Wow. That takes some real fortitude! 
But I think it’s more about not mixing the host with actual food rather than doing some sort of penance before communion. Imagine standing in the communion line with a turkey sandwich in one hand and a coke in the other!
Jehovah’s Witnesses offer a communion only once a year (14 Nisan) and even then members are generally expected to not actually partake. That’s only for the 144,000 and you’re not supposed to assume you’re in that group.
Some groups with strong anti-Catholic origins go pretty far to avoid coming close to the Catholic Eucharist rite, esp. the transubstantiation part. So there might be a ceremonial setting out of bread and wine and nothing more.
Some of my relatives belong to a church with no communion. Part of the reason is that no food or beverages are allowed in church as well as the above.
A religion with no food? I can’t even imagine that. Judaism has like, 25 blessings just for different kinds of food. Then there’s the long blessing after you eat.
Misread, thought you meant the service length, nm. I don’t recall any specific instruction except that we always did breakfast/brunch afterwards.
Do they just have food and [del]wine[/del] (I’m sure it’s) grape juice to throw out?
A JW mailer told me that the Vatican is a whore riding a tiger. How often do I have to attend church to get my own tiger?
It’s an hour before Communion, so if it takes ten minutes to get to church, and you get there ten or fifteen minutes early, you can pretty much have a sandwich, wash your hands, get in the car, and have the hour done before Communion.
They do use wine, but yes, they pass it around the room and often nobody partakes. According to some recent stats, around 20 million people attended the services, and 15,000 took the bread and wine.
When I was a wee chylde, a friend of my father told us of the day he sat out in his car (for some peace and quiet) eating a ham sandwich, while studying his Torah reading for that evening.
That can’t have been a very official JW treatise. They usually depict the whore (typically identified as “The Whore of Babylon”) riding on the seven-headed ten-horned (count them carefully!) beast, which is drawn to look like a leopard or jaguar, with spots.
At an Adventist lecture I attended, the speaker explained the “rationale” why they use grape juice instead of wine: The Bible refers to “new wine”, which I suppose is commonly taken to mean fresh wine, recently made. But they interpret the Hebrew word “yayin” ( יַיִן ) to mean simply grape juice, with no implication as to whether it’s fermented into wine or not. They take the phrase “new wine” to mean explicity “new”, as in freshly squozen unfermented grape juice.
TL;DR Cradle Catholic who fully understands why the Mother Church tries to limit it to a One-A-Day Eucharist because otherwise the Polish and Italian widows would never leave the church. Evangelical Lutheran, where we offer it at every service of note, and let reasonable people act reasonably. Totally shocked when at my niece’s Methodist confirmation, where there was no sharing of the Eucharist, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS FUCKING PENTECOST!!!
Try correcting me if I’m wrong, which I ain’t, but isn’t that meal to be celebrated at least FAIRLY OFTEN? Isn’t it a definition of being a Christian?
HAR-UMPH! I mean, I know there is a part of me convinced that Methodists (Married the first I met. Go figure.) have an express pass to Hell (her’s was earned), but could they TRY to pretend they don’t deserve it? 
[QUOTE=dropzone;19348561Try correcting me if I’m wrong, which I ain’t, but isn’t that meal to be celebrated at least FAIRLY OFTEN? Isn’t it a definition of being a Christian?[/QUOTE]
All too often I see here statements like “As a Christian, I believe/practice X.” When there are Christian groups that don’t believe/practice X. Christianity was always a group of divergent sects with different beliefs and practices.
What you think constitutes core Christian concepts and what someone else may consider core Christian concepts may not intersect.
That’s right. You could take Communion twice on a Saturday, say, if once was at the Saturday daily Mass in the morning, and once was at the Saturday evening Mass for Sunday. (And I imagine in other circumtances like a Saturday wedding Mass during the day and a Saturday vigil.) But otherwise, once a day, to avoid scrupulosity.
My mistake. Where’s my leopard then (I’m going to assume that jaguar is a modern interpretation)?
Yeah I’ve heard that particular interpretation (and it’s not just JW but other conservative, teetotalling churches). Lot must’ve gotten craaaazy on that grape juice.
See, that wouldn’t make any sense at all in my church. No that we don’t have a service without sermons–once a year on the Wednesday before New Years, but the idea of needing to go to church to take Communion.
I remember one elder (not the official position) who told me just to take communion myself before a fervent prayer session. When I mentioned we didn’t have any unleavened bread or grape juice, he said it didn’t matter–that you could use substitutions if necessary.
And, yeah, grape juice–to avoid drunkenness. Both specifically for communion, and in general. Better to do without than to risk it–though said elder above had a rather casual attitude when he thought the grape juice he gave me might have “turnt” a bit–so not everyone feels that way.
Then again, this a church whose membership agreement had an anti-dancing line in it, which I crossed out before joining. (I took it to be a leftover, since people talked about dancing all the time. It was more just so I wouldn’t lie. I don’t like to lie.)
I haven’t been a practicing Catholic for 20-odd years, but reading this paragraph actually slightly startled me. Catholics CAN’T do that. Communion, in the RCC, is the literal (if spiritual) transformation of the bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus, and ONLY a priest can effect that transformation. Someone who hasn’t taken Holy Orders can perform the Liturgy of the Eucharist 24/7 and nothing will happen, by Catholic belief.
I have to be careful heading up for communion to set my coffee mug out of the way so the other people in the pew don’t spill it. Also to have the cake and donut crumbs discreetly wiped into the napkin before sitting back down. Head trustee had a bird about food and drink in the sanctuary and the people that did it shouldn’t. I, as a new trustee, pointed out I sit in the front quarter of the pews with my coffee mug along with several other members. We did keep the under high school aged ones from bringing in the hot chocolate and fruit juice unless it was in toddler cups. Very traditional LCMS church trying to keep up with life. Communion every service except last one on Good Friday.
Ironically, John Wesley lived at a time well before the modern tendency of the Anglican/Episcopal church to try and be “Catholic-lite,” and Methodism started as a movement within the Anglican Church promoting Eucharistic observance (among other things).
Do any groups other than the Mormons not bother with wine or grape juice at all? They just use water.
Echoing jayjay, it depends what your definition of Communion is. Besides the whole transubstantiation part, the point is to be a communion of believers taking part together. It’s right there in the name!
I can’t recall which one, but one of the churches tracing its lineage back to Joseph Smith, Jr., uses orange juice for Sacrament Service. The Salvation Army has an interesting take on both Baptism and Eucharist: they don’t practice either.
With certain exceptions, like being homebound. There is a ministry in the Church that takes the Eucharist to people who can’t come to Mass, either because of disability or illness.