At 6:15 the night before Thanksgiving, we got the call we’d been awaiting for nearly three months. My developmentally disabled teenager has celiac disease.
We were prepared, and had already started the transition to a gluten-free diet. But it was the next morning, at Thanksgiving Day Mass, when I really processed just how big a transition this was. I had already received Communion and was back in the music area playing my flute when I had the gut-wrenching realization that I hadn’t even thought about Communion for my daughter. There was no finding a gluten-free host at this point. The choices were to receive or not.
I let her receive. And when we got home that night I sent a note to my pastor to ask how procedures work at our parish so we’d be better prepared for Sunday.
Which we were–sort of. They put a host in a pyx and the head minister brought it over when she saw my daughter coming up for Communion. But the Eucharistic minister didn’t know what was going on and put a regular host in the pyx on top of the specialty host. So–cross-contamination! Yay!
We’re on week 1 of this transition, so it wasn’t the end of the world. There’s a learning curve here, for everyone involved. But as I watched from within the music area, unable to intervene, I groaned inwardly, glimpsing the magnitude of what we’re going to have to remember every danged week for the rest of her life.
And then after Mass, I learned that gluten-free hosts are specifically disallowed by the Church. They can do low-gluten, but not gluten-free.
The reason behind this I have not actually explored yet, though I gather it has something to do with “it can’t be bread without gluten.” (Of course, little wafers aren’t bread, either, but you know. And no bread in the history of humanity has ever consisted only of wheat and water. But whatever.) I was actually enraged, my inner mama bear ready to rumble, but I decided to follow my own admonitions to others and ask a bunch more questions, trusting–or praying, at least–that the answers would render the rage irrelevant. Which ended up being mostly true. I was given the specifications for the low-gluten hosts used in my parish. Out of 12 testing dates, 2 were over the amount of gluten we have been told is OK. The other 10 were below it. It’s enough for us to go forward–for now, at least. Until we get our feet wet and know more.
But here’s my problem. The Catholic community has a huge gap in understanding of the Eucharist. We have people who, on one side, don’t take Real Presence seriously enough. And on the other, we have those who take it so seriously that they believe gluten in a host either no longer exists after consecration, or that it’s irrelevant because God will protect us from any harm coming from the gluten in the host. (I’ve heard both of those in the past week.)
I’ve said before that I am not convinced the problem of Real Presence is nearly as dire as it has been made out to be. I think the wording of the questions on that sensational survey was the problem.
I do, however, think both of those latter beliefs are a big problem–indicative of a superstition mentality among Catholics and, by extension, evidence of a need for greater spiritual maturity.
Our bishops are aware of the problems, or they wouldn’t be focusing on the Eucharist in that new document. And yet apparently, a bunch of people wanted to boil that catechesis down to “pro-choice Catholics should be barred from Communion?”
Thank God, they didn’t go that route. The question of whose politics mirror Catholic teaching and whose don’t would have wiped out virtually every politician, regardless of party. Death penalty is a pro-life issue, too. And racism, as the US Bishops themselves said.
But I’ve got to say, if our focus around the Eucharist is on how to put up as many barriers as possible, then we have at least as big a problem in the institutional Church as we do among the laity.
Thank God, I am intelligent and well-educated in my faith, and I had a line of options queued up for my daughter. But if the Eucharist is as critical to life in the faith as we claim to believe it is, we should be working to make it EASIER for everyone, regardless of medical condition, to receive safely. We should NOT be putting obstacles in the way.
Intentional Catholic 