A young Irish woman has a question:

Last night, a young person showed up on my doorstep and asked if we could talk. For about six weeks, this person, who is a cradle Catholic, suddenly finds herself at odds with the Church on the nature of the Eucharist. Her question has a bit of an odd angle (at least one that I’m unaccustomed to looking at it from) so I thought I’d put the question out there and see if anyone else has an idea on how best to approach it.

She doesn’t have a big problem with the Eucharist being the body of Christ. Her problem is with the Church saying that it is no longer bread. I told her that once the bread is consecrated, the substance changes although the appearance of bread remains. Hence, if you put the Eucharist under a microscope or do a chemical analysis (apart from certain miracles of the Eucharist) you will find the chemical composition and etc. to match that of bread.

Now, this young woman is a scientist–she is brilliant. She kept saying, ‘so it is still bread.’ I said, ‘It is now the bread of life, the blood of Christ.’ She said, ‘But it is still bread. The church seems to be saying that it is no longer bread, and if that is the case, it’s like calling a square a circle and I can’t be Catholic.’

I’m gonig to send you over there to answer the questions and discuss

Pulling something from the comments over there – one commentor recommended a book Why Matter Matters: Philosophical and Scriptural Reflections on the Sacraments by David Lang (edited by Michael Dubruiel)..which deals with exactly this issue, not only in regard to Eucharist, but all the sacraments – why  water, why oil, why man and woman, etc…