Is Jesus Physically Present in the Eucharist? Or How Not to Teach Berengarius

In Catholic Eucharistic theology, an influential metanarrative claims that the Catholic Church mitigated its condemnation of Berengarius of Tours, frequently claiming St. Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent as evidence for such a mitigation. The authors of this metanarrative claim that Catholic teaching prohibits the “crass realism” of Christ being “physically” present in the Eucharist. This paper first argues that the authors of the metanarrative have misinterpreted their historical evidence, particularly regarding the entailments of Christ’s substantial presence in these sources. It then argues, on the strength of the encyclical Mysterium Fidei, that the semantic range of “physically” can cover the same meaning as “corporeally,” allowing Catholic theologians to say that Christ is physically present in the Eucharist, subject to the appropriate qualifications of the Ro-man Catechism and Mysterium Fidei about the non-local presence of Christ.