AUSCP Presents Condemned Teaching About the Eucharist

We’ve reported extensively on The Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP), cataloging the many ways this dissident organization of priests is working to subvert Church teaching and practice into what they feel is the true “spirit” of Vatican II, but is just a modernist fantasy.

Some of AUSCP’s goals include the sacramental ordination of women, priestless lay-led parishes,  homosexual activism including homosexual adoption of children and a host of other deviant ideas and ideologies.

Last year, the AUSCP was so fed up with our reporting that its executive director, Fr. Stephen Newton, CSC, sent a letter to Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute.  The letter is said to have been sent “at the request of the AUSCP Core Team … in response to Lepanto once again labeling AUSCP a heretical organization,” and it referenced our report headlined, “The Synod’s Backdoor for Heretics.”  The thrust of the letter was to ask that both Hichborn and Lepanto “cease continued slander and defamation aimed at the AUSCP and individual members.”

We responded with a simple set of questions asking the AUSCP to affirm key points of Church doctrine. The AUSCP, of course, answered with a dodgy non-response.

Now, it looks like we’ll have another question to add to the list, this time concerning Church teaching on the Eucharist.

On March 13, the AUSCP posted an event notice on its website for a “Eucharistic Revival” featuring “AUSCP member and former Assembly presenter” Fr. Jim Bacik.

Fr. Bacik, according to his website bio, is a well credentialed theologian, who has held teaching positions at a number of Catholic universities. A cursory review of his materials found him to be stereotypically modernist and a good fit for AUSCP. His presentations include the promotion of such condemned ideas as the “Fundamental Option”, (a theory condemned in Veritatis Splendor that we make a fundamental choice for or against God rather than fall based on our individual moral choices),  the ordination of women to the priesthood and a dissident understanding of homosexuality.

Following the Eucharistic Revival event, the AUSCP posted video of Fr. Bacik’s presentation to its website.

The talk consists of Fr. Bacik answering a number of fictional questions concerning Mass and the Eucharist.

The first question, from a character named Abraham, sets the overall tone of the presentation. Abraham is a traditionalist who doesn’t like music or the sign of peace. Fr. Bacik emphasizes that liturgy is a communal activity and a “common meal.” Later, around the twenty-minute mark, Fr. Bacik explains that some tell him Mass is a sacrifice to which he responded, “it doesn’t turn me on.” He goes on to state that the Mass is a ritual gift exchange rather than a sacrifice. Other highlights include his discussion at and hour and one minute calling Archbishop Cordileone a “culture warrior” for his response to Nancy Pelosi while then going on to praise Cardinal McElroy’s approach on making the Eucharist “common ground.”

However, the most alarming aspect of the talk is where Fr. Bacik swerves into downplaying or downright denying Transubstantiation.

Beginning around 13 minutes into the talk, Fr. Bacik presents the story of a woman named Sarah who is challenged by her presbyterian husband concerning her belief in Transubstantiation. Fr Bacik first downplays Transubstantiation by claiming that Catholics aren’t “tied” to that as a teaching.  Fr Bacik then tells Sarah that she can explain Christ’s presence in the eucharist to her husband as “transignification,” by saying:

“Trent said that [Transubstantiation] was a ‘suitable way’ of describing the Eucharist.  Most theologians don’t think we’re tied to that.  The Vatican did repeat it in the 1950s …  but, um, I think most theologians would say we’re not tied to that.  So, you can tell your husband, ‘okay you don’t like it. I don’t have to hold it as a Catholic.’

Here’s another.  Try this.  How about thinking of what happens in the Eucharist as ‘transignification.’  So, that bread and wine, because of the Eucharistic prayer, is no longer merely Bread and Wine.  They don’t just throw it away when the Mass is over.   It took on, through the Mass, a ‘new significance.’  So, you could tell your husband, ‘No, I don’t hold [transubstantiation], I hold transignification.  When I go to communion, that’s Jesus – for me.  That’s Him nourishing me, that’s Him strengthening me, that’s helping me get through my day – tough day – and the dog-eat-dog world that I live in.’  Transignification.  Try that on your husband; see how that works.”

The problem here is that Fr. Bacik is instructing his audience to hold a condemned view of Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist.

Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Mysterium Fidei expressly condemned the concept of transignification as a “false and disturbing opinion”:

For We can see that some of those who are dealing with this Most Holy Mystery in speech and writing are disseminating opinions on … the dogma of transubstantiation that are disturbing the minds of the faithful and causing them no small measure of confusion about matters of faith, just as if it were all right for someone to take doctrine that has already been defined by the Church and consign it to oblivion or else interpret it in such a way as to weaken the genuine meaning of the words or the recognized force of the concepts involved.

To give an example of what We are talking about, … to concentrate on the notion of sacramental sign as if the symbolism—which no one will deny is certainly present in the Most Blessed Eucharist—fully expressed and exhausted the manner of Christ’s presence in this Sacrament; or to discuss the mystery of transubstantiation without mentioning what the Council of Trent had to say about the marvelous conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body and the whole substance of the wine into the Blood of Christ, as if they involve nothing more than “transignification,” or “transfinalization” as they call it; or, finally, to propose and act upon the opinion that Christ Our Lord is no longer present in the consecrated Hosts that remain after the celebration of the sacrifice of the Mass has been completed.

Everyone can see that the spread of these and similar opinions does great harm to belief in and devotion to the Eucharist. [emphasis added]

Later in the same encyclical, Paul VI adds:

In the same way, it cannot be tolerated that any individual should on his own authority take something away from the formulas which were used by the Council of Trent to propose the Eucharistic Mystery for our belief. These formulas—like the others that the Church used to propose the dogmas of faith—express concepts that are not tied to a certain specific form of human culture, or to a certain level of scientific progress, or to one or another theological school. Instead they set forth what the human mind grasps of reality through necessary and universal experience and what it expresses in apt and exact words, whether it be in ordinary or more refined language. For this reason, these formulas are adapted to all men of all times and all places.

Fr Bacik is proposing exactly what is condemned by Paul VI, because of the exalted reason that “most theologians don’t think we’re tied to that.”

This is yet another example of the heretical threat posed by the AUSCP.  Not only did the AUSCP promote this “Eucharistic Revival” event, but they published the entire lecture on their own website for all to see.  Given this, it stands to reason that the AUSCP agrees with Fr. Bacik’s assertion that the Church’s teaching on transubstantiation is not an obligatory belief to be held by all Catholics, and that Catholics can hold belief in “transignification” instead.  We already know the AUSCP holds Fr. Bacik in incredibly high esteem, as he presented at its 2014 Annual Assembly, and the AUSCP has published nearly two dozen other articles by him, including one that calls into question the Church’s absolute condemnation of abortion. However, the AUSCP continues to hold that it is not a heretical organization, so we are offering the AUSCP the chance to answer the following questions:

1. Does the AUSCP, as an organization, assent to the following teaching of Pope Paul VI that: “we have to listen with docility to the voice of the teaching and praying Church. Her voice, which constantly echoes the voice of Christ, assures us that the way in which Christ becomes present in this Sacrament is through the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His body and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, a unique and truly wonderful conversion that the Catholic Church fittingly and properly calls transubstantiation.”
2. Will the AUSCP take down Fr. Bacik’s video, and publicly condemn his notion that it is proper for a Catholic say that they do not have to hold to Transubstantiation as a Catholic, but can hold to transignification instead?

We look forward to the AUSCP’s response on these important questions.