Thanks for asking and I would never take that question as disrespect. I am recently converted to catholicism (that word converted means something different to catholics than common parliance - i was Christian before and I was saved, but turning toward a deeper devotion and the process of turning away from sin and toward Christ is known as conversion in Catholic teaching).

Your question has a couple of parts to it. The first part is simply: how do the two groups view it differently. Each group has a biblical and traditional view of why they view it how they view it.

Catholics understand Christ’s teaching, “Unless you eat of my body and drink of my blood,” to which the jews and his followers replied, “who can hear this, for this is a difficult teaching,” to refer to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a word which means “thanksgiving.” It is a celebration of the sacrifice of Christ and continues the tradition of the passover in a way that requires no animal sacrifice. Keep in mind the apostles were doing this for 5 decades before any of the books of the new testament were even written! They were persecuted for being “cannibals” primarily because of this teaching and that they believed in the true spiritual presence of Christ in the physical elements of the bread and the wine.

There is a lot behind this truth: the first miracle of Jesus, the wedding at Cana, was to turn water into wine. The idea of a wedding where the celebration runs out of wine and only has water left which Jesus turns into wine (interestingly enough at his Mother’s request), is analogous to the body of christ as the bride of christ, no longer having to sacrifice, and the new sacrifice as Christ, represented in remembrance as the bread and wine which have their nature changed spiritually into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Protestants do not believe that the elements of communion change in any way but simply that we eat and drink and think of the last supper.

Keep in mind that the Eucharist as the true body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ was practiced continuously until the 1500’s - until the protestant reformation. Interestingly, even Martin Luther defended the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist!

It took many years to convince people who had grown up catholic that Christ was not present in the Eucharist. Martin Luther did not agree with that.

So it is interesting to note that christianity WAS catholicism (catholic just means “universal” so catholic christian means “universal christian”) up until 1054 when the orthodox church split because they believed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from God the Father only and not from Christ as well (and as a result did not see the pope as leader of the church on earth until Christ’s return). Orthodox christians also still believe in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist and still have authority through apostolic succession to change the bread and wine into the body and blood of our Savior.

So it is interesting to consider that the reformer still believed in it - but his followers, who did not have the authority to change the bread and wine, did not.