Nearly all Christians celebrate some form of the Eucharist by consuming bread and wine in memory of Christ’s death and Resurrection. Protestants [non-Catholic & non-Orthodox Christians] usually refer to the Eucharist as the Lord’s Supper and do not believe that Christ is physically present in the bread and wine at their services or at the Catholic Mass.

Rejection of the sacrament: Some denominations do not celebrate the Eucharist. For example, the Salvation Army is usually known for its charity work, but it is actually a self-proclaimed Christian denomination. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, “Catherine Booth, the influential wife of the founder [of the Salvation Army], admired the piety and practices of Quakers, who did not perform baptisms or Communion rites.

A couple of months ago Archbishop Etienne wrote a pastoral letter on the Eucharist; Eucharist is a Greek word meaning “thanksgiving”, as in thanksgiving for what Jesus Christ has done to redeem us. The Archbishop’s pastoral letter was in the Northwest Catholic, the Archdiocesan magazine sent to all registered Catholics in Western Washington. Here is a link to it in case you missed it.

In it, the Archbishop asks us to have a year of the Eucharist, a year in which we re-educate ourselves on the Eucharist and re-devote ourselves to Jesus Christ in it. So, I thought I would run a series of pastor columns on the Eucharist using a little book by Trent Horn at Catholic Answers. In it he answers 20 questions or accusations that people have about the Eucharist.