Will you, now? Let's see if you really believe that:
Question: Was Jesus speaking/teaching using figurative terms throughout the occasion of the Passover meal in that upper room in less than 24 hours before His death?
Listen to a small sample of these words which Jesus spoke to His disciples at the Last Supper, the same gathering in which He introduced the Ordinance of Remembrance:
"I am the vine: you the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5 DRB).
(1) "I am the vine . . ." -- Was Jesus here speaking figuratively, or was He suddenly transformed before their very eyes into a literal wood-and-bark trunk and root of a grape vine? Please make a choice here as to which mode Jesus is speaking in.
(2) ". . . ye the branches . . ." -- Was Jesus here speaking figuratively, or did each of the disciples suddenly become transubstantiated into a literal branch of a grape vine? Choose here which mode He is addressing the disciples in terms of.
(3) "He that abideth in me, and I in him . . ." -- Was Jesus here speaking figuratively as to their trust in Him, and His teachings carried out and passed on through them? Or was it simply that they found themselves, each a literal vine branch, literally sprouting in that room out of a literal trunk of grape wood, with no other spiritual consequence? Please choose which this illustration is, now.
(4) ". . . the same beareth much fruit . . ." -- Was Jesus figuratively speaking of His expectation that they would make more disciples, or was He speaking of them literally growing bunches of literal grapes at the ends of the limbs into which they had literally been changed? Choose which mode he is talking in, in this parable.
OK, if you do not see the point, it is because you haven't become mature enough to grasp similes and poetic language in speaking and teaching. Or else you are willingly blind to the conceptual mode in which Jesus was instructing his intimate friends.
If so, only you can help yourself. This is not about Protestantism or Catholicism (which are not diametrically opposed); it is about obvious Truths versus blindness and falsehoods (which are diametrically opposed).
Of course, using the literal (but illogical) model of transubstantiation will make catechizing little, concrete-thinking, as-yet illiterate children much, much easier, won't it? Trying to explain the above verse, and its meaning in context would be very difficult with a six year old child would be very difficult, would it not? Or even to an uneducated low-information adult?
I suspect this is the main reason for the use of this approach to explaining the spiritual purpose and meaning of the communal Remembrance Experience to people not prepared for it, eh?
"All these things Jesus spoke in parables to the multitudes: and without parables he did not speak to them. That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world" (Mt. 13:34-35 DRB).
"And with many such parables, he spoke to them the word, according as they were able to hear. And without parable he did not speak unto them; but apart, he explained all things to his disciples" (Mk 4:33-34 DRB).
You see, Jesus took some three and a half years to educate his disciples to understand literary communication, so that they were quite fit to hear and understand the parable of the vine, and the parable of the fig tree, and the parable of the communal Remembrance Supper and the central elements of Its symbolism, and to explain it to others.
You have just called all the Church fathers liars. You know more than they do. Pardon me for believing first Christ, then 2,000 years of Church teaching, starting in the 1st Century.