”This Is My Body”: Did Jesus Mean What He Said? (MP3)

Catholic Answers apologist Tim Staples heads Down Under to defend the Real Presence in this stirring debate with Rev. Peter Barnes, Australia’s leading Evangelical controversialist.

Recorded live in the city of Blacktown, New South Wales, ”This Is My Body”: Did Jesus Mean What He Said? is a classic duel between Catholic belief in the Eucharist and Reformed Protestantism’s purely symbolic “Lord’s Supper.”

To shore up his argument, Tim draws deeply upon Scripture—not just the well-known proof texts, but a range of passages that build a solid foundation for Catholic Eucharistic theology—as well as the words and practices of the early Church.

With his characteristic easy to follow arguments, Tim compellingly draws out the full implications of Christ’s promise that “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life within you.”

Among the questions disputed (with charity and decorum but great skill and zeal) in this ninety-minute debate are:

• A literal versus merely metaphorical interpretation of Jesus’ words in John 6
• Whether belief in the Real Presence makes all Catholics cannibals
• Why Jesus is not really a vine or a door, but the Eucharist is really his body
• What Jesus actually meant by “it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail”
• Whether the Catholic Mass purports to re-sacrifice Christ continually, making his death on the cross something less than a perfect sacrifice accomplished once for all.

If you want great real-life example of what happens when anti-Catholic claims run up against solid Catholic answers, ”This Is My Body”: Did Jesus Mean What He Said? is a must-listen.