Do Catholics believe that they are actually eating the body of Christ? Does this make them cannibals?

The issue is "substance" which is a philosophical construct of the mind from Aristotelian times¹.

It is not directly related to reality because substance is not physically verifiable as being anything other than the DNA of some kind of unleavened wheat. The same can be said of wine, and its DNA from some kind of grape.

It is a spiritual conjecture which cannot by its nature be physical--it is not physically verifiable. Catholics are spiritual "cannibals" at best (or at worst). Lastly, my statement does not mean Christ is not present for and to us, as in the liturgy of the Word and Eucharist. When we bless, break, and share bread we are in communion with one another as the body of Christ living today. We become the body of Christ when we receive both the "word" and the breaking of the bread. Thomistic teaching has really missed the point of communion.

¹ This use of substance is related to a theological term: Greek Homoousian and Latin consubstantialis; the usage reaches back to the Early Church, and is how Jesus being of the same substance as the Father is described. Reference: Nicene Creed.

No, it does not make Catholics cannibals.

What we eat or drink doesn't "make" us something. Jesus himself said in Matthew

15:16-17 16 “Do you still not understand?” Jesus asked. 17 “Do you not yet realize that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then is eliminated? 18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things defile a man."

Jesus clearly teaches that the heart produces sin or faith. What we believe about who Christ is what saves us. What we eat or drink only represents our heart belief. The call to consume Jesus' body and blood is spelled out in considerable detail in the bread of life discourse (John 6:22-59), and the command to do so is in each of the synoptic Gospels (Last Supper narrative), and also in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. (1 Corinthians 11:24-5).

As for Catholic teaching, consuming the body and blood during a Eucharistic celebration cannot be called Cannibalism, unless one simply wishes to insult Catholics.

1331 .. because by this sacrament we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us sharers in his Body and Blood to form a single body. We also call it: the holy things (ta hagia; sancta) - the first meaning of the phrase "communion of saints" in the Apostles' Creed - the bread of angels, bread from heaven, medicine of immortality, viaticum...

It doesn't makes us Cannibals, since eating of mundane flesh does not "unite ourselves with bacon" nor with a potato. Neither is bacon, nor a potato, "medicine of immortality."

In contrast, it can't save us either unless we remain in communion with Him.

I answered a related question a few years ago. It was about celiac disease (gluten intolerance), but most of it applies equally to cannibalism.

And it avoids the confusing term "substance" given in a few of the other answers here. In common English, "substance" means what something is physically made of, while in those answers it means the exact opposite.

For non-Catholics, the quick answer is no.

For Roman Catholics, who believe in transubstantiation, the answer is also no, but understanding why requires some explanation.

Communion is based on Luke 22:19-20 and other gospel accounts of Jesus's last meal: "And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you."

Most Christian denominations have a ceremony in which small amounts of bread and wine are consumed. Some perform this only once a year, on the anniversary of that final meal; many celebrate the event at weekly services; and others, Roman Catholics in particular, offer communion more frequently.

For most denominations, the bread and wine are purely symbolic, serving as a reminder of what Jesus sacrificed, having no special power, and being no different from ordinary bread and wine.

Lutherans believe in consubstantiation, in which Jesus becomes present within the bread and wine. The bread does become special, yet it reamins bread.

But Catholics, who regard communion as one of their basic sacraments, consider is my body to be literally true. During the communion sacrament, the bread and wine take on special powers and actually become Jesus's body and blood.

But understanding what that really means, again requires some explanation.

When describing things using formal logic, the term essence refers to attributes that are fundamental to the object, while accident refers to attributes that aren't.

A table could be made of wood, of metal, of plastic, or of some other substance. Which material is used is considered accident, not essence. Which specific material that tables are made of has nothing to do with the state of being a table.

Similarly, a wooden table and the inside of a tree are composed of the same substance, but one would not consider the table to be a tree. Being made of wood is essence when it comes to defining a tree, but accident when defining a table.

The same situation applies to bread (and wine). During the communion sacrament, the bread turns into Jesus's body just as a piece of wood can be turned into a table.

In the same way that the table is no longer a piece of wood, so too, the sacrifice is no longer a piece of bread. The table may be physically composed of the same thing that trees are composed of, but it is not a tree; wood is an essence of tree, but accident of table. A sample taken from the table would be indistinguishable from a sample taken from a tree, but that doesn't mean that the table is a tree. Similarly, this aspect of the body of Christ may be physically composed of flour, but it is no longer bread; flour is an essence of bread, but accident of Christ's body.

A piece of wood starts as essence with respect to tree and becomes accident with respect to table. The wood itself is there, but it has nothing to do with the table's essence.

Gluten starts as essence with respect to wheat bread and becomes accident with respect to the body of Christ. The flour itself is there, but it has nothing to do with the body of Christ's essence.

A table might sometimes be made of wood, but its essence is table, not wood. The body of Christ might sometimes be made of flour, but its essence is Christ, not flour.

The bread transforms into the body of Christ, but that does not mean that flour turns into meat any more than transforming a tree into a table turns it into metal or plastic.

So just to be sure: transubstantiation does not make communion safe for people with celiac disease or wheat allergies.

• Does transubstantiation make communion safe for people with celiac disease?

Do Catholics believe that they are actually eating the body of Christ? Does this make them cannibals?

Yes, Catholics believe that they actually are consuming the Body of Christ in the form of bread.

No, it does not make Catholics cannibals.

I am going to divide this question into two parts. The first will deal with eating the Eucharist within a Catholic viewpoint. The second part will deal with true cannibalism.

A Catholic viewpoint on consuming the Sacred Host is not considered cannibalism. Can not tell you how many times someone has accused us as doing this very thing, because of our belief in the real presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the sacred Host!

Perhaps the most disconcerting Catholic doctrine is the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Many people today have the same reaction as those disciples who heard Jesus preach it for the first time in Capernaum and were scandalized, “This saying is hard, and who can hear it?” (Jn. 6:61). John says that after, many of His disciples stopped following Him altogether.

What is obviously so “hard” about this saying is that it suggests cannibalism. If Catholics believe the Eucharist really is the body and blood of Christ, then they believe they are eating human flesh and drinking human blood. The Romans accused Christians of cannibalism and that the charge has been made against Catholics in various ways ever since.

But while Holy Communion does involve eating human flesh and blood, it is not true that it is cannibalistic. How so?

The Eucharist is life. Cannibals eat what is dead. The Aztecs, the most notorious cannibalistic society in history, ate the beating hearts of victims, but they were still eating something doomed to die, and in the act of eating, it did die. By contrast, Christ, is alive. He rose on the third day, and is present in the Eucharist as fully alive (indeed, He is Life itself). Our reception of the Eucharist doesn’t destroy or change that in any way.

The Eucharist is the whole body and blood of Jesus Christ. Cannibals only take a part of their victims. But even the smallest particle of the Eucharist contains the entire body and blood of Christ. The familiar characteristics of space and matter don’t apply: consuming a larger Host does not mean you get more of Christ’s body and blood, nor does consuming a small Host mean you get less. Even receiving from the Precious Cup is unnecessary: by “concomitance,” when a communicant receives the Host, he also receives the Precious Blood.

The Eucharist is the glorified body of Jesus Christ. Concomitance is possible because Christ’s living and eternal body is forever reunited with His blood; hence, receiving the former entails receiving the latter. Christ’s risen body is not a resuscitated corpse like that of Lazarus, but an utterly transformed “spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:44) far different from the spatio-temporal “body of our lowness.” (Phil. 3:21) Therefore, when a Catholic receives the Eucharist, he is receiving not just flesh but glorified flesh, a resurrected and transfigured “super body” that foreshadows the new reality of a new Heaven and a new earth. Cannibalistic practices don’t do that.

The Eucharist contains the soul of Jesus Christ. Some cannibalistic societies eat the flesh or drink the blood of fallen warriors in the hopes of taking on their “life force” or their courage, or of destroying their spirit altogether. Yet precisely because the risen Jesus is alive, His immortal soul is united to His body and blood, and inseparable from them in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist contains the divinity of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ is true God and true man, His divinity and His humanity are also inseparable. Consequently, in partaking of the human “aspects” of Christ (His body, blood, and soul), we also partake of His divine nature. This stands in sharp contrast to cannibals such as the Binderwurs of central India, whose flesh-eating religious rituals tried to bring them closer to the gods, but made them sink lower than most beasts.

Putting all these elements together, we arrive at the Catholic formula: “The Eucharist is the body and blood, soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Eucharist is not diminished. If Christ is entirely present in even the tiniest part of the Host, then it follows that the living body and blood of Christ are not diminished by the act of receiving Holy Communion (more communicants does not mean “less Christ” left, and so on).

The Eucharist consumes us. When you eat food, it becomes a part of you. With the Eucharist, however, the opposite happens. We become a part of it, that is, in Holy Communion, we are made a part of the mystical body of Christ. In our Lord’s words, those who eat His flesh and drink His blood abide in Him (Jn. 6.40).

The Eucharist is nonviolent. Catholics understand the Mass as the non-bloody re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Cross. Christ, whose innocent blood was unjustly shed 2,000 years ago, is made available for His disciples under the appearance of bread and wine, but in a peaceful, nonviolent way. Cannibalism is inherently violent and usually predicated on the assumption that the victim is guilty of a crime against a society (usually they are prisoners of war).

All of this suggests that what happens at the Lord’s table is fundamentally different than what happens in the dark rites of a depraved tribe. Indeed, from a metaphysical perspective, we can consider all cannibalistic customs (as opposed to those induced by derangement or starvation) as a perverse and even demonic mimicry of our Holy Communion with the risen Lord.

Most anthropologists believe that cannibalism is intrinsically religious in nature. Just as all pagan blood-sacrifices were distorted knock-offs of the one true Sacrifice of Calvary (even if they took place before the Crucifixion), so too all ritual acts of cannibalism are a distorted attempt to replace the Bread of Life with the mammon of one’s own iniquity.

The disciples scandalized by Jesus’ hard saying were right to be horrified by cannibalism but wrong to identify it with what they were hearing. The Eucharist is not another form of cannibalism. On the contrary, it is a holy union with Life itself, which all cannibal acts blindly seek but never obtain.

In this respect Holy Communion is actually the supreme instance of anti-cannibalism, an exposé of all evil impostors for what they are. Jesus made the difference clear enough when He referred to Himself as the “Living Bread” (Jn. 6:41). - The Eucharist & Cannibalism

We must remember that when we consume the Eucharist, we nourish ourselves with the entire body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ are present in each and every consecrated Host.

The accidentals however remain unchanged: bread and water. The sacred species, thus are no longer bread and water! This referred to as transubstantiation according to Catholicism.

Now for the second part.

As far as real cannibalism is concerned, Christian in general would consider true and actual cannibalism to immoral.

Common Christian decency considers real life cannibalism to be against the human decency of the human body!

However eating of a human body in a case of necessity may be considered permissible. This would be considered as an exemption to the rule.

The following article will explain this situation:

Two spokesmen for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York said yesterday that the survivors of a plane crash in the Chilean Andes two months ago “acted justifiably” when they ate parts of bodies of dead companions to keep from starving to death.

Msgr. Austin Vaughan and the Rev. William Smith, pro fessors of theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, declared in a statement issued in response to inquiries: “A person is permitted to eat dead human flesh if there is no feasi ble alternative for survival.”

Twenty‐nine persons died in the Oct. 13 crash of an Uru guayan Air Force plane or later in an avalanche. The 16 sur vivors, all Roman Catholics, spent 69 days staving off death from starvation and below‐zero temperatures. To stay alive they ate parts of the bodies of the dead.

A young man who survive! Jikened the cannibalism, to “a heart transplant,” observing that the heart of a dead person may be taken to keep another alive.

The comparison was termed “not unreasonable” by the two Catholic theologians. They said that there was a “serious obli gation” to show respect for the dead and that eating human flesh would be a breach of this obligation “in almost all cases.”

Cannibalism would be justifiable, they held, if there were no alternative. - Two Catholic Aides Defend Cannibalism In Chilean Air Crash

Yes, Catholics believe they are actually eating the body of Christ, but that doesn't make them cannibals. This is a common question and has been answered in Catholic websites such as at the Catholic Answers website (Are Catholics Cannibals? ) and The Catholic Thing website (The Eucharist & Cannibalism).

If we understand the doctrine of Transubstantiation correctly, we will see that:

Though Christ is substantially present—body, blood, soul and divinity—in the Eucharist, the accidents of bread and wine remain. Here it is important to define terms. When the Church teaches the bread and wine at Mass are transubstantiated into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, we have to understand what this means. The word, transubstantiation, literally means “transformation of the substance.” “Substance” refers to that which makes a thing essentially what it is. Thus, “substance” and “essence” are synonyms. For example, man is essentially comprised of body, soul, intellect, and will. If you remove any one of these, he is no longer a human person. The accidents or accidentals would be things like hair color, eye color, size, weight, etc. One can change any of these and there would be no change in the essence or substance of the person.

In the Eucharist, after the priest consecrates the bread and wine and they are, in fact, transubstantiated into the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord, our Lord is then entirely present. Neither bread nor wine remains. However, the accidents of bread and wine (size, weight, taste, texture) do remain. Hence, the essential reason why Catholics are not guilty of cannibalism is the fact that we do not receive our Lord in a cannibalistic form. We receive him in the form of bread and wine. The two are qualitatively different.

For a lengthier explanation, please see the EWTN website article On Transubstantiation by Fr. Edward McNamara, LC.

Several points of differences between Transubstantiation and cannibalism (freely quoted from the above 2 articles):

• Cannibals eat what is dead. By contrast, Christ is alive.
• In cannibalism, one only consumes a body, not a person (a corpse is no longer a person). In the Eucharist we consume the entire person of Jesus Christ: body, blood, soul and divinity.
• What is consumed is the glorified body of Jesus Christ, a spiritual "super body" (glorified flesh), unlike in cannibalism where one can only eat an earthly body.
• The Eucharist is not diminished (i.e. more communicants does not mean "less Christ" left).
• Christ is innocent, unlike many cannibalistic victim who is usually perceived as guilty of a crime against society.
• The whole point of Eucharist is to partake Christ's divine nature and to be united to Christ's immortal soul. But in Cannibalism, the victim is not divine, and although in some cannibalistic practice the victim was still alive (in the hope of taking their "life force"), the victim would die in the act of eating.
• etc.

From the above differences, it's clear that Eucharist can only be practiced with the person of Jesus Christ, because only the body of Jesus Christ meets all the requirements listed above, i.e. Jesus Christ is the only person on earth that has a glorified body and who has a divine nature. Therefore, because in Catholicism there has never been (or ever will be) a practice of consuming humans other than Christ Catholics are not cannibals.

As an aside, only in Catholicism (and possibly in Eastern Orthodox) is cannibalism potentially an issue (actually since the Roman period !) since for other denominations, even those which believe in the Real Presence of Christ, there is no change of substance during the Sacrament of Eucharist.

Yes, consecrated hosts actually become the body of Christ.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZKwnH-Bh0Y&t=22s

Energy turns into matter. It's as simple as that! The human body does this so efficiently that our bodies are able to do this, but not perfectly like Jesus. Yes, there are physics involved in the electromagnetic field of our body--there are billions of nanoscale electric motors that power our brain, heart and digestive system functioning well so the rest of the body can be efficient. Love is the necessary energy that is vital to the heart and mind for the body to survive and to heal your body and the body of those around you, because the cells of our body can vibrate at the correct frequency in order for these electric motors to heal the cells. If we do not have love, these nanoscale electric motors do not function the way they were designed by God. The Eucharist is a sacrament and opportunity to share a meal with Jesus every time we attend Catholic mass. When people share the same thoughts at the same time (that of sharing a meal with Jesus, the person who had the perfect mind and body), our bodies are synchronized with each other and amazing things can occur. In order for a human body to turn energy into matter to heal, we must have the following, among others. Trust in God (belief means to trust). Gratitude for being given the gift of life (after all, the eucharist means thanksgiving). Love for one another. Everyone associates the Catholic mass with death. That is NOT the point! The point of the Catholic mass is about life! Treat it with respect. Yes, the Eucharist does turn into Jesus' body! This is called a substance change, or transubstantiation. There must have been the perfect mix of people at the mass of St. Thomas parish in Connecticut who had enough trust in God for this to happen, otherwise it wouldn't have happened. There is a lot you cannot believe, but not trusting/believing what a priest says after mass is something you should not question for even a second!

St. Thomas Aquinas addressed the objection that Christ would seem not to be present in this Sacrament because it seems to be cannibalism (Super Sent. lib. 4 d. 10 q. 1 a. 1 arg. 1):

It seems that the true body of Christ is not contained in the sacrament of the altar. For in those things that pertain to piety and divine reverence, there should be nothing that implies cruelty or irreverence. But to eat the flesh of a man suggests a certain bestial cruelty and an irreverence for what is eaten. Therefore, in the sacrament of piety which is ordered toward eating as its use, it should not be the true body of Christ that is eaten.
_{Videtur quod in sacramento altaris non contineatur verum corpus Christi. In his enim quæ ad pietatem et reverentiam pertinent divinam, nihil debet esse quod in crudelitatem vel irreverentiam sonet. Sed manducare carnes hominis sonat in quamdam bestialem crudelitatem et irreverentiam manducati. Ergo et in sacramento pietatis, quod ad manducationis usum ordinatur, non debet esse verum corpus Christi quod manducatur.}

He refutes this objection in ibid. ad 1:

It would savor of cruelty and the greatest irreverence if the body of Christ were eaten in the mode of physical food, namely so that the true body of Christ itself were torn to pieces and ground up by our teeth. However, this does not happen in sacramental eating, for it is not mangled by this eating, but it makes the ones eating it whole, when they divide the appearances under which it is hidden, as will be said below at Distinction 12 [cf. Summa Theologica III q. 76].
_{in crudelitatem saperet, et maximam irreverentiam, si corpus Christi ad modum cibi corporalis manducaretur, ut scilicet ipsum verum corpus Christi dilaniaretur et dentibus attereretur. Hoc autem non contingit in sacramentali manducatione: quia ipsum per manducationem non laceratur, sed manducantes integros facit, speciebus, sub quibus latet, divisis, ut infra dicetur, dist. 12 [cf. Summa Theologica III q. 76].}

Similarly, Catechism of the Council of Trent, pt. 2, § The Eucharist, §§ The Accidents, §§§ Advantages of This Mystery:

since it is most revolting to human nature to eat human flesh or drink human blood, therefore God in His infinite wisdom has established the administration of the Body and Blood of Christ under the forms of bread and wine, which are the ordinary and agreeable food of man.