Sect. 267How the Mass Is a True SacrificeHow the Mass Is a True Sacrifice

So far we have dealt chiefly with the dogmatic question, “Is the Mass a true sacrifice?” (an sit); we now face the theological question, “How is the Mass a true sacrifice?” (quomodo sit). The former point is of faith, and admits of no controversy on the part of Catholics; the latter is left open to discussion, and every Catholic is at liberty to follow his own opinion. When a dogma is defined, the definition necessarily supposes a certain knowledge of its terms. Otherwise it would be unintelligible and to no purpose. The knowledge, however, of the terms, or, to be more accurate, of the things connoted by the terms, must be deemed sufficiently perfect when it contains one or more essential notes, and enables us to give a reasonable assent to the dogmatic statement. To believe that “in God there are three persons,” it is enough to conceive God as the Supreme Being and a person as a reasonable being. That “grace is necessary for salvation,” that “Scripture is inspired,” that “original sin is a true sin,” are propositions to which the assent of faith can be given on the vague knowledge that grace is a gift of God, inspiration a Divine influence, and sin something wrong. In like manner the simple believer, who knows sacrifice only as “a sacred offering to God,” satisfies the claims of faith when he admits that the Mass is truly such an offering The Councils speak the general language of the Church In their decrees and canons they are most careful to avoid terms or expressions favouring particular schools of theology. No scientific definition is usually expected from any Council. That is left to theology. On the other hand, dogmatic definitions are a help to the theologian in search of scientific definitions. E.g. if he strives to define a sacrament by genus and species, he must analyze the several rites defined as sacraments by the Church, and first find an essential note common to all, and then another proper to each. In like manner, the dogma that the Mass is a true sacrifice, compels him to find in it the essential notes of all sacrifices, and another essential note which distinguishes it from all other sacrifices.

I. In the treatise on Redemption (§ 209), we have given the essential elements of sacrifice on the lines laid down by Scheeben, the deepest and most fascinating of modern theologians. As, at the present time, the papal Bull on Anglican Orders, the “Reply” by the Anglican Archbishops, and the “Vindication” by the Catholic Bishops of England, have given a new interest to the question in hand, we shall now put before the reader a summary of what Dr. Paul Schanz wrote on the subject in 1895. See the Freiburg Kirchenlexikon, OPFER.

The inquiry into the idea which underlies the various sacrificial rites is one of the most difficult problems of the philosophy of religion. On the one hand, sacrifices are the symbols of certain feelings, desires, and ideas; on the other, they are types of the future. The first we gather from the rites themselves; the second, from the fulfilment in the Christian dispensation. The notion of offering (oblatio, προσφορά) may be taken as the fundamental notion of all sacrifices. Man gives to the Divinity part of his property in order either to express his veneration and gratitude, or to secure the Divine favour, taking it for granted that God is pleased with such gift and with the dispositions of the giver. The Divine pleasure is supposed to be increased by the fact that the gift implies submission, acknowledgment (= adoration), and veneration on the part of the giver. In this St. Augustine sees the reason why demons desired sacrifices to be offered to them, and why no man has such a desire (Contra Advers. Legis et Proph., 1, 18, 37; cf. Thomassin, De Incarn., 10, 2). The burning or outpouring of the gifts hands them over to God, and through their acceptance God admits the giver to communion with Him. For the essential character of the sacrificial gift is not its destruction, but its handing over and consecration to God. The privation suffered by the giver parting with his property, and the dispositions with which that privation is endured, may have a great moralizing influence on the giver, but they are not essential. The outpouring of the libations and the killing of the animals are but the means for handing over the gift to God, and for bringing the giver into communion with Him. The killing necessarily precedes the burning, but the killing is not the sacrifice. “The victim is killed in order to be offered” (Greg. I., In Ezech. i. 2, Hom. 10, 19); in other words, the killing is preparatory to the sacrifice. More importance attaches to the blood of the victim which is gathered and poured out at the altar. For, according to ancient ideas, the life, or the soul, is in the blood. When, therefore, the blood is offered, the highest that man can give, viz. a soul or a life, is handed over to God. On the received principle of “soul for soul (= life), blood for blood,” the sacrifice of blood was a substitute for the sacrifice of self. Human sacrifices were prompted by the same idea of giving to the Divinity what is best in man, the soul which is in the blood. As milder views came to prevail, the life of domestic animals was offered instead of the life of man. They who see in the killing of the victim the final act of the sacrifice, have no satisfactory explanation for the pouring out of the blood, the offering of the life in it and the burning. These rites cannot mean “that the two essential points of the sacrifice (adoration and propitiation), already expressed in the act of killing by the shedding of blood, are once more clearly and prominently represented.” Against this stands the fact that the pouring out of the blood is the special function of the priest, whereas the killing—which nowhere is set down as a pain or punishment inflicted on the victim—may be performed by a layman. Moreover, the sacrificial eating of the victim is, in this hypothesis, insufficiently accounted for. Hence in the sprinkling with the blood there is more than an act of propitiation, and in the cremation there is more than an act of supreme worship (latria). Both express in the first place, the oblation of self to God and the union of self with God. The sanctifying power of fire is as well known as the rôle it plays in heathen mythologies. God Himself was a fire, “Our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), or the fire was a power sent from heaven, and frequently the heavenly fire is said to have consumed the victim. The Persians only offered the soul in the blood, and Philo explains the shedding of blood as an oblation of the soul (839 B, in the Paris edition of 1640). Our Lord Himself says that He will give His soul (ψυχὴν) for our redemption (Matt. 20:28). The independent unbloody sacrifices can only be explained from the same point of view, viz. that they express oblation of self to, and union with, God. In the most ancient sacrifices of incense (and of oil) the sweet odour generated in the burning is the chief object in view. The Fathers (e.g. Theodoret, q. 62, In Exod.; cf. q. 62, In Genes.) remark that burnt bones and flesh produce no sweet odour, and that, consequently, the pleasure God finds in the sacrifice must lie in the pious dispositions of those who offer The sacrificial meal is an element to be considered in the interpretation of sacrifices; but, taken by itself, it affords no explanation for the outpouring of blood (which is no food) and of the incense offering. It is altogether too gross a notion to see in the ancient sacrifices nothing but a banquet in which the gods were supposed to take part. The eating of the victim accepted by God is simply the symbol of the union with God intended by those who offer the sacrifice. This τελείωσις—making perfect (Heb. 9:9; 10:1, 14)—is the end and final object of all sacrifices. St. Irenæus says, “Sacrifices do not sanctify man, for God is not in want of sacrifices; but it is the conscience of him who offers which sanctifies the sacrifice, for when it is pure it causes God to accept the sacrifice as from a friend” (Adv. Hæreses, 4, 18, 3). Sacrifice in general may therefore be defined as “the offering to God, by an authorized minister, of an external gift of something our own [transformed] by the consecration of the minister, and thus passing into the dominion of God, Who accepts the gift for the sanctification of the offerer.” The self-sacrifice which lies in the parting with the gift works for the same ends as the sacrifice itself: acknowledgment of the Deity, thanksgiving, atonement, impetration—in short, for the sanctification of man. The Fathers and Schoolmen laid peculiar stress on the juridical aspect of sacrifices, yet without overlooking the end of sanctification and union with God. St. Augustine sets down as a true sacrifice any work performed in order to unite us with God in holy society. Alexander of Hales follows Augustine: “Sacrificium est oblatio quæ sacra fit offerendo et sanctificat offerentem” (Sum. Theol. 3, q. 55, n. 4, a. 1). St. Thomas has several definitions or quasi-definitions: “In the oblations and sacrifices man offered to God things of his own to acknowledge that he held them from God” (1 2 q. 102, a. 3); “properly speaking, a sacrifice is something done to give God the honour due to Him, and to appease Him” (3 q. 48, a. 3); “in order perfectly to unite the spirit of man with God” (3, q. 22, a. 2); “the term sacrifice expresses that man makes something sacred” (2 2, q. 85, a. 3, ad. 3). Later, the scholastic aliquid facere circa rem oblatam (“doing something to the gift”) was supplanted by conficere rem (“to make the gift”), (Suarez), and this was further explained as conficere per immutationem (“to make by means of a change”). Vasquez again narrowed the notion by describing the confectio as destructio, the immutatio as demutatio (i.e. change for the worse), and the dominium Dei as the Divine dominion over life and death. Franzelin and many modern theologians take the notion of sacrifice to include the following elements: “Sacrifice is an offering made to God by the destruction or quasi-destruction of some sensible object, such offering having been instituted by public authority to acknowledge God’s supreme dominion over all things and man’s absolute dependence on God for life and everything; after the Fall it also expresses a sense of sin for which Divine justice must be satisfied” (Franzelin, De Eucharistiæ Sacrificio, thes. ii.). But, as Schanz justly observes, so far as this definition makes it essential to a sacrifice that it should recognize God’s supreme dominion by the destruction or quasi-destruction of something, it evidently does not correspond to the notion of sacrifice in the old heathen world, for it implies that sacrifice cannot be offered to inferior deities, nor to heroes; nor does it express the meaning of the Jewish sacrifices, for the victim in these sacrifices was not unfrequently killed by the person offering it, and not by the priest. As to the burning on the altar, it was regarded as the means of conveying the victim to God, or, when the fire was kindled from heaven (3 Kings 18:38; 2 Paral. 7:1), it was God’s acceptance of the sacrifice. Many of the Hebrew sacrifices may be described as things given to God to secure His favour, or to appease His wrath, or as thank and tribute offerings; but frequently also they meant an act of communion with God, either by means of a feast, which God was supposed to share with His worshippers, or by the renewal of a life-bond in the blood of a sacred victim.

These reasons justify the elimination of the element of destruction, real or equivalent, from the essential constitution of sacrifice in general. With Scheeben and Schanz we revert to the definitions commonly adopted before the time of Vasquez († 1604).

II. Two more questions lie before us: Does the Mass contain the above generic element of sacrifice? and, What is its specific element? We deal first with the second of these questions, because on its solution depends the solution of the first. It is admitted on all hands that the Mass is a sacrifice “relative to the sacrifice of the Cross.” The relation is founded extrinsically upon the expressed will of Christ: “This do ye as often as you shall drink for the commemoration of Me; for as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until He come” (1 Cor. 11:25, 26); intrinsically upon the identity of priest and victim in both sacrifices, and upon the similarity between the mystical effusion of blood in the Mass and the real effusion on the Cross. The relation, external by institution, and internal by nature, belongs uniquely to the Eucharistic sacrifice. It is this specific difference which, added to the generic notion of sacrifice, gives us the definition of the Mass: “The sacrifice in which, by the institution of Christ, the sacrifice on the Cross is re-offered in an unbloody manner.” For the better understanding of the relative nature of the Christian sacrifice we add some details.

1. The Last Supper was the celebration of another commemorative sacrifice, the Jewish paschal lamb. “This day shall be for a memorial to you; and you shall keep it a feast of the Lord in your generations with an everlasting observance.… And when your children shall say to you, What is the meaning of this service? you shall say to them, It is the victim of the passage of the Lord, when He passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, striking the Egyptians, and saving our houses” (Exod. 12:14, 26). Jesus, as head of a house, acted as minister of this most typical of all sacrifices; and when it was over, when He had explained its meaning to the Apostles, He offered Himself as the antitype, “Christ, our Pasch, is sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7), and His words, “Do this for the commemoration of Me,” sound like the echo, or the literal repetition of the words by which God instituted this typical sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb (cf. Cornelius à Lapide, In Exod. xii. 14, 26, 47; In Matt. xxvi. 17, etc.).

2. The internal fitness of the yearly sacrifice of a lamb to represent and commemorate the first Pasch celebrated in Egypt is founded upon the identity of the minister, the victim, and the ritual. The minister was not the ordinary priest, but the head of the house, a layman; the victim was a lamb—one year old, male, without blemish; the ritual was the same, with one important exception: the relative sacrifice omitted the sprinkling of the door-posts with blood, because the redemption from the Egyptian slavery had been accomplished, and needed no repetition. The object of the commemoration was to gather the fruit of the model sacrifice: the closer union of the people with God through the grateful acknowledgment of His sovereign power. The Eucharistic sacrifice adapts itself better to the commemoration of its type on the Cross than the Paschal Lamb to the commemoration of the Egyptian sacrifice. In the Mass the real minister and the victim are identically (numero) the same as on the Cross, whereas in the paschal sacrifice they were so only specifically. Both rites differ in a similar way from their types. They both are unbloody, whereas both the types are bloody sacrifices. In the Jewish rite the eating of the victim, symbolizing union with God, is the consummation to which the whole rite leads up; and the same is true of the Mass.

3. We use the term “mystical” in reference to the “mystery” in which the effusion takes place; it is opposed to “real,” and equivalent to “representative, commemorative, or relative.” The mystical effusion consists in placing the Divine body and blood on the altar under distinct and separate species. Of course Christ is wholly present under either species, yet so that the words of consecration which strike our ears, and the species which strike our eyes, convey a first impression (only to be rectified by reason and faith) of a divided presence. Considering the glorified state of the victim on the one hand, and on the other the manner in which the human memory is awakened by sense perceptions, it seems impossible to devise a better commemoration of the death on the Cross. The distinctness and expressiveness of the words of the institution, “This is My blood which is shed; My body which is given (= sacrificed),” leave no doubt that in the mind of Christ the very essence of the commemorative sacrifice lies in the separate presence of body and blood on the altar.

III. This reflection leads us on to the crucial theological question how the Mass is a real sacrifice, and not a mere (nuda) commemoration.

As long as theology was taught from the bishop’s pulpit, rather than from the professor’s chair, the subtle question under consideration received but scant attention. It was only when the Schoolmen began to scrutinize the Scriptures and the Fathers that such pointed questions were mooted and solved according to the principle quot capita tot sensus. The Fathers, who spoke and wrote for the instruction of the faithful at large, when touching on the Eucharistic sacrifice, naturally laid greater emphasis on its objects, chief among which is the sanctification of the people by close communion with God. In the Middle Ages stress was laid upon the notion of commemoration and representation. The Mass is an immolation of Christ, because it is “a certain image representative of the Passion of Christ, which is His true immolation” (St. Thomas, 3, q. 83. a. 1). The further explanation of the sacrificial act differs according to the theories held on the essence of sacrifice. Nobody placed it in the offertory, because there bread and wine, and not the body and blood of Christ, are offered; and the offerer is the priest (with the congregation), not Christ, who is only introduced with the words of consecration. Bread and wine are indeed called oblations, but merely as the matter prepared at the offertory for the sacrificial transformation in the canon. St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and others, see the sacrificial act in the consecration; some in the consecration and the Communion taken together (Bellarmine, the Salmanticenses, Tournely, etc.); others, again, in the breaking of the bread, the dipping of the particle in the consecrated wine and the Communion (e.g. Canus). This latter opinion found but few followers, because the breaking and dipping affect the species only, and not the body of Christ; and even at the Communion, the transformation is but the destruction of the species. At the consecration itself, the commemoration and representation of the scene on the Cross are not effected by the transformation of the substance (Suarez), or by the mystical killing of the celestial body in the separation of body and blood on the altar (Lessius), but by the presence of separate species. In this separation may be traced an immutation of the victim, inasmuch as Christ is wholly present under each separate species only per concomitantiam (Vasquez, Tournely). De Lugo and Franzelin take the consecration to be the sacrificial act. The latter has this thesis, “We think, with Card. De Lugo, and a great many later theologians, that the intrinsic form (essence) of the sacrificial act is in this: Christ, the High Priest, by the ministry of the priests offering in His name, puts His body and blood, under the species of bread and wine, in a state of food and drink, by way of despoiling Himself (exinanitionem = κένωσις = ‘emptying’) of the functions connatural to His sacred Humanity.” In proof of his theory, he describes the state of victim as follows: Christ’s body and blood are present as meat and drink, i.e. as inanimate things; the Eucharistic body, not occupying space, cannot naturally receive actions from, nor react on, external material objects; His sense-life is suspended; He lies under the species as if He were dead, and subjects Himself, through the species, to be dealt with at the will of His creatures. Exception may be taken to this on two counts. The suspension of the lower life in Christ on the altar is a theological deduction not easily understood; at any rate, it is too dark to throw light upon other dark questions. Again, the state of meat and drink, and all the rest, do not produce in the real victim, i.e. Christ glorified, any change for the worse which may be called, or likened to, destruction. Christ dieth no more. The painful efforts of some theologians to inflict at least a semblance of death on the Giver of life, are entirely due to their narrow notion of sacrifice. If we eliminate the “change for the worse” from the notion of “victim,” and replace it by “a change for the better,” we obtain a notion of the sacrificial act which throws new light upon all sacrifices. That we are justified in so doing, has been shown above. The student may turn to Scheeben’s Dogmatik, vol. iii. p. 400, for further proofs and explanations.

In the definition of man as a rational animal, the specific element (reason) fixes the generic element (animal) as the form fixes and determines matter. The genus is the secondary, the specific difference the primary, element in the compound. The same is true of all definitions by genus and species. Hence, in the definition of the Mass as “a sacrifice relative to the sacrifice on the Cross,” the element “relative” is the form, and gives us the proper essence, the true nature, the essential character, of the Mass. The relativeness is founded upon the will of Christ and the identity of Sacrificer and Victim on the Cross and on the Altar; and also upon the similarity between the mystical and the real effusion of blood. The representation of the sacrifice of Christ is, therefore, the proper essence of the sacrifice of the Mass.

IV. It only remains to show how all the elements of a real sacrifice are found in the representation of Christ’s death. For our starting point we take the definition of Tanner, adopted by Scheeben (cf. Book V. § 209).

1. “Sacrifice is an oblation.” The prayers of the canon, before and after the consecration, abundantly show that the offering of a gift to God is the primary motive of the whole action. The oblation is expressed eight or ten times.

2. “Of a corporeal thing,” i.e. of some sensible object. The body and blood of Christ are corporeal, but it may be objected that we see only the appearances. The ready answer is that Christ cannot be perceived by us exactly as He is in heaven, and that He expressly willed to be sacrificed under these appearances. The representative nature of the sacrifice accounts for this slight divergence from other sacrifices.

3. “In which oblation this thing, by means of a transformation (per immutationem transformativam), is made and consecrated (conficitur et conficiendo consecratur).” Where does the transformation come in? There is no real effusion of blood, no material fire to consume the victim, no victim even capable of immutation as commonly understood. These difficulties disappear if we remember that the sacrifice is essentially representative, and, as much as possible, identical with Christ’s own. We have the same victim in the real presence; we have the mystical separation of body and blood in the separate presence under separate species; we have also the same sacrificial act (sacrificatio). Only this latter point requires elucidation. The making of the victim by the sacrificial act (conficere conficiendo) has always been understood to mean the productio corporis Christi per conversionem panis in ipsum (the production, or making present, of the body of Christ through the conversion of the bread into the body). In this sense conficere sacrum (to make the sacrifice) is a technical term with the Fathers, and in all liturgies. When Christ, through the priest, pronounces the words of consecration, he puts Himself, as much as possible, in the same state of victim as on Calvary. There He gave to His violent death the character of the most perfect sacrifice by an act of His will: the complete gift of Himself to God as the price of our redemption. That intention transformed His whole life, and especially His death, into the state of victim. For the crucifixion performed by the soldiers was but a preparation, a condition, of the sacrifice. This takes its being, its dignity, and all its effects from the holy will of Christ. Like the fire which consumed the victims and the incense of old, and made them a sweet odour to God, the love of Christ, burning with all the energy of the Divine Spirit Who fills Him, transformed Him into “a pure Host, a holy Host, an immaculate Host.” On the Christian altar, our Saviour does the same when He makes Himself “the holy bread of eternal life, and the chalice of everlasting salvation” (Prayer, Unde et Memores, immediately after the consecration).

4. “As an earnest (testimonium) of the Majesty and of the subordination (ordinis) of the creature to God, its first principle and last end.” These words express the objects for which sacrifices are offered. They are but an expansion of the simple and more appropriate idea of our communion with God, i.e. our sanctification. The Eucharistic sacrifice brings us into communion with God in more ways than one. For the real Sacrificer is Christ, the Spiritual Head of Whom we are the body. The Church, His bride, and we, its members, unite our intention with His, and make ourselves a joint sacrifice with Him. “Through Him, and with Him, and in Him (we give) to Thee God the Father Almighty, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory (per ipsum et cum ipso, etc.)” (Canon of the Mass). The same idea is beautifully rendered in the blessing of the water before mixing it with the wine at the Offertory: “O God, Who in creating human nature didst wonderfully dignify it, and hast still more wonderfully renewed it; grant that by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His Divinity, Who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord.” Freedom from sin is the first condition of our participation in the Divine life; hence we pray, “In the spirit of humility, and with a contrite heart, may we be received by Thee, O Lord … (in spiritu humilitatis …);” and “May the Lord enkindle in us the fire of His love and the flame of everlasting charity” (Ascendat … prayer after incensing the altar). At the Orate, Fratres, the priest turns to the people and says, “Brethren, pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty.” The people answer, “May the Lord receive the sacrifice from thy hands, to the praise and glory of His Name, to our benefit, and to that of all the Church.” At the Preface, in union with the Angels in heaven, we offer thanks and praise to the thrice-holy Lord God, and then the Actio, the sacrifice, commences. First the Church on earth, with “our Pope, our Bishop, and all believers of the Catholic and Apostolic faith,” are introduced to the altar; then the Church triumphant in heaven with “the glorious Mother of our Lord, the Apostles and all the Saints,” is communicated with, and the Lord is besought to “accept this oblation of His whole family.” The objects of the Actio are again laid before Him: “Dispose our days in Thy peace, command us to be delivered from eternal damnation, and to be numbered in the flock of Thy elect.” The Divine High Priest now takes up the Actio, and performs anew the sacrifice He instituted at the Last Supper. The pure, holy, and immaculate Host is immediately presented to God, with a prayer “that as many of us as, by participation at this altar, shall receive the most sacred body and blood of Thy Son, may be filled with all heavenly benediction and grace; through the same Christ our Lord.” The “servants and handmaids who are gone before us with the sign of faith, and slumber in the sleep of peace,” are remembered; “we sinners” beg for “fellowship with the holy Apostles and all the Saints, not considering our merits, but expecting the free pardon of our offences.” The supreme and all-embracing object of the sacrifice receives its fullest expression in the communion of the priest and the people. “The body—the blood—of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve my (thy) soul to life everlasting.” The sacrificial action terminates with the sacrificial feast, in which the Victim is taken as food “with a pure mind, and of a temporal gift becomes to us an eternal remedy.” The eternal participation in the Divine life by the union of charity is not only foreshadowed, but actually commenced in the sacramental Communion. At this sacred banquet, the adopted sons of God sit down with the Natural Son, Who made them heirs of His kingdom; they appropriate the benefits of His Passion, and receive a tangible pledge, and a foretaste of the glory that awaits them “when that which is perfect is come” (1 Cor. 13:10). As now “they see through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face,” so also now they adhere to God in a true and real, but imperfect, manner; but then they will be “made participators of the Divine life.”

It may be useful and acceptable to the reader to have in brief the essential points of the Catholic doctrine on the Mass. We give them in the words of the “Vindication” of the Bull on Anglican Orders by the Bishops of England, n. 12: “The Mass, according to Catholic doctrine, is a commemoration of the sacrifice of the Cross, for as often as we celebrate it ‘we show the Lord’s death till He come.’ At the same time, it is not a bare commemoration of that other sacrifice, since it is also itself a true sacrifice in the strict sense of the term. It is a true sacrifice because it has all the essentials of a true sacrifice: its Priest, Jesus Christ, using the ministry of an earthly representative; its victim, Jesus Christ, truly present under the appearances of bread and wine; its sacrificial offering, the mystic rite of consecration. And it commemorates the sacrifice of the Cross, because, whilst its Priest is the Priest of Calvary, its Victim the Victim of Calvary, and its mode of offering a mystic representation of the blood-shedding of Calvary, the end also for which it is offered, is to carry on the work of Calvary, by pleading for the applications of the merits consummated on the Cross to the souls of men. It is in this sense that the Mass is propitiatory. To propitiate is to appease the Divine wrath by satisfaction offered, and to beg mercy and forgiveness for sinners. The sacrifice of the Cross is propitiatory in the absolute sense of the word. But the infinite treasure of merit acquired on the Cross cannot be diminished or increased by any other sacrifice. It was then offered once and for all, and there is no necessity of repeating it. That plenitude, however, of merit and satisfaction by no means excludes the continual application of such merit and satisfaction by the perpetual sacrifice of the Mass. Thus the sacrifice of the Mass is also propitiatory. And so, according to Catholic doctrine, even the dead in Christ are not excluded from the benefits of this sacrifice; we call the Mass ‘a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead.’

“Such being our doctrine on the Eucharistic Sacrifice, its essential dependence on the doctrine of the Real Objective Presence is manifest. For, if there were no power in the words of consecration to make the true body and blood of Christ really and objectively present on the altar, we should not have on our altars the Victim of Calvary, and without its Victim the sacrifice could not subsist.”

Scholion. In 1905 the late Bishop Bellord suggested and defended the “banquet” theory of sacrifice. A long and interesting discussion ensued, in which his view was almost universally rejected, and various other theories were discussed. See American Ecclesiastical Review, 1905–6.