This past week, the U.S. National Eucharistic Revival’s Congress in Indianapolis started, and a surprising study’s results came to light. 

“Do Catholics Truly Believe in the Real Presence?” was released by Maryland-based Vinea Research. The new 2024 survey contradicted the 2019 Pew Research study that alarmed bishops and priests by asserting that only 31% of Mass-going U.S. Catholics believed that the bread and wine “actually become” the body and blood of Jesus. 

The other 69% of Catholics, according to Pew, believed the bread and wine are “symbols” of Christ’s flesh and blood. 

Those who analyzed the poll suggested that the wording made all the difference. The Vinea and Pew studies used different terms, with the Vinea study having its questions based on traditional knowledge of the Church, its doctrines, and teachings. 

Pew’s question for the survey respondents — asking if they believed the elements “actually become” Jesus — may not have resonated with what Catholics know from regularly attending Mass, so the Vinea question asked if Christ was truly present in the Eucharist. 

And thanks be to God, the response to the question was overwhelmingly positive by U.S. Catholics polled concerning the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. 

Father John Cush, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn who is a professor of fundamental and dogmatic theology at Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, reminds us what it is precisely that we believe about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. 

Father Cush draws attention to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1374. 

The Catechism states: “The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as ‘the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.’ 

“In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist, ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.’ 

“This presence is called ‘real’— by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God, and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.” 

So, with this being said, if U.S. Catholics seem overwhelmingly to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, why does Mass attendance seem so low in some of our parishes? 

What can we do to draw others to the Eucharist? 

Namely, this: Be living witnesses to the reality of the Presence of Christ by what we say and do. 

The Christian life is only credible when we are on fire with the Lord, when we become he whom we receive.