Transubstantiation

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Transubstantiation. In Catholic theology of the eucharist, the change of the substance (underlying reality) of the bread and wine into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, leaving the ‘accidents’ (i.e. the appearances of the bread and wine) intact, so that the faithful do not literally touch Christ's body. The term was recognized at the Lateran Council of 1215, and was formally defined at Trent in 1551. The E. Church entertains an essentially identical doctrine to transubstantiation, but many modern Orthodox theologians avoid the term because of its associations with Latin scholasticism.

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