Interesting link on the christian beliefs and views on the eucharist nineteensixty-four.blogspot.sg/2010/10/christian-belief-in-and-knowledge-of.html Quoted link What is perhaps most surprising is that a majority of all significant sub-groups of non-Catholic Christians in the United States (i.e., those with a sufficient size that the number of interviews allows for an estimate) express a belief regarding the Eucharist that is consistent with Catholic Church teachings. The Pew results also indicate that they do so with little knowledge that the belief they affirm is a teaching of the Catholic Church. Again we may have another case of source amnesia—believing something you once heard but without memory of the source of that belief. The Catholic identity crisis is interesting. I must say the Protestant case even more so. Should the Catholic Church be more concerned that people don’t know what it teaches or surprised that so many non-Catholic Christians believe it—often in opposition the teachings of their own denominations? How do so many Protestants—including those who identify themselves as “born again” come to believe a Catholic teaching regarding the Eucharist? This teaching was at the heart of anti-Catholic criticisms and caricatures of the Catholic faith for hundreds of years. Other than source amnesia what could this be attributed to? Perhaps another set of Pew survey results provide a clue. Some 59% of Evangelicals say the Bible is the “Word of God, literally true word for word.” If this is the case, many Evangelicals may take a literal reading of the passage such as Matthew 26:26-28 and incorporate this into their beliefs without realizing the literal interpretation is consistent with Catholic teachings that their particular denomination may not agree with (...and there is evidence for this link...). The exploratory analysis above has its limitations. It is based on two separate surveys and the ANES does not include non-citizens. It is also the case that both survey questions cannot possibly capture all the nuances of the teachings and theology of the Catholic Church on this matter (although both questions are intentionally attempting to reflect these teachings specifically). Despite these limitation it definitely points to a need to explore this issue further.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 11:17:47 +0000