This thread may already be dead, but just to throw my two cents in –
I’m a member of a mainstream Protestant denomination, and participated in a communion service just this morning (it’s Worldwide Communion Sunday). In our particular denomination, we partake in the sacrament of communion (acceptably also known as the Eucharist, and the Lord’s Supper) several times yearly, but not every Sunday.
As for supplies, we use what I call communion “pellets”. They’re available at religious supply stores, and look sort of like Chiclets. In function, they’re much like square Oyster crackers, but not quite as crunchy (a little softer). Each participating member of the congregation takes a pellet from a silver serving dish, then takes a tiny plastic cup from a serving tray made especially to hold them. The cup contains red grape juice. It seemed to me today that our head steward watered down the juice to make it go further – but that’s just a guess.
Anyway, as a denomination that has traditionally been part of the temperance movement, our denominational rules actually specify that communion should be taken only using non-fermented wine (read: grape juice) and unleavened bread.
**The document in question appears to refer only to church buildings, but embracing it outdoors while prohibiting it indoors seems a stark contrast. I predict a softer discouragement, at the discretion of the local heirarchy, who can decide whether it’s appropriate in their culture.
Another ELCA (well, kinda lapsed) here. The church I still sometimes go to has communion every week, with a few things of grape juice in the individual cups and wine in the communal cup(s). Bread is whatever someone brings that week–pita and home-baked loafs are most common.
I currently attend a Presbyterian church (but grew up evangelical Protestant where we did it once a month).
We also did Worldwide Communion Sunday today - so we did have communion. According to the church website Communion is served 4 Sundays/year and then 3 other days (Thanksgiving, Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday) but I’ve heard that the Tuesday service does it every week. Part of the reason just might be logistics - it’s a huge church.
Anyway, the bread looks and tastes like smashed matzo and the wine is grape juice in individual cups (one of the good things about being Protestant is individual communion cups!) As both are passed through the pews, the congregants can choose which of the elements they want to partake.
Considering that dance, norms for communion under both species, art & environment, and a whole new edition of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal are all relatively recent issues dealt with and promulgated by Rome, it seem highly unlikely that a brand new document is going to come out and contradict what has been decided within the past decade.
This mysterious draft document is going to go the way the proposed “Mary as Co-Redemptor” proposal went… by the wayside. There are many such proposed documents put together by Vatican offices and study groups that never get published or are greatly revised before promulgation.
The language of the Vatican insider who basically said “this is going to look different when it comes out” is Vatican code speak for “if this ever sees the light of day, it’s going to be completely different.”
In my Roman Catholic parish, communion was generally only distributed in wafer form. IIRC, at every mass there was one aisle which also distributed it in wine form. At special masses (such as Good Friday, Christmas Midnight Mass, etc.) wine was given out in all aisles, and the bread was not of a wafer form, but more of a dark-rye crumbled bread form.
As a member of the choir (in a Catholic church), I always prefer to receive under both species (usually only at Christmas, Easter, and a few other days), as it gives you something to wash down the wafer – the dry wafer stick to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter, and it is really tough to sing like that!
Grew up ELCA in the Northeast. We had communion once a month, and on major holidays. It went like this:
Pastor prepares, presents, and blesses the wine and wafers
Pastor and his lay assistants (the folks who help him hand out wafers and direct us congregants) take communion
Congregants line up in aisle and each takes a small shot glass (disposable plastic on busy days, else glass) from a silver tray
Congregants go up in small groups and kneel at a rail around the altar.
Lay assistant goes around, handing out wafer to each (putting wafer in each person’s hand, never, that I observed, directly in the mouth as some Catholics do)
Pastor comes around and pours a small measure of wine (we usu. bought Manischevitz) from the chalice into each glass. Pre-communion kids get a blessing on their head (pastor holds his hand on top of tot’s head, asks God to preserve him/her, etc.).
Pastor blesses and charges us to go forth in peace, etc. We return to seats, dopping used glasses in a different silver tray
After all have ben served, the pastor drains the chalice
Re: the Catholic mass and communion today–I know for a fact that, at my wife’s church, the congregants never (except at first communion) drink the wine. They only take wafers.
Nitpick: There is no Good Friday mass, as there is no consecration of the bread and wine on Good Friday. The Eucharist which is distributed on Good Friday was consecrated on the day before.
My ELCA church does the weekly bread torn off a homebaked loaf then dropped in your hand plus pretty good red wine (with white grapejuice for special needs) in shot glasses routine, though a big crowd causes the wafers and dipping chalice (two sides for wine and juice) to be pulled out. My wife, the exMethodist, likes the greater access to the Eucharist we have. I, the exCatholic, like how we get a little eye-opener to wash down the bread.
The leftover bread is tossed to the birds and the leftover wine is poured at the base of a tree.
