Religious ed: what the Eucharist is

Recently was antiques/vintage/junque browsing, one of my favorite activities. Treasures of history, even if you don't buy anything; like a museum without the attitude. Anyway, this artifact got my attention, a Silver Burdett 1970s-ish Catholic children's book on the Eucharist. I skimmed it. I've seen suchlike before. Lots and lots about community, family, fellowship, hugs all around, good as far as it goes. But nothing about the Eucharist being Christ's one sacrifice, a deep love, being pleaded to God the Father at the altar by the priest! Without that it's meaningless. Ever run across a bigmouth who challenges your attempt to share the faith, shutting you down by saying "Don't tell me what to believe; I went to Catholic school for 12 years"? In the pre-Benedict XVI Novus Ordo it was possible to go through the Catholic system and not learn what the Eucharist is. More than one Gallup poll confirms it: 70% of Catholics, nominal and other, don't. I happened to learn, partly by providence and partly seeking, how to examine my conscience and go to confession, the good old Roman manuals' way; part of worthily going to Communion for Catholics, which I also learnt by happenstance. I learnt what the Mass really is the same way I started to learn good-old-fashioned liturgics, from somebody in the Episcopal Church, which I was born into! (Catholic Anglicans: wonderful people and churches descended from 16th-century heretics, which seems almost not to matter.) In this case a then-Episcopal priest. We're not in touch but he's a happy-convert story, long a Catholic priest. But this encounter in a junque store reminded me of what's recently long been passed off as Catholicism, which the Bergoglians/Synodalists (guten Tag) are trying to bring back. A spiritual counterfeit.