From The Sadness of Christ:
Finally more specially is Christ delivered into sinners’ hands among those sects of heretics,
which although they do receive this blessed sacrament of the altar oftener than other do, and on this
would bear the world in hand, that most of all other they have the same in reverence, yet because
without any necessity, to the great dishonour of the Catholic Church, contrary to the common custom
they receive it under both kinds, do nevertheless after the receiving thereof, under the colour of
honouring it, shamefully blaspheme it, while some of them name it still bread and wine, and some,
which is worst of all, not only bread and wine, but furthermore count it nought else but bare bread and
wine alone, utterly denying the very body of Christ (albeit they call it by that name) to be contained in
the said sacrament.
Which point since they go about to maintain, contrary to the most evident words of scripture,
contrary to the most plain interpretations of all the old holy fathers, contrary to the belief that the whole
Catholic Church so many hundreds years hath most steadfastly holden, and contrary to the truth by so
many thousand miracles sufficiently approved, these that are in this latter kind of heresy, which is
indeed the worse of the twain, be they not, trow you, even as evil as they that this night laid hands upon
Christ, and as those soldiers of Pilate too that in scorn making low curtsy to Christ as it had
been to honour him, most spitefully dishonoured him, calling him in mockage king of the Jews? Like as
these men kneeling and crouching do call the blessed sacrament of the altar the body of Christ, which
themselves confess, for all that, they do no more believe than Pilate’s soldiers believed that Christ was a
king.
The question of the King’s authority did not exist in a vacuum. For more than a decade Europe had been racked by what would come to be called the Reformation. Saint Thomas had been aghast at the spiritual anarchy unleashed on the Continent and now it was being brought to England under the sponsorship of his King.
St Thomas remarks on the failure of the Protestant heretics to acknowledge the Real Presence. So do two thirds of present Catholics.
Eucharistic revival is essential, but the methodology is poor. Instead of a rah rah conference that few have the time or treasure to attend (and will do nothing to educate and persuade the doubtful) it should have been a simple direction to include lessons on this in homilies, particularly Christmas and Easter when the nominally Catholic attend.
When the Protestants rejected the Catholic Church, they rejected the Hypostatic Union and the metaphysical world. The Protestants are the poorest of the poor.