Re MDMD Transubstantiation

[Terrance]

         Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians throughout the world
         believe that the bread and wine   become the actual body and
         blood of Jesus during a liturgy  (church service).   

         Even though the shape, color, flavor, and smell of the elements
         themselves remain unchanged,  the bread and wine no longer
         exist. This occurs by the power of the Holy Spirit during the
         "Consecration" of the bread and wine during the  liturgy.

         The term transubstantiation has been around at least since 1215
         AD, and was affirmed by the Council of Trent in 1551. The
         Orthodox church likewise affirmed this belief at the Synod
         of Jerusalem in 1672.

If you ask Catholics in the USA about this they will say that they don't
believe in transubstantiation, or they will not know that this is the
foundation of their faith according to the dogma of the RC church. 

Catholics eat the living god. They consume the flesh and drink the blood
of their god. 


 http://www.cup-bread.org/wine.htm

There is a lot of controversy surrounding this. 

The Bread and Wine link above, is not quite correct on the Anglican
position. 
Also, what we are dealing with in M&D, is a period when this issue was
not quite settled in a lot of the Sects. It still isn't in some. 


    Lord's Supper,
    Protestant rite commemorating the Last Supper. In the
    Reformation the leaders generally rejected the traditional belief
    in the sacrament as a sacrifice and as an invisible miracle of the
    actual changing of the bread and wine into the body and blood
    of Christ (transubstantiation) but retained the belief in it as
    mystically uniting the believers with Christ and with one
    another. The Lutherans held that there is a change by which
    the body and blood of Christ join with the bread and wine;
    this principle (consubstantiation) was rejected by Huldreich
    Zwingli who, in a controversy over the sacrament, held that
    the bread and wine were only symbolic. Calvinists, on the
    other hand, maintained the spiritual, but not the real presence
    of Christ in the sacrament. The Church of England affirmed
    the real presence but denied transubstantiation. However,
    since the Oxford Movement, Anglicans tend to accept either
    transubstantiation or the Calvinist interpretation. Lutheran
    and Anglican communion services follow the Roman Catholic
    Mass in outline, although the service books have eliminated
    references to a sacrifice and have shortened the service.
    Anglicans hold to Western tradition in using unleavened bread.
    Most Protestant churches use raised bread; many use
    unfermented grape juice instead of wine. Communion in which
    the laity receive only the bread is rejected by Protestants; this
    was a crucial point with the Hussites. Lutherans and
    Anglicans (especially since the Oxford Movement) celebrate
    communion much more frequently than most other Protestant
    churches. The Quakers are one of the few Protestant groups to
    reject the sacrament entirely.

The Oxford Movement was in the 19th century, so this doesn't apply to
Mason or his father. 

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01498a.htm 

Here is what the Catholics say about the Anglicans: 

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01498a.htm

Again, I post these for information purposes only. All of these links
have an obvious, sometimes, offensive bias. 

Dialogue on the Anglican Eucharist

           An Anglican priest wrote on my discussion list (his words in
blue):

http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ310.HTM

A very long dialogue on the subject. 

http://hometown.aol.com/philvaz/articles/num31.htm

The Anglican Communion teaches the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy
Eucharist. The bread and wine still remain bread and wine, but by
combination with
the spiritual act of Consecration they are invested with the Body and
Blood of
Christ. "This," said our Lord, "is my Body....and this is My Blood" The
virtue of
His Presence produces its results when the Sacrament is received by the
communicant, but the Presence is still there whether it is received or
not.

http://turtle.looksharp.net/~muir/eucharist.htm