Symbolic? Saint Justin Martyr, explain it to the heathen please:
“This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”
“First Apology”, Ch. 66, inter A.D. 148-155.
Bonus:
Good response. Of course, the sad truth is that, depending upon which poll you read, anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of self-identified Catholics believe the same thing as stated by NPR. 🤦🏻♂️
Was this an honest mistake on NPR’s part? More likely, IMO, it was willful, an underhanded way to disparage the Faith. How hard would it be to learn the facts of Catholic belief before saying this?
Then there’s this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOLZDaTgIaM
it was willful, an underhanded way to disparage the Faith.
NPR isn’t that clever and their idea of research is to look at Leftist tweets. Outside of the janitors most NPR reporters have as much contact with believing Catholics as they do with space aliens.
Note, NPR was a jobs program for the Democratic Party nomenklatura almost from the get go. The president of the company (until he was forced out due to financial mismanagement) was for six years George McGovern’s campaign manager. The voices you heard regularly included Cokie Roberts (whose father and mother were in Congress, whose brother succeeded Clark Clifford as Washington’s no. 1 lobbyist, and whose sister was a Democratic pol in New Jersey), Linda Wertheimer (whose husband ran Common Cause for a time), and Nina Totenberg (whose husband was a Democratic senator). They have some agreeable programming and good production values, but a Republican administration needed to clean the place up and never did. PBS signature programs, Frontline and Independent Lens, never pursue a thesis you cannot identify from the trailers. Their news programs used to be better, but decayed rapidly when Jim Lehrer retired. As a rule, I don’t think people of satisfactory character go into the news business anymore.
You have as much chance of finding truth at NPR as experiencing chastity in a brothel.
Maybe someone needs to report NPR to Biden’s Disinformation Board?