How the Church Lost Christ

Bernadette Roberts

The best I can trace the loss of Christ in the Catholic Church is as one of the fall-outs from Vatican II and its attempt to Protestantize the Church. Gradually there came the tendency to substitute the proper name “Jesus” for the epithet “Christ” – as if they meant the same thing, which they do not. This “Protestantizing” is best symbolized by the decentralization of the Eucharist from the center altar of the Church to a side niche – or out the door entirely. In place of the Living Christ (Eucharist), we now have a bible on the center altar, signifying a switch from the Living God to a paper god. If this was not a Protestant move – substituting the centrality of the Eucharist for a book – what else can it be called? When the focus is solely on the life of the historical man Jesus – which St. Irenaeus (125-202) aptly called the “Apostles’ Memoirs” – we miss the transfigured, glorified Christ whose ascended “spiritual” (invisible) body is the living Christ – otherwise known as the “Eucharist”.

This is largely how (and why) the Catholic Church changed from being Christ-centered to centering on a dead biblical image – the man Jesus. With the loss of the Real Christ, however, comes the loss of Christianity. Although there will always be a handful to whom the Real Christ is revealed, this will not be enough to save Christianity as a whole. People today are too well educated and have too many choices of religions to stick with an anthropolatric  Jesus-cult. Without the knowledge of the true Christ, it would just be a matter of time before even this cult runs out of joiners and disappears. If it can be said Christianity will never be lost, it will only be because its essence and roots, being profoundly mystical, and its Truth transcending mere belief, it will belong solely to a few unknown Christian contemplatives.

The Real Christ, from Reason for Writing