When I was a child, I made an entire congregation’s “communion” null and void. See, I was an alter-girl. The priest (a good family friend, has a woman in every port, and knows more dirty jokes than my dad and I combined…) and I used to have a running gag of pulling pranks on each other.
When preparing communion, he’d always make me pour the entire little jug of wine into the chalice. So, one day, with the help of the nun who ran the parish office, I substituted his wine with apple juice.
The look on his face was priceless. Payback involved chasing me around the church after mass with a little bowl of holy water which he poured on my head.
Still - the parish peoples were none the wiser… but they’re all going to hell (me too, of course) because that one week was just not kosher (heh!).
And in doing so, you’d be falling guilty of the Donatist heresy, which says that the validity of the actions of a church official to practice his office is dependent on that official’s moral state.
That was still some pretty bad advice your friend’s boyfriend gave her, though.
See, if she’d taken it, and then had fallen to the floor, thrashing around with her airways shrinking into nothingness, that’d just have been the Holy Spirit takin’ her over.
I tell you - Anaphylaxis: The New Witnessing Craze. Forget speaking in tongues, just watch your tongue swell to an unnatural size!
I do. I see that the Church is putting imitation above the spiritual needs of its congregants.
The meat of any ritual is its meaning, not the trappings. I don’t see how, especially considering the doctrine of transubstantiation, rye hosts are any less likely to become the body of Christ than wheat hosts. Communion with God is (supposed to be) a force powerful enough to rise above material concerns, and I think it’s sinful of the Church to be so fixated on aping The Last Supper.
The spiritual aspect should take precendece over the secular and ephemeral trappings.
Give it time for the issue to resolve itself…and I don’t mean that killing the kid through anaphylaxis shock is called resolving the issue. I think there is a way to communicate the issue to the Holy See to resolve the issue…for now, if it was my kid, I would have him/her recieve blessings from the priest instead of communion until the issue is addressed and solved.
I suspect that what the child in the OP suffers from is not that exact type of allergy, but rather gluten intolerance, or celiac disease. It can cause a variety of side effects/symptoms - rash, irritability, depression, stomach upset, all sorts of things. Plus any wheat-like product that is consumed will cause a small amount of damage to the lining of the small intestine, and this adds up over time. Children can even have their growth stunted, as they’re essentially being malnourished as a result.
So you won’t have anyone scrambling for an epi-pen, but they’re essentially feeding people with this disease a tiny amount of poison, as this gluten will damage their intestines.
Give it time for the issue to resolve itself…and I don’t mean that killing the kid through anaphylaxis shock is called resolving the issue. I think there is a way to communicate the issue to the Holy See to resolve the issue…for now, if it was my kid, I would have him/her recieve blessings from the priest instead of communion until the issue is addressed and solved.
I’m being snarky. This is the second time in a week we’ve had a thread about ridiculous food rituals that have served to get a person fired and freak out a kid because she didn’t make legit communion. It’s just so absurd. They can all take their secret handshakes and blessed or unblessed foodstuffs and shove 'em as far as I’m concerned.
Yeah, but it’s also generally a bad idea to change a law because one person is inconvenienced. Besides, this just happened back in May. Even if they are going to make a change or an exception, it’s not going to happen in only 3 months.
This may be the first person in that congregation or that area, but it is not the first time that this issue has been brought up. Still, this is why I’m glad I’m a Methodist, rather than a Catholic. Methodists consider communion to be more symbolic than do Catholics and therefore do not consider that the exact form of the wafer is important. The persons who can not have gluten in my present congregation take communion with rice cakes, while the rest of us take communion with (ordinary) bread.
How important is it in Catholicism to partake in the Eucharist and are there any ecclesiastal penalties that attach themselves to this girl because of her “failure” to partake thereof?
For example: In Judaism one must eat matzah (unleavened bread) on Passover. One who cannot do so (for whatever reason – there is no matzah available, he’ll die if he eats it, etc.) is exempt from the commandment, but on the other hand cannot be said to have fulfilled it either.
Would this be an analogous situation? Would the girl be exempt from the rite of the Eucharist, or is she still obligated thereof despite her condition? And if she’s example, then what’s the big deal?
The Church can’t simply throw out a 2,000 year old teaching just because of a single sick girl. There are other options.
When one partakes, in Catholicism, of either the Body or the Blood, one is partaking of both. The obvious solution here is to give the girl a very small sip of the wine chalice instead of a piece of host during the Eucharist.
Fine, but I still doubt that the average catholic parishioner is aware of those rules. Unless of course I missed the Canon Law segment of catechism class.
As I understand it, yes it is analogous. Under normal circumstances, a Catholic is obligated to have communion twice a year, once during the easter season. If he or she fails to do so, that’s sinful.
However, if he or she fails to do so due to neglect or accident, the sin is “venial” instead of “mortal”, and if he or she is really unable to do so through no fault of their own, as in the case of this girl, one hasn’t committed a sin at all.
And like spectrum said, since drinking communion wine also fufills the obligation to participate in that rite, she could do so and have fufilled her obligation.
Out of curiosity, I wonder whether the RCC required parishes in medieval times in areas where wheat was unknown to have wheat-based products in the Eucharist.
Perhaps as an out, though…back in late-medieval England there was a bishop who declared that beef was fish, therefore allowing parishioners in his diocese to eat it on Fridays. Maybe the Pope could do the same and declare soybeans to be wheat. After all, he might have to answer to the Father soon.
I’m sure the average Catholic is unaware of those rules. But apparently they are aware enough to suspect that the bread contains wheat , otherwise people wouldn’t be trying to make special arrangements. The priest certainly should have been aware of the rules. The proper response would have been for the priest to offer the wine to the child (or really, to everyone children, so as not to single her out), not to use a wheat free host.
I’d really like to know what "declaring her First Holy Communion invalid " is supposed to mean. That she doesn’t get her certificate? That she gets a certificate with a later date, the first date that she received the wine ( a valid and sufficient way to receive the sacrament) ? Does someone actually think she’ll be forced to go throught the sacramental preparation again?
