I am a Roman Catholic, and with respect, I think that your contrast of transubstantiation with transelementation does injustice to the former.

With these words you describe transubstantiation:

– Descent, replacement, transmuted, fixed, one-sided, containment, Aristotelian metaphysics, essences and accidents.

Some of these words are accurate in their proper context, but they are all either technical or negative; and you contrast them with words very colorful and positive for transelementation:

– Ascent, enhancement, reality, power, dynamic, living, indwelling, mystical, unabridged.

While “substance,” “accident,” etc. are perfectly suitable for theologicial precision, these latter, more colorful words are also fitting for the Catholic doctrine. In fact, I would argue that they are more fitting for transubstantiation than they are for transelementation for the following reason:

The ascent, power, mystical indwelling, etc. in transelementation, as I understand it, refers to temporary association of the elements with God; whereas in transubstantiation it refers to elements becoming God and remaining God. That is ascent. That is power. That is dynamic, living, and mystical. If there is an abridgment, I suggest to you that it is not in transubstantiation, but in a doctrine that holds anything less.

. . . For example, for all its faults practical Zwinglianism would not be as bad, in important respects, as “liturgical Pelagianism,” a term of misgiving that I have encountered in both Catholic and Reformed writers.

Yes maybe if we all read TF Torrance’s paper: “The Mind of Christ in Worship: The Problem of Apollinarianism in the Liturgy,” we could avoid “liturgical Pelagianism.”

From the standpoint of the Reformed tradition, I think our best hope, if things ever got so far, would be to follow the lead of the Orthodox. If they make curbing extra-liturgical use of the Holy Gifts a condition for eucharistic sharing, them I think we should fall in with them. If they decide, however, as they probably would, that the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and the Corpus Christi celebrations were dubious but not intolerable, then I think we should go with that.

I don’t think this issue is important enough to let it block eucharistic sharing. I think all traditions will have practices in their history that will need to be tolerated by the others, even if the others do not adopt them. I don’t see how the Reformed (and indeed most Protestants) could see the extra-liturgical use of the Gifts as anything less than unfortunate.

By the way, I welcome Fr. Kimel’s term “practical Zwinglianism,” which I find to be quite useful. Nevertheless, I find myself thinking that it’s not necessarily all bad. For example, for all its faults practical Zwinglianism would not be as bad, in important respects, as “liturgical Pelagianism,” a term of misgiving that I have encountered in both Catholic and Reformed writers.

“Orthodox and catholics in the seventeenth century: schism or intercommunion,” by K. T. Ware, in *Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest: papers read at the tenth summer meeting and the eleventh winter meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society,* (Studies in Church History, 9) ed. by Derek Baker (Cambridge, 1972: Cambridge University Press; ISBN: 0-521-08486-5), pp. 259-276.

My thanks to Bill Tighe for the information. My copy of the article is in one of many unopened boxes in my basement.

I appreciate this exchange, since it helps me to see that if, God willing, we ever got so far, Protestants might need to adopt a charitable stance in tolerating the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

By the way, the passage you remembered reading from Ware may be found in The Orthodox Church (2nd. ed.), p. 98.

Andrew Louth’s concern, which I take to be typical of the Orthodox, is that the consecrated host ought not to be abstracted from the eucharistic celebration, and that it ought not to taken as an end in itself. The host is consecrated not directly for the sake of adoration but for the sake of union and communion with Christ.

Adoration has its proper place only in the course of the liturgy, but in that setting the Holy Gifts are properly adored and reverenced.

Curbing the cult of the elements outside the eucharist would be an important step toward visible unity.

“The Purpose of the Eucharist lies not in the change of the bread and wine, but in the partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, the manifestation of the Church as the body of Christ. This is why the gifts themselves never became in the Orthodox East an object of special reverence, contemplation, and adoration, and likewise an object of special theological ‘problematics’: how, when, in what manner their change is accomplished.”

Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1998), p. 226.

Perhaps eight years ago or so I called a Catholic priest who was very involved in national and international Catholic/Orthodox dialogue and asked him if the Orthodox participants had ever raised serious objection to the practice of Benediction and other extra-liturgical devotions. He said they had not, that it had never come up in his extensive conversations with Orthodox theologians.

I know that in the past Orthodox polemicists have sometimes accused Catholics of artolatry, because of the practice of genuflecting to the bread and cup before the Epiclesis. An Orthodox monk raised this objection with me in conversation a few years before I became Catholic, but it does not appear to be a serious contemporary Orthodox concern about Catholic liturgical practice.

And of course, a millennium ago the Orthodox vehemently objected to the Catholic use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist; I have not run across this objection in contemporary Orthodox literature though. I wonder if this concern has been raised in Orthodox/Armenian conversations.

Legitimate questions can, of course, be raised about certain expressions of extra-liturgical eucharistic devotion. I was too deeply formed in Anglicanism not to find myself still feeling a bit uneasy about public Corpus Christi processions, though I feel no uneasiness about Benediction, which I find profoundly moving.

The Orthodox reserve the Blessed Sacrament, but they do not direct any prayer or devotion to the reserved elements. I have wondered why and have speculated that Eastern Christians have never felt a personal need for such prayer because the visual aspects of devotion are so powerfully fulfilled by the presence and use of icons. Unfortunately, icon devotion never took root in the West. Just a speculation on my part.

If an Orthodox believer were to visit a Catholic parish where the Blessed Sacrament is exhibited for adoration, prayer, and intercession, would he/she really find this practice objectionable? Perhaps some would, but most, I think, would not. They might find it alien to their own experience, but I do not think they would raise principled objections to it.

But whatever objections Orthodox theologians might raise about Catholic extra-liturgical devotional practices, surely Catholics and Orthodox are one in their conviction that *within* the liturgy, the sacramental Christ is properly adored and reverenced. I remember the first time I attended an Orthodox Liturgy of the Pre-sanctified. When the Blessed Sacrament was brought out in procession, members of the congregation prostrated themselves in adoration. I think many contemporary Catholics could learn a great deal from the Orthodox on how to properly adore the sacred Body and precious Blood.