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While I was still exploring the Catholic Church, I was introduced to the accusation that Catholics are cannibals because of their belief about the bread and wine transforming into the literal body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion. I actually had someone I worked with, who was Protestant, say this exact thing.
And for the protestants that make this accusation, they come by it honestly. Martin Luther used this kind of rhetoric in “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church” and in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, he describes the Catholic mass as “detestable cannibalism”.
It draws an interesting parallel with the historical events of the very earliest Christians who were persecuted by pagan Romans under this exact same allegation.
A Roman rhetorician named Minucius Felix made this claim to anyone who would listen prompting responses and explanations about what Christians actually believed and performed in their eucharistic celebrations by Hippolytus and St. Justin Martyr: namely that a prayer of blessing is prayed over the gifts of bread and wine which become the body and blood of Jesus.
Which reveals two things to me: that Protestants who made and make this accusation have more in common with the Roman pagans who were bent on murdering Christians than they do with the early Christians, and secondly, that the early Christians practiced something that was just as easily confused with cannibalism as the Catholic mass.
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