Most Catholics believe Jesus Christ is present in the Communion bread and wine they consume at Mass, according to a survey released to coincide with a national revival.
A survey by Vinea Research found that 69% of Catholics who attend Mass at least yearly believe that the Eucharistic elements become the invisible substance of Christ.
The Baltimore-based Catholic market research firm has released the survey results as thousands of Catholics from around the country are participating in a three-year revival by walking to Indianapolis this summer for the first National Eucharistic Congress in 83 years. Each weekend, they stop in major cities to rally parishioners around belief in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
“We learned that even at low levels of Mass attendance, there’s a fair amount of agreement that it’s not just a symbol, that Jesus is truly present in the bread and wine,” Vinea founder Hans Plate told The Washington Times. “But the more people believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the more likely they are to go to Mass.”
The survey found belief in the teaching increased with Mass participation. That included 51% of Catholics who attended once or twice over the past year, 64% who went “a few times a year,” 80% of “once or twice a month” worshipers, 81% of weekly attendees and 92% of those who worshiped “more than once a week.”
The findings follow efforts by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to address a perceived loss of faith in the Eucharist that officials have linked to years of declining religious participation.
In launching the Eucharistic revival, the bishops pointed to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey that found only 31% of all Catholics believe the bread and wine “actually become” Jesus. Another 69% told Pew that the bread and wine are “symbols.”
Pew found the share who chose “actually become” over “symbol” rose to 63% of online respondents who attended Mass weekly. That’s well below the 81% Vinea tracked in the same group.
“In our survey, we found that most Mass-attending Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist,” Greg Smith, Pew’s associate director of religion research, told The Times. “Belief in the real presence is far lower among Catholics who attend Mass less often or not at all.”
More recently, church-sponsored studies have pushed back on the wording of that survey. They insist that Pew underestimated belief and confused participants by posing a false “either/or” question.
“The problem is that both answer choices were partially correct,” said the Rev. Tom Gaunt, a Jesuit priest who directs Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. “Pew also made the mistake of confusing a lack of knowledge with disagreement.”
In a survey CARA released in September, 64% of all Catholics gave answers in open-ended and multiple-choice questions “that indicate they believe in the real presence,” even though only 17% reported attending church at least weekly.
According to Father Gaunt, those findings are more in line with Vinea’s research than the Pew study. But he said the church still faces the challenge of reaching the majority of believers who rarely attend Mass.
“They don’t explicitly know what the church teaches when you ask them directly,” he said. “But implicitly or intuitively, they hold to the real presence.”
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the consecrated bread and wine both symbolize and embody the presence of Jesus.
The Vinea survey canvassed 2,259 adults in an online consumer panel between October and November 2022. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
To test the wording of Pew’s online poll, Vinea posed separate questions to two groups of Catholics who reported attending Mass once a year or more.
One Vinea survey asked 1,138 participants about the Eucharist in Pew’s language: “During Catholic Mass, the bread and wine … a. Actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ b. Are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”
Based on Pew’s wording, 41% chose the first answer that they “actually become” Jesus.
The other survey asked 1,121 others about the Eucharist with revised language that repeated words from the Catechism: “[W]hat do you personally believe about the bread and wine used for Communion? a. Jesus Christ is truly present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist b. Bread and wine are symbols of Jesus, but Jesus is not truly present.”
Based on the revised wording, Vinea found that 69% chose the first option that Jesus is “truly present.”
Mr. Plate said his biggest surprise was that even 51% of those attending Mass only once or twice a year embraced this answer.
“They believe in the real presence, but it’s still not enough to get them to Mass,” he said. “That’s a limitation in our study, because as a researcher, I want to know why they’re not going.”
Mr. Smith said Pew is open to re-testing the issue, adding that the research center has “every reason to think people answered this question thoughtfully and with knowledge of what it meant” in 2019.
“I’d like for us to do some testing of our own the next time we ask this question to see if it yields different results,” he said. “I’d be surprised if it made a lot of difference, as people tend to take surveys quickly.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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