In chapter 5 of the thirteenth session of the Council of Trent (October 1551), concerning the Decree touching the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, we read the following affirming that the consecrated host and wine are to be given the highest form of cultic worship, latria:
On the Worship and Veneration to be shown to this most holy Sacrament
There is, therefore, no room left for doubting, that all the faithful of Christ, according to the custom ever received in the Catholic Church, exhibit in veneration the worship of latria, which is due to the true God, to this most holy sacrament. For it is not the less to be worshipped on this account, that it was instituted by Christ, the Lord, to be received. For we believe that same God to be present therein, concerning whom the eternal Father, when introducing him into the world, says; And let all the angels of God adore him;r whom the Magi, falling down, worshipped; who, in fine, as the scripture beareth witness, was worshipped by the apostles in Galilee.t
The holy Synod declares, moreover, that very piously and religiously was this custom introduced into the Church, that this most sublime and venerable sacrament should be, with special veneration and solemnity, celebrated, every year, on a certain day, and that a festival; and that it should be borne reverently and with honour in processions through the streets, and public places. For it is most just that there be certain stated holy days, when all Christians may, with a special and unusual demonstration, testify that their minds are grateful and mindful towards their common Lord and Redeemer for so ineffable and truly divine a benefit, whereby the victory and triumph of His death are represented. And so indeed did it behove victorious truth to celebrate a triumph over falsehood and heresy, that thus her adversaries, at the sight of so much splendour, and placed in the midst of so great joy of the universal Church, may either pine away, weakened and broken; or, touched with shame, and confounded, at length repent. (Theodore Alois Buckley, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent [London: George Routledge and Co., 1851], 74-75)
Catholic historian and priest, Reginald F. Walker, wrote the following about the revival of worshipping the Eucharist during the Counter-Reformation which implicitly admits that Eucharistic veneration is a much later development:
The Forty-Hour’s Adoration is also found in its beginnings at least, at this time. Previous to the sixteenth century it seems to have been unusual to expose the Blessed Sacrament except on the Feast of Corpus Christi. It became more frequent in the sixteenth century when the frightful sacrileges of the Protestants and Huguenots called so insistently for prayerful reparation to the Divine Prisoner of the Tabernacle.
The practice of Perpetual Adoration, finally, is found towards the end of the sixteenth century (c. 1574) in Italy and France. In the latter country its great patroness was Blessed Melchtilde of the Blessed Sacrament, a Benedictine nun of Paris.
The devotion of the Forty-Hours’ Adoration as we know it to-day is usually ascribed to a Capuchin, Father Joseph, of Milan (d. 1556), who arranged the Forty-Hours’ exposition to commemorate the time spent by Our Lord in the tomb. The same devotion in various other forms was approved by Popes Pius IV (1560) and Clement VIII (1592): it was adopted with enthusiasm by St. Charles Borromeo and St. Philip Neri as a means of reparation for the excesses of the Carnival before the opening of Lent. (Reginald F. Walker, An Outline History of the Catholic Church, vol. 2 [Dublin: Gill and Son, 1939], 100)
This is why the Mass is such an important topic as if Rome is right, Latter-day Saints are guilty of rejecting an essential part of God-ordained worship, as well as excluding themselves from a propitiatory sacrifice and denying divinely-revealed dogmatic truths. If Rome is wrong, they are guilty of idolatry (worshipping wine and bread as God) and presenting a perverted understanding of the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper and a perverse view of the atonement.
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