The "ban" story

You've probably seen it in your news feed—people getting upset about the Vatican "banning" gluten-free hosts.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40545023

I'm exhausted by it. It's simply not news--the policy has been in place since, I think, 1980. And it has nothing to do with God being "unable" to transubstantiate rice-cakes, with the church "denying" communion to people with celiac's etc. And… oh you get the picture.

Doritos might be a bit much, but methinks that otherwise the Holy Father must have more important matters on his plate than a bit of kitchen creativity in the wafer? Work of human hands and all that?

Letter to Bishops on the bread and wine for the Eucharist
July 7, 2017
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/07/08/letter_to_bishops_on_the_bread_and_wi...

As TIm says, it has long been the technical rule, but it has quite rightly been widely ignored for years. It's unfortunate that someone now feels the need to restate it rather than just letting it fade further into obscurity. As margd says, don't they have anything more important to do?

>3 John5918:

I don't think you're right it's been ignored. They distribute rice crackers over where you are?

Honestly, I'm in favor of these rules. Just as you need to maintain connection to wine, by not allowing beer or vodka or whatever, you've got to maintain some connection to bread. Bread is made of wheat, not rice or whatever. We are, after all, talking about the core foodstuff of the Fertile Crescent, and of the passover meal. The ancient world had other things you could make into a flour of sorts, such as acorns and rice. Acorns in particular were for when flour ran out. But I deny anyone to find an ancient reference to acorn eucharists.

Doritos might be a bit much

Doritos could be argued under the rules. They are certainly made of wheat.

>4 timspalding:

No, we're talking about people who have an illness which prevents them from receiving holy communion if it contains gluten (let me add I'm talking about people who are genuninely ill, not the latest trendy food fad), just as there are recovering alcoholics who cannot take wine.

On your broader point, Jesus used the staple food and drink of the culture and time in which he found himself. All over the world now Christianity has taken root in different cultures and different times where the little papery host is completely unrecognisable as food to anyone. I have attended many masses where normal bread is used, and the symbolism is much clearer to the congregation than that of the host. Inculturation demands that we interrogate our symbols and discern what is the core meaning and what is just peripheral. Naturally the Vatican tends towards the more conservative interpretation, and I have no problem with them doing so, but that doesn't stop others interpreting it differently.

>4 timspalding: Corn, I think, but I'm most prejudiced against the list of factory additives including artificial color and flavor. Not appropriate, IMHO, unless Doritos were all that was available. Wasn't there an imprisoned priest recently who consecrated something unusual?

Nacho Cheese Doritos ingredients (U.S.), in order of percent of product:

whole corn, vegetable oil (corn, soybean, and/or sunflower oil), salt, cheddar cheese (milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), maltodextrin, whey, monosodium glutamate, buttermilk solids, romano cheese (part skim cow's milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), whey protein concentrate, onion powder, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, corn flour, disodium phosphate, lactose, natural and artificial flavor, dextrose, tomato powder, spices, lactic acid, artificial color (including Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40), citric acid, sugar, garlic powder, red and green bell pepper powder, sodium caseinate, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, nonfat milk solids, whey protein isolate, corn syrup solids

(Wikipedia)

>5 John5918:

As you know, the two species contain the grace of the whole sacrament. So, in order not to be able to receive holy communion, you need to be both gluten sensitive AND unable to take wine. That's a basic theological point. If, as I'm hearing a lot, someone complains they're only getting half the sacrament, they're getting only half the point as well. Access to the chalice for such a person is a right, even if the chalice is not being distributed generally at that mass.

To your second point, I agree in general, but I think the church has a particular duty to build a fence around this law, which guards both the words of Jesus and a deeper theological point. The sacraments may have a "core meaning," but they are embodied in a not incidental way, and that physicality is something we must stress--Catholicism is not gnostic, a religion of the head, free-floating above the world.

As physical things, the "matter" of a sacrament--bread, wine, oil, water, the physical presence of another Christian or of a priest--can all fail. Sometimes there's no bread, sometimes no one to lay hands or hear confession. The gnostic approach is to dismiss this--to open up confession to online chats, or use plum wine. I think we must resist this, because the meaning isn't only found in the attempt to get at the meaning, but in the refusal to treat the physicality of the sacrament as integral to it.

>6 margd:

I stand corrected. On a personal note, I was considering buying a bag of them last night. Holy SMOKES, they are high in calories. One little bag is a double cheeseburger. I kinda love them. I almost never eat them; now I have another reason not to.

>7 timspalding:

Hm. All sounds very legalistic to me.

Incidentally I was once in a position where we nearly had to use local carbohydrate and alcohol (both sorghum based) for mass. We were in a town which had been under siege for months, foodstocks were pretty much exhausted and so was our supply of hosts and mass wine. The bishop said we might have to make do with local stuff. The Italian sisters were scandalised and really laid into the bishop; the rest of us just shrugged our shoulders and got on with life. As it happens a convoy of barges arrived in the nick of time, escorted by government troops who had to fight every inch of the way to get the convoy through, and the supplies which the barges carried included wheat flour. Ironic really that it was the troops of an Islamist regime who saved the holy sisters from having to break a petty church regulation.

>8 John5918:

I'm with the sisters, sorry. I think back to, say, the Power and the Glory, and the great efforts the Priest takes to get wine, so he could hold mass. There are any number of such situations in history--people going to great efforts to procure wine, bread, a priest. I don't feel comfortable calling that devotion a petty regulation.

To me the petty is the notion that the eucharist continuing on without interruption is paramount. It has a "show must go on" quality. Keep that sacramental filling station full! Taken to its extreme, we wouldn't travel to go to mass or take mass to shut ins. We'd just tell them to consecrate on their own, with whatever they have lying around. I think that sort of attitude wrong, but also very corrosive of the respect we owe the sacraments. If that means mass ends in a city under siege, that's a city that respects the mass, and waits all the more for the siege to end.

It's not clear to me what's rules and what's doctrine, but think on all the ways the Catholic church guards the sacrament. Part of me thinks all the worry about crumbs and cloths and such is Pharisaic, but the stronger (and I think better) part thinks it's important. I mean, when communion wine spills on the ground accidentally, we can be sure God holds none accountable. But we should, I think, fall to our knees and weep even so.

If the earth is God's footstool what does s/he care if people eat fish on Friday, cut their sidelocks, make women wear scarves, or (your ritual observation here)? Those are all human-invented metaphors for devotion. If the Transubstantiator General can change grape wine and wheat bread, then surely s/he can change anything at all? And it's the devotion of the believers and not the substance they use that's important.

Didn't Jesus argue against excessive legalism?

>9 timspalding:

The Power and the Glory was written before Vatican II and before the church started seriously reflecting on the concept of inculturation. I won't even begin to explain to you the lengths we had to go to to get altar wine in an Islamist country, let alone a war zone. Actually we weren't just sitting on our arses waiting for it to run out so we could gleefully use something different.

I don't see how what we are discussing leads to your second paragraph at all.

Have you ever been in a city under siege? Do you think the people there want the mass as a "sacramental filling station"? To be honest, that's a bit insulting towards them, although I'm sure you don't mean it as such. You may also have noticed in other threads that during the big debate forty or so years ago about maintenance ("sacramental filling station") v mission, I have always argued strongly in favour of mission.

But we should, I think, fall to our knees and weep even so.

Of course, but it doesn't have to be either/or. It can be both/and. Making exceptions for pastoral necessity, interrogating long-held norms in the light of inculturation, and so many of the reforms which have taken place over the centuries, do not negate what has gone before, and there is room for pluralism.

the worry about crumbs and cloths and such

Reminds me of a High Anglican friend of mine who once said to me that if we Catholics really believe it is Jesus in the tabernacle, don't we think he can take care of himself witohut us having to fuss about him so much?!

>7 timspalding:

Having a friend who cannot have gluten did make me wonder (she's not Catholic, so it's not an issue for her in that regard), and I get your point about being able to do one or the other (bread or wine).

But there must be folks who cannot have gluten or alcohol. What happens to them? Communion is fundamental to Catholicism, is it not? Although there may not be many people in that situation, is it right to cut even one person off because of issues they cannot help?

I attended a discussion meeting at a Christian church, not sure of the denomination. There was food and drink. At the end of the meeting a basket of oyster crackers was passed around the table in a sacramental manner. The basket had been sitting in the center of the table all along, next to a covered tray of grape juice in tiny cups, which was also passed around. I was certainly glad I had not snacked on the crackers during the meeting!

>11 John5918:

More later. I do heartily apologize for implying what you found insulting. I was speaking about it as a general attitude, and a very American and European-church one, not one applicable to your situation.

But there must be folks who cannot have gluten or alcohol. What happens to them? Communion is fundamental to Catholicism, is it not? Although there may not be many people in that situation, is it right to cut even one person off because of issues they cannot help?

A good deal more people are unable to swallow anything--both very sick people and some with congenital defects. I imagine there must be people who go years in that situation. And there are certainly those who can't receive because they're too far away, in North Korea, or whatever. If this were the sine qua non of Christian life, we'd administer communion intravenously, and send it by mail to people in Siberia, or whatever.

Pope Francis has spoken very approvingly of the church in Japan, which went underground for about 200 years (1630-1851). For a short period there were some hidden priests (see Silence). But for most of it there was no priests. They did not try to make new ones, or to consecrate the eucharist without a priest. They had baptism, which doesn't require a priest, they read texts they had, they prayed. (They also, as St. John Chrysostom would put it, had Jesus in the body of the suffering--no less worthy of care and love.) When Japan finally opened, they asked for communion. It would be hard for me to condemn them if they had chosen another path, and I can't believe God would have condemned them for it either. But I think the witness was all the deeper and better--for us, but also for them too--not doing so.

>11 John5918:

So, looking back, I think "sacramental filling station" is a very European and American attitude, and wrong to apply to your situation. Your idea that I was saying you were "gleefully" waiting for it to run out is unfair, albeit punching back is better than punching. I can imagine the situation was difficult, and why some would want to move to another substance. But I stand by the notion that a city that runs out of hosts during a siege should not switch to sorgum or casava or whatever. If you were completely convinced of its appropriateness, I'd still worry that some at least would not be, and would abstain. Division over communion itself would be tragic.

I wouldn't compare it to being under siege but I've gone many months without communion, in Turkey. I'd compare it to being without a friend or loved one--the heart grows all the fonder and more desiring for that want. Make of that what you will.

At the other extreme, some older, classic "liberal" Catholics here periodically have mass-like events together over dinner, without a priest. The woman I know expresses ambiguity over whether the think the mass is real but they treat it as such--an ambiguity that apparently doesn't bother them. Excellent as these people are, I am honestly fairly shocked by this.

The Power and the Glory was written before Vatican II and before the church started seriously reflecting on the concept of inculturation

The Power and the Glory isn't about wheat being unavailable, it's about a government that shoots priests and outlaws the mass. That the priest needed to find wine added to the problem in the novel, but only marginally. We're not talking about a question of Latin-American culture that would have been solved by substituting coffee and quinoa.

If we're going to talk about inculturation, however, it's worth noting that there was significant inculturation in the early church. The Armenian church, for example, translated a pagan ritual of animal sacrifice, and moved it inside the very church. That's a powerful example that should show us how far the church can indeed go. But nobody messed with the eucharist. In Ethiopia, for example, the local alcoholic drink is tej, a "wine" made from honey. Grape wine is marginal as an ordinary drink. Almost completely cut off from the rest of the Christian world, with a different cultural tradition, it would have been easy to justify a change. But the wine of mass appears to have always remained grape wine--made from raisins, to be exact.

At the other end of the world, in India, I believe the same rule applied, and raisins again used. There are some sources online that say St. Thomas Christians used palm wine, or might sometimes have used it when there was no grape wine. But the citations are very repetitious and unconvincing--none from the sort of source you'd look for. If such use could be proved at an early date, I'd find that interesting.

For fifty years (between 1203 and 1237), some Icelanders made wine from crowberries. (See https://books.google.com/books?id=tuY11WRAYPoC&pg=PA307&lpg=PA307&dq.... Apparently the Pope banned it in 1237, but, alas, the sentence ends on a hidden page, so I can't track the source. Would be an interesting one to dig up.

We make dandelion wine, albeit with a bit of grape juice or raisin for "mouth feel". Dandelion wine is excellent IMHO, involves a lot of work of human hands (the picking of yellow with minimal green...), and has minimal/no additives. I would be offended, I think, if we offered it in a pinch for Communion use, and the offer was declined.

(Bet it would have been welcome at the Last Supper, if available--we serve it at Thanksgiving and Easter dinners. WWJD? :-)

>16 timspalding: "Apparently the Pope banned it in 1237, but, alas, the sentence ends on a hidden page, so I can't track the source."

The reference is Diplomatarium Islandicum, Volume I, pp. 513-514. This document is on the web here. It's in Icelandic, so you'll have to take it from here.

>18 cpg:

The reply is in Latin, though. And also here in Latin, in blackletter (God have mercy!) https://books.google.com/books?id=92JZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq...

I'll try to work up a translation tonight.

Grumble. I'm not putting this out so long as there are things I simply don't understand--a bad translation is just shameful, not to mention useless. If anyone wants to work through it with me, I'll PM you.

About all I can add to here is that:

1. The responsum goes to Sigurd, the Archbishop of Trondheim, some of whose suffragan bishops have apparently done this.

2. Gregory represents the question as the substitution of "beer or some other drink in the place of wine," because wine is hard or impossible to find there.

He also mentions the eucharist lacking because of a lack of wheat. This doesn't quite make sense to me, as this wasn't the issue.

3. Gregory replies that it shouldn't be done, but that the consecration must be of wheat bread and grape wine ("panis de frumento et vini de uvis")

4. The justification for NOT doing this is, as expected, certainty versus doubt--"because there there is no doubt they contain the truth of body and blood"

5. It ends with a concession that doesn't quite make sense to me, in the context of the letter or (as I know) in church practice--"although bread merely blessed could given to the people, as is the custom in some parts."

>20 timspalding: The "bread merely blessed" might refer to the antidoron of the Eastern Churches (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidoron):

"At the conclusion of the liturgy, the antidoron is distributed to the faithful as they come up to kiss the blessing cross. Antidoron is not considered a sacrament and is explicitly not consecrated during the Eucharist. Therefore, non-Orthodox present at the liturgy, who are not admitted to partake of the consecrated bread and wine, are encouraged to receive the antidoron as an expression of Christian fellowship and love. However this is limited only to Christians permitted to attend the Liturgy of the Faithful."

>21 sullijo:

Yes, I was thinking that. But it doesn't fit the context.

The sense of it suggests I should translate it as "although it's possible for simply the blessed bread to be given to the people" (i.e., not the wine). I avoided that because there seemed to be a contrast between consecrated and blessed (consecrata and benedictus), and because I thought the translation to the wine being for the priest alone in the west long predated the 13c. I think I may be wrong about the latter, and that makes more sense.

>14 timspalding:

Thanks, Tim. Much appreciated. Our experiences of Catholicism (and indeed of life) are very different, so what comes to my mind when I read something, mediated through my own experiences, is very different from what comes to yours. This is part of the diversity of the church, catholic and universal but not uniform, thank God.

Incidentally, I'm in your beautiful country this week and next, accompanying a Sudanese bishop. We're in New York at the moment, travelling to Cincinnati tomorrow and DC next week. Yesterday NY was apparently panicking as temperatures reached the nineties Fahrenheit. We smiled to ourselves in what to us was a fairly average temperature in the mid-thirties Celsius.

>23 John5918:

Ah. If you ever come up to Boston or—surely impossible—Maine, let me know. I'll buy you a cold beer. Do this especially if you come here in February ;)

I wonder if anyone's ever studied heat and acclimatization. Because I'm always puzzled at the central Africans at my church complaining about the heat in Maine in the summer. My guess is that we adjust to the local climate within three years, and then that's your normal.

I think the case for the laity is stronger, insofar as being a priest is a special and rare calling, whereas reception of communion (under either species), is indeed central to Christian life. Nobody needs to have communion, but very few need to be priests.

Over history there have been various weird and unfair rules about priests. For example, being born out of wedlock is never and having fewer than ten figures is usually no fault of the person, but both were disqualifiers.

That said, I think anyone who can tolerate the seven micrograms should be admitted to the priesthood—that is, most celiacs.

And indeed I think I'd push so far as to say that people can be priests who have not and never will celebrate the eucharist, or could only do so without eating the host themselves, which is probably impossible. The eucharist is not, I think, the sine qua non of priesthood. This is double clear since nobody is proposing that celiac or alcoholic priests be stripped of their priesthood. There are six other sacraments, and all the other things a priest can do.

What do you think?

Oh, and PS, I love that there was a "Bishop Warlock." I thought for a moment I was being punked by that! It's almost as good as that respected prelate Cardinal Sin.

Now, has there every been a "Bishop Bishop"?

Yay!

>27 MMcM:: >28 timspalding:: In Lancashire (UK) it was once fashionable (in the 1800s) for a child to be given the surname of someone from the mother's line. Searching my ancestry, something I long ago gave up on, I came across a few people with the same first (given) name and surname such as Butterworth Butterworth. So perhaps out there there's a Bishop Bishop Bishop.

LA Times, "Opinion No, the pope isn’t denying Communion to Catholics with celiac disease"
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-communion-gluten-20170717-story....

It misses the fact this isn't new, but otherwise good.