Eucharist

Latria also applies to the Eucharist and Eucharistic adoration. In the 16th century, the Council of

Trent made specific affirmations of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the theological basis
for Eucharistic adoration and stated: [2]

"The only-begotten Son of God is to be adored in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist with the
worship of "latria", including external worship.

Pope Paul VI's 1965 encyclical Mysterium fidei:[2] also affirmed this belief and in items 56 stated:"The
Catholic Church has always displayed and still displays this latria that ought to be paid to the
Sacrament of the Eucharist, both during Mass and outside of it". [3]

Latria vs. Dulia and Hyperdulia

Latria is sacrificial in character, and may be offered only to God. Catholic and Orthodox Christians
offer other degrees of reverence to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the Saints; these non-sacrificial
types of reverence are called hyperdulia and dulia, respectively. In English, dulia is also
called veneration.[4] Hyperdulia is essentially a heightened degree of dulia provided only to the
Blessed Virgin.[5]

This distinction, written about as early as Augustine of Hippo and St Jerome, was detailed more
explicitly by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, A.D. 1270: "Reverence is due to God on
account of His Excellence, which is communicated to certain creatures not in equal measure, but
according to a measure of proportion; and so the reverence which we pay to God, and which
belongs to latria, differs from the reverence which we pay to certain excellent creatures; this belongs
to dulia, and we shall speak of it further on (103)";[6] in this next article St. Thomas Aquinas writes:
"Wherefore dulia, which pays due service to a human lord, is a distinct virtue from latria, which pays
due service to the Lordship of God. It is, moreover, a species of observance, because by
observance we honor all those who excel in dignity, while dulia properly speaking is the reverence of
servants for their master, dulia being the Greek for servitude".