In the wake of the Pew study on the belief (or lack thereof) of Catholics in the Eucharist, most proposals to address this problem have focused on education. But the problem is more than an intellectual one. At the root, it’s about experience. We can drill the Church’s teaching on transubstantiation and the Real Presence into children studying for their first Communion and confirmation, and priests can (and should) use every opportunity throughout the liturgical year to remind those of us in the pews that Christ is truly present under the forms of bread and wine.
But if we say those words and then act as if that reality means nothing, why are we surprised when that teaching becomes an abstraction and then gets tossed aside?