A late response, but I want to do it anyway.

If we beleive that the Church was instituted by Christ to lead mankind into the fullness of salvation, then I think it follows that the Church can declare the intent of the Christ on certain things. I could go into all kinds of reasons that the bread for the hosts must be wheat based. Not the least of which is that this is what would have been used at the Last Supper.

Next if we believe in the Real Presence, we know that Jesus Christ is fully present, “Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity”, in both consecrated species of bread and wine. In other words you receive Jesus fully and totally whether you receive the Body OR the Blood. Many receive only the Body for whatever reasons, including those who may be alcoholics and don’t want to risk the consecrated Blood which still retains the accidents of wine. No one is complaining much that these people are being screwed, but it is substantially the same situation. They are prevented from receiving Jesus in one of the species.

The archbishop is not a jerk nor a jerk, and I find your comment that he is male is ether unintentionally redundant or you are trying to make a point for women’s ordination, which will not happen either. John Paul II pretty much set that aside officially almost 20 years ago, no matter what dissenters say.

The sacraments are not things that can be changed, no matter what people desire or “feel”. The Last Supper was part of the Passover meal and it requires unleavened wheat bread. That is one of the things that we kept from the Jewish faith. What Christ did in other cases like the feeding of the 5000 has no bearing here. None of those were in the context of the sacrificial meal that was part of Passover.

Transubstantiation as a term and formal definition was not defined until the 1200s because for 1200 years no one seriously disputed it. Most of the councils were called in response to heresies. That is why the term was formally defined then. It’s not like no one believed it or had heard that the bread and wine used in the Mass was turned into the true Body and Blood of Christ. Your notion that the Eucharist was considered totally symbolic until then is unfounded in history. If your assertion were true, the Eastern Orthodox who had split with Rome over 150 years prior to this would bot believe in a literal presence of Christ in their Divine Liturgy. Numerous writings of the Early Church Fathers attest to the Real Presence. Christians were accused of being cannibals by Romans. Why if they believed in a symbolic Eucharist?

It seems to me that the problem here is not that the mean old male bishop (who probably ought to retire and be replaced by a woman) has no feelings and can’t let celiacs do things that make them feel better. It is rather that too many want to make the Church into what makes them feel better about themselves. The Church is what it is and the Deposit of Faith is what it is. If we don’t assent to what the Church teaches, we run the danger of heresy and damnation.

The request by Haley Waldman’s mother to the ignorant male archbishop John Smith of Trenton New Jersey was denied in 2004 because rice is not wheat and only wheat could serve as the appropriate intermediary, the Bishop maintaining only unleavened wheat was use at the ‘Last Supper’. Can you believe it? What a jerk!

Maybe the bread was rye, barley, or some other ancient ‘pulse’ like spelt that He used, who knows? It wouldn’t be the first time Scripture says that He used barley loaves….“There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves , and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” (John 6:9)…”Therefore they gathered together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.” (John 6:13)

Were any of the Church’s current eminent thinkers and scholars there….the all important ‘Last Supper’? More importantly, who cares what He used? Christ wouldn’t! Only a male idiot like archbishop John Smith of Trenton New Jersey would!

The doctrine of “Transubstantiation” ie: consecrated bread becoming the Body of Christ, was not declared until the year 1215 by Pope Innocent III after the Fourth Lateran Council and until then the bread and the words were considered only to be symbolic of the request of Christ to do this in his memory. So much for the importance of what type of bread is the intermediary.

To many times of course people dont do the research and this can do much harm. Usually even if you have an unusual problem someone else has already had to address though on rare occasion one may be the first it would not be the norm I imagine.

With this alternative available to most sufferers, and the chalice available to all, this should be a issue put to rest once and for all.(even those with a “cross allergy” to wine can take one drop to the toungue.)

Anyone who puts up an argument to this issue now is either ignorant to the turth (which we can gently instruct them on) or has some other agenda which will be made clear by their own mouths.

CELIACS REVISITED

I can understand how celiacs–people who can’t eat wheat and certain other grains because they have gluten in them–might feel left out at Communion time. Not that they can’t receive Communion. They can receive from the cup if not from the ciborium. Still, they no doubt wish they were able to receive hosts as do other communicants.

Now there is a solution for almost all of them.

Celiac disease is like other diseases in that it affects people variously. Some who have the disease, which is a digestive disorder, can eat bread and suffer only lightheadedness. Others can’t have even microscopic particles of bread without getting very ill. Most celiacs are somewhere in between. How might they be helped at Communion time?

For them the solution lies in wheat hosts that have a very low gluten content. But there has been a problem with that. Until recently it didn’t seem possible to fashion hosts with almost no gluten and yet with the consistency of bread. Each attempt resulted in something inedible.

But then some nuns who specialize in making hosts stumbled on the solution. Their story is told in this article: http://catholickey.org/index.php3?gif=news.gif&mode=view&issue=20040409&article_id=2858

Greg Gaulin’s teenage daughter may find comfort in this. She was diagnosed with celiac disease when she was about four. When it was time for her First Holy Communion, she seemed to be out of luck.

Gaulin said that, “as her father, I was incensed. I felt responsible for her spiritual well being, and I intended to fight for her to receive our Lord, just as I would fight for her to have adequate food, perhaps more so. But then I came to appreciate a few essential points.”

He realized that he should “trust Christ,” who “loves my daughter more than I do. Don’t you think he might have considered this problem? Any drop of the Precious Blood is totally and completely the whole Lord. It’s simply not a question or proportion or quantity.

“My daughter walks up to Communion with us at Mass but diverts to the Eucharistic minister who provides the Precious Blood. What a blessing that is! When I was younger, this was not an option. Of course, no one knew about celiac disease either.”

Now Gaulin has another option, if the parish will go along with it: using, at least for parishioners such as his daughter, the hosts baked by the nuns mentioned in the article. If that happens, Gaulin’s daughter will be able to remain in the same Communion line as her parents.

I spoke with Guvner on this one when he posted this one and for once totally disagreed with him. He said that if Christ came down into Japan instead of the Middle east 2000 years ago he wuld have used Rice instead of wheat.

I said – so? If Angels danced on pinheads?

The point is he didn’t. He established the sacrament as he did and that is how we were given it.That’s what so many people here don’t get, and perhaps that’s the whole point of this.

Humans did not “make up” this stuff, nor did the Church “opress” us by arbitrarily decreeing it the way they want and thereby obstinately refuse to “bend” because they wish to be “authoritative” or “remind us who’s making the rules”.

Christ established the rules – we simply follow them.

In other words, the Sacrament of the Eucharist is so precious and so sacred that any tampering with it at all is absolute anathema. The Church is simply defending the Sacrament – as Christ would wish us to do.

It seems that the parents here, and any priests that “enable” them in this matter, have failed to have the faith of even the size of a mustard seed.

The people involved here have only one wish – to simply challenge the authority of the church – pure and simple(something many in our society have vowed it seems.) This is evident in that the simple alternative of recieveing from the chalice only was never brought up.

Anyone with a minimum of theological instruction in the eucharist knows that recieving either species is recieving the whole Christ – one drop to the tongue would be sufficient – and anyone no matter their medical condition would be able to tolerate that.

WHINE OR WINE?

It was the second such case to make the national headlines. A girl’s parents complained that their parish wouldn’t use a rice-flour wafer in Holy Communion. The girl has celiac disease, which prevents her from eating anything made of wheat because wheat has gluten in it. Rice doesn’t. The girl wants to go to Communion, so why not accommodate her by using some flour, such as rice, that doesn’t contain gluten?

Can’t be done, said the diocese. That’s insensitive and discriminatory, said the parents.

This is a replay of an earlier case. The result that time was that the parents left the Catholic Church and joined a Protestant church where their daughter could receive that church’s analogue of Communion in the form of a rice wafer. I don’t know what the result of the recent case will be–maybe the family will stay in the Church, maybe not–but reality needs to be respected and accepted.

The reality is that a valid consecration requires a host made of wheat flour and water. In the West, the host is unleavened; in the East, it is leavened. But otherwise the host is nothing but wheat by the time it is brought to the altar (the water already having evaporated, of course).

No other flour may be used: not rice, not barley, not corn, not rye, not anything else. The use of any flour other than wheat flour makes the bread invalid matter. If a priest said the words of consecration over such bread, nothing would happen. There would be no consecration, just as there would be no consecration if the wine were replaced with plain grape juice or with any other liquid.

Why did Jesus choose wheat bread and wine as the elements of the Eucharist? Why didn’t he choose, say, rye bread and water or cheese and beer? Theologians offer us several reasons, but the bottom line is that our Lord could have chosen whatever he wished as the elements. Wheat bread and wine may have been the most suitable, for many reasons, but he could have chosen anything.

We need to keep in mind that he did choose wheat bread and wine, and that’s that. Only those elements can be consecrated. Only those can be transubstantiated into his body and blood. Nothing else will work. This has been the constant teaching of the Church, from the earliest centuries, and it is an unchangeable teaching. Take it or leave it.

The family in the first case decided to leave. Instead of accepting the reality of the sacrament, they chose to redefine it according to their own desires. I hope the second family comes to understand the teaching of the Church–I hope someone at the family’s parish is adept at conveying that teaching–and not just understand but accept.

Those who suffer from celiac disease can be accommodated through the use of low-gluten hosts or, for those who can’t have even the slightest amount of gluten, through recourse to the chalice alone, even a separate mini-chalice into which no particle of the consecrated host is dropped by the priest.

http://www.cathnews.com/news/408/111.php

Further, the Church teaches that the Latin Rite wafers MUST be wheat and water only. Eastern Rites and Orthodox Rites may use leavened bread, but they still require it to be bread made from wheat.The reason being that the matter of the Sacrament has always been understood to be this and to be the same that Christ used at the Last Supper. Also, I saw a link at CWNews.com I believe that said the Vatican said wafers MUST contain wheat.

Again, I believe they traumatized a situation that did not require it. The child should simply skip the host and receive the cup. The matter IS important and we cannot make exceptions based on our feelings and desire to be charitible. What if someone wanted to substitute chocolate chip cookies and cokes (as I read happened in the weirdness after V2)?