By Father Kenneth Doyle • Catholic News Service • Posted February 19, 2015

Q. Recent polls indicate that some 70 percent of Catholics in the United States (and 66 percent in Ireland) do not believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but rather a symbolic presence.

I happen to be one of them. I am Jesuit-educated, and I have written to my pastor with my question but have been greeted with stone silence. If these polls are even halfway true, why is this elephant in the room never addressed or even mentioned in church? Are we all condemned to hell for this belief? (Duxbury, Massachusetts)

A. The beliefs of the Catholic Church are not determined by plebiscite. That is to say, what is fundamental in determining the core content of the Catholic faith is not how people feel, but what Jesus said. And for that, we go to the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel.

Jesus has just multiplied the loaves and the fish to feed 5,000 people, and the crowds are in awe. The very next day, Jesus says something that turns out to be very controversial (Jn 6:35, 51): “I am the bread of life … the living bread that came down from heaven … and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” People are shocked and ask: “How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?” (Jn 6:52).

Even his followers are horrified. Christ has every opportunity to pull back and explain. “Wait,” he might have said, “I was only speaking figuratively.”

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Instead, he presses the point, watching as people start to drift away: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him” (Jn 6:54-56).

Later, at the Last Supper, Jesus reaffirms this teaching in language that is virtually identical.

Polling data varies widely regarding this teaching. The National Catholic Reporter, for example, found in a 2011 survey that 63 percent of adult Catholics believe that “at the consecration during a Catholic Mass, the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

But as I said at the start, polling data is largely irrelevant, except to this extent (as your question suggests): If a fair number of Catholics do not subscribe to a long-held and central article of faith, the church should doubtless do more to proclaim and explain that teaching.

As to your last line, about the consequences of not believing, one thing is certain: No one is going to hell who sincerely follows the dictates of his own properly formed conscience. So why worry about that? Why not focus instead on determining what Jesus taught?

Q. My mom told me that asking dumb questions is what makes women smarter, so here it is. I live in a non-Catholic area, and every Christmas I am asked this question: Why is the baby Jesus always portrayed without any clothing at all? Is it to show us the importance of his poverty? (I doubt it, for his mother Mary and St. Joseph are covered from head to foot.) (Houma, Louisiana)

A. What the Gospel says in Luke 2:7 is that Mary “wrapped (Jesus) in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.” That is how the Christ child is shown in early Christian art, and it is quite likely accurate.

Jewish newborns at the time were swaddled in long strips of cloth to give them the sense of security they had experienced in the womb. Then, in the 14th century, St. Bridget of Sweden experienced a vision of the Nativity in which she saw the glorious infant Jesus lying naked on the earth, with light streaming from his body.

Following that, medieval and Renaissance art began to show the Nativity with the baby wearing little or no clothes. Today, modern paintings usually depict the infant either in swaddling clothes or almost naked, wrapped in a loincloth.

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Questions may be sent to Father Kenneth Doyle at askfatherdoyle@gmail.com and 40 Hopewell St., Albany, N.Y. 12208.