The recent news that the Catholic church has come out against gluten-free wafers made me laugh. Putting my theologian hat on for a second: communion is not a magic ritual where you must get the material components right or the spell doesn't work. It's a reminder of your relationship with the all-powerful creator of the universe. Even if you accept the doctrine of transubstantiation (which I do not, even theoretically), a creator who routinely transforms bread into divine flesh is not going to be troubled by the exact gluten level.
If communion were required and there was no wine or bread, diet coke and twinkies would serve just as well. You would let the coke go flat though, to avoid distraction from the point of the ceremony. And it is this which makes gluten free communion host the right thing to do. If you were at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting you might use water instead of wine; and if you were at a celiac's convention you would use gluten free bread. Because if the person taking communion fears what they are eating, they are not thinking about their relationship with God.
This is a key problem with organized religion. There is always someone who has to overthink what are often deeply ambiguous texts, which means they keep adding rules and restrictions that only make sense in their reading of the text. Whenever I see something like this I remember once again all the people who have fought and in some cases died for religious freedom. So that I can laugh, dash off a blog post disagreeing with it, and move on with my life - instead of struggling to find some way to handle an unnecessary rule while hiding my frustration with the hierarchy that created it.
I am not celiac, but I know people who are. Who wants to find themselves with a choice between making themselves sick or excluding themselves from a deeply important community ceremony? What do you do when some busybody inevitably pronounces that any resulting harm means God has rejected you?
Cardinal Sarah should find something more important to do with his life.
If communion were required and there was no wine or bread, diet coke and twinkies would serve just as well. You would let the coke go flat though, to avoid distraction from the point of the ceremony. And it is this which makes gluten free communion host the right thing to do. If you were at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting you might use water instead of wine; and if you were at a celiac's convention you would use gluten free bread. Because if the person taking communion fears what they are eating, they are not thinking about their relationship with God.
This is a key problem with organized religion. There is always someone who has to overthink what are often deeply ambiguous texts, which means they keep adding rules and restrictions that only make sense in their reading of the text. Whenever I see something like this I remember once again all the people who have fought and in some cases died for religious freedom. So that I can laugh, dash off a blog post disagreeing with it, and move on with my life - instead of struggling to find some way to handle an unnecessary rule while hiding my frustration with the hierarchy that created it.
I am not celiac, but I know people who are. Who wants to find themselves with a choice between making themselves sick or excluding themselves from a deeply important community ceremony? What do you do when some busybody inevitably pronounces that any resulting harm means God has rejected you?
Cardinal Sarah should find something more important to do with his life.
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