The Eucharist: Ministry of Presence, Sacrifice, and Communion by Lawrence Feingold (review)

I hope envy does not ruin this review. Lawrence Feingold has written a masterful survey of the theology of the Eucharist, and I wish I had. To embarrass me further, this book comes after a spurt of recent productivity (The Mystery of Israel and the Church, 3 volumes, 2010; The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters, second edition 2016; Faith Comes from What Is Heard: an Introduction to Fundamental Theology, 2016) that together total 2000 pages. Feingold currently teaches at Kenrick-Glennon seminary, having come there from Ave Maria University, and Estudiantado de Filosofia Santo Tomás de Aquino in Argentina. From both personal conversation and a web posting at the seminary I know that he converted to Catholicism in 1989 while he was studying marble sculpture in Italy, having an MA in art history from Columbia. He studied dogmatic theology for a decade at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, broken in the middle by a year's study of biblical theology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem.

This is a textbook. If one were to teach a course on the Eucharist, how would one decide between covering Scripture, history, real presence, transubstantiation, sacrifice, communion, or Catholic magisterial documents? In this book, no choice required, as all of these are found between the covers. Part I is titled "Foundations," and provides Thomistic patterns, Old Testament typology, New Testament messianic teaching, and a brief mention of all the major Fathers of the Church. Part II is titled "The Real Presence in Transubstantiation," and covers the Berengarian controversy, transubstantiation in St. Thomas, and the dispute over this doctrine in the Reformation and its legacy. Part III is titled "Sacrifice," and treats the sacrifice of Calvary and the Church, objections to the sacrificial nature of the Mass, the participation of the faithful in offering this sacrifice, and the fruits they receive from it. Part IV is titled "Communion," and treats the effects of Holy Communion, the visible and invisible ecclesial communion, pastoral concerns about the reception of communion, and Eucharistic adoration. Students will be well served by working through this material, but the book will not only serve them. Scholars and professors receive an up-to-date bibliography (I am grateful to the publisher for choosing footnotes instead of endnotes), a helpful structural organization of topics, and connections to relevant magisterial documents. This may be used for a class textbook, or it may be used to remember what you need to cover in your class, or it may be used to remember what you have forgotten about Eucharistic theology. The book is filled with quotations—every quotation that ought to be there—but they do not obtrude in a clunky manner.

Thomas Aquinas lives rent-free in Feingold's mind. By this quip I mean to say that because they live together, they can speak together. Feingold does not have to spend his time talking about the Thomas of history because Thomas is with him in live speech. It is not meant pejoratively to say that Thomas is "modernized" in the text: Thomistic themes naturally apply in support of the topic at hand because they are still relevant. Yet, although Thomas erects the I-beams, there are contributions from other scholars, ancient, medieval, and modern. I open randomly to a page and record for you who appears in the footnotes of the succeeding pages: Ratzinger, Jungmann, Kilmartin, Pitre, John Paul II, O'Neill, Levering, Augustine, Peter Chrysologus, Vatican II, Pius XII, Scheeben, Schönborn. Feingold also includes material from many medieval Western theologians that we professionals remember from Church history class, but have forgotten, or not given due attention.

It is especially notable that the fourth section turns to pastoral concerns that students would be interested in: communion for children, viaticum, communion under both species, communion in the hand, extraordinary ministers of communion, and Eucharistic adoration. Again, in doing so he directs...