Early Church Fathers Upholding Transubstantiation in Their Own Words - Ascension Press Media

Early Church Fathers Upholding Transubstantiation in Their Own Words - Ascension Press Media: As a Baptist taking tentative steps toward the Catholic Church, the first theological domino to fall, for me, was two thousand years of consistent, adamant, historical Church teaching on the Eucharist. I accepted Eucharistic teaching immediately upon the testimony of the Scriptures and the Church Fathers. The historical interpretation of John 6, to which I had never before been exposed, seemed painfully obvious as soon as I heard it! As Pope Leo XIII stated in his encyclical “On the Study of Holy Scripture”: “The Holy Fathers, we say, are of supreme authority, whenever they all interpret in one and the same manner any text of the Bible, as pertaining to the doctrine of faith or morals; for their unanimity clearly evinces that such interpretation has come down from the Apostles as a matter of Catholic faith” (Providentissimus Deus, 38). Also, Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman stated: “We receive those doctrines which they thus teach, not merely because they teach them, but because they bear witness that all Christians everywhere then held them” (John Henry Newman on Antichrist in the Church Fathers, 45). Many Catholics and non-Catholics believe the Catholic Church invented the doct