even though they know about the church’s teaching,” the study says.

“The vast majority of those who believe that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ – 28 percent of all Catholics – do know that this is what the church teaches. A small share of Catholics (3 percent) profess to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist despite not knowing the church’s teaching on transubstantiation,” it continues.

However, the Pew study did find that about six-in-ten (63 percent) of the most observant Catholics — those who attend Mass at least once a week — accept the Church’s teaching about transubstantiation, but among Catholics who do not attend Mass weekly, large majorities say they believe the bread and wine are symbolic and do not actually become the body and blood of Jesus.

A follow-up poll using multiple phrases describing the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist was held in 2022 by the Georgetown University-affiliated Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that 64 percent of Catholics expressed belief in Jesus’s presence in the Eucharist in at least one response, as did virtually all who attended Mass weekly.

These different polls indicate that the phrasing of the Church’s teaching on transubstantiation often influences the response to the question.

Pierre said the encounter with Christ’s real presence in the sacrament “opens us to an encounter with him in the rest of our lives.”

“Not only is he present in our family, friends, communities, but he is also present in our encounters with people from whom we would otherwise consider ourselves divided. This might include people from a different economic class or race. People who challenge our way of thinking, people whose perspective is informed by experiences that differ greatly from our own,” the cardinal added.

The National Eucharistic Congress is the first in the United States in over 80 years. Between 1895 and 1941, there were nine, but the devotional practice declined after World War II and the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s.

The U.S. bishops are now trying to revive it – and hopefully, encourage Catholics to increase their devotion to Church teachings.

Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron told participants from his region the Eucharist represents God’s “humbling” of himself.

“The Eucharist is about everything that is true in the covenant because here the all-powerful, powerless, humbled Christ becomes more humble yet again. He becomes our host; he feeds us, and even more humbly, he makes himself the food. This is the all-powerful, powerless God,” he said.

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