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Jesus is Gluten Free

Eucharist hostsLast week, I heard mention of a company making gluten-free hosts (or communion wafers). I didn’t think much of it, since it seems logical that someone (especially a child) who had coeliac disease would not want to eat something during communion that would make him ill.

However, upon further examination, I found the issue to be very odd, particularly with regard to the Catholic faith. Catholics believe that when the bread and the wine are consecrated during the Eucharist service, something called transubstantiation occurs, which means the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ.

From Wikipedia…

The Roman Catholic Church accordingly believes that through transubstantiation Christ is really, truly and substantially present under the remaining appearances of bread and wine, and that the transformation remains as long as the appearances remain.

Not wanting to just take Wikipedia’s word for it, I dug a little deeper and found that, indeed, transubstantiation is a basic Catholic belief.

Here’s what Catholic Culture has to say…

Catholics believe in the doctrine of “transubstantiation,” that the bread and wine become, in a substantial way, the Body and Blood of Christ.

From Ancient and Future Catholics

Essentially, the Church teaches that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in substance, while the incidentals (or accidents), the physical characteristics of bread and wine, remain. This means that what you see, feel, and touch will seem to be bread and wine, while in reality, they are actually the body and blood of Christ.

And, unless it’s changed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says…

By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity.

So after seeing that idea documented in various places (I only listed a few), I’d have to assume that Catholics truly believe that the bread and wine become the actual body of Christ. I can’t say that I find that rational, in any sense, but I have an understanding that it is a Catholic belief.

This all came to a head when I read a question-answer article on the Eternal Word Television Network, Global Catholic Network about a girl who couldn’t receive her first communion because she was allergic to wheat gluten. She states that it’s Catholic Church doctrine that the hosts be made with wheat gluten.

I found the answer to be quite interesting (and involved). After giving some historical rationale, Father Edward McNamara replies…

The Holy See has declared that some gluten is necessary for the substance to be considered as true bread. And thus a gluten-free wafer, in spite of its external resemblance, is no longer bread and thus is incapable of becoming the Body of Christ.

The sacraments are far too important to risk performing them invalidly.

He then goes on to explain that it presents a problem for coeliac sufferers because they shouldn’t have to worry about whether their hosts were genuinely consecrated. He says…

It would be a manifest act of negligence on the Church’s part to look the other way while some members of the faithful were being innocently induced into an act of idolatry by attributing adoration to what is in fact a lump of matter.

So it’s critically important that the host contains gluten because otherwise, it would not qualify as “bread” and would be incapable of becoming the Body of Christ… thereby invalidating the sacrament, unbeknownst to church members.

Happily, the situation has been addressed and a solution has been found.

Recently, however, another solution has been found thanks to the patience and perseverance of two nuns, Sisters Jane Heschmeyer and Lynn Marie D’Souza, of the Benedictine convent in Clyde, Missouri. Over two years of experiments they have developed a Communion wafer that has been approved as valid material for the Eucharist by the Holy See.

With a level of gluten content of 0.01% it is safe enough for consumption by almost all celiac suffers, according to Dr. Alessio Fasano of the University of Maryland and other medical experts.

So, with all that (boring) background information, I can now get to the problem that I see here.

If the host actually becomes the body of Christ, why does it matter whether or not it originally has any gluten in it? According to Catholic doctrine, when the host is consecrated, it becomes the body of Christ and since the human body doesn’t contain wheat gluten, there should be no danger to anyone, including coeliac sufferers. No Catholics should ever have to refuse the Eucharist unless they have an allergy to human flesh or blood. Wheat gluten should be a complete non-issue.

What I take away from this is that even Catholics don’t really believe in transubstantiation. They may say they do, but when it comes right down to it, they don’t… otherwise gluten-free (or nearly free) hosts would never even come up as an issue. It’s the same as quite a few other religious notions that people claim to believe, but don’t.

Perhaps that’s a topic for another post.

So Much for Catwoman

I’m not even sure how to begin with this one. It seems that the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops finds it necessary to have Senator Danny Martiny file a bill that will prohibit Louisiana scientists from creating human-animal hybrids for experimentation. I’m not kidding.

Conference lobbyist Danny Loar said the bill is designed to be a “pre-emptive strike” against scientists who might want to mix “human and animal cells in a Petri dish for scientific research purposes. . . . It is becoming more of an issue globally.”

Then there’s this statement…

Martiny and Loar said they are unaware of any attempts to do that type of research in Louisiana.

However, that won’t stop them from proposing legislation to ban it. I mean, it’s becoming a global issue! It’s not like there’s more important stuff that should be dealt with in Louisiana right now, anyway. Maybe they should also propose legislation banning the use of insects in space-flight research. I’m unaware of any attempts to do that type of research in Louisiana, but it could happen!

Martiny’s bill would make it illegal to “create or attempt to create a human-animal hybrid, . . . transfer or attempt to transfer a human embryo into a non-human womb . . . (or) transfer or attempt to transfer a non-human embryo into a human womb.”

That’s a far cry from doing some stem cell research. It seems that, about a year ago, the British Parliament approved legislation allowing scientists to mix human and animal DNA in cloning experiments. Any human embryos created this way would be destroyed after 14 days, the goal being to create new stem cells for use in research into the curing of diseases. They did, however, reject using sex cells of a human and an animal.

The Louisiana bill, however, seems to take issue with creating growing creatures in the womb… sort of a Doctor Moreau thing (though he was a vivisectionist). There doesn’t seem to be any attempt by scientists to create any sort of viable human-animal hybrid, yet it seems to be a fear of the Catholic Bishops… enough so to persuade a state senator to propose legislation banning it.

I’m not really sure what’s sillier: the fear that scientists are going to make mutant human-animal hybrids or the fact that a state senator actual proposed a legal ban on the act, presumably with a straight face.

At least Vincent gets grandfathered in.

Obnoxious and Rude? Definitely.

This month, the Freedom From Religion Foundation erected two new billboards in honor of Charles Darwin, one of them in Dover, Pennsylvania which is about 15 minutes away from where I live and where I grew up. Today, in our local paper, there was an opinion editorial by Larry Hicks, a regular contributor to the paper. In it, he accuses the FFRF of being a “gloating winner” and that by putting the billboard in Dover, they are being obnoxious and rude.

I responded via a letter to the editor and decided to post my letter here as well.

In the February 4th edition of The York Dispatch, Larry Hicks wrote a Viewpoint editorial concerning the newly erected “Praise Darwin” billboard in Dover. While I agree with Mr. Hicks that  both sides of the Evolution/Creationism(or Intelligent Design… same thing) debate tend to get a bit touchy about opposing views and freedom of speech, there are a number of common misconceptions perpetuated in his editorial that I would like to clarify.

First, the issue of “Evolution versus Creationism” is not a debate between Christians and atheists. It’s a debate between Creationists and Evolutionists. Framing it as a debate between Christians and atheists not only trivializes the issue by stereotyping each side, but it is inaccurate and dishonest. Not all those who accept the Theory of Evolution are atheists. Far from it (Biology professor Kenneth R. Miller, a key witness for the plaintiffs in the Dover trial, is a Roman Catholic). Nor are all those who do not accept it Christians. The sides consist of those who accept the scientific evidence with its resulting theory and those who do not.

In addition, though the “battle” was won in the Dover case (though not by the FFRF, which was not involved), it is absolutely not over, and the Creationism proponents have most assuredly not “accepted their loss” or “licked their wounds and moved on.” Since the Dover verdict, there have been multiple challenges throughout the country related to this exact issue, one just recently in Texas. The Creationist movement refuses to give up, instead continuing their attempts to corrupt the teaching of science by claiming that supernatural explanations should be placed on equal footing with exhaustively researched evidence.

So not letting “well enough alone” is an accusation that should be leveled against the Creationist movement. It is because they won’t “let well enough alone” that the scientific community has to continually spend an absurd amount of time defending science against the Creationists’ misinformation.

Though I agree with Mr. Hicks that the display of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s billboard is a freedom of speech issue, the issue of Evolution versus Creationism in our classrooms is not. Nor is it an issue of separation of church and state. It is about education standards and intellectual honesty. Anyone who has followed this issue even passively has probably heard that the scientific community generally has no problems with Creationism being taught in schools in a philosophy class or a comparative religion class. It simply has no place in science class… because it is not science. That is the real issue.

I have no doubt that the Freedom From Religion Foundation chose Dover as one of the locations for their billboards because of the fame that Dover now has due to the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. I’m sure it’s not personal. It’s not a matter of wanting to “rub salt in the wounds” of Christians in Dover. It’s a matter of effectiveness. Location. Location. Location.

Mr. Hicks says that placing the billboard in Dover is obnoxious and rude and that it has everything to do with respect. He says, “Isn’t that what the non-believers were accusing Dover Christians of five years ago? A lack of respect for their point of view.”

No. It wasn’t. Again Mr. Hicks perpetuates a common misconception. The “non-believers” were accusing the Dover school board of corrupting the science education of their children.

The Creationists continually peddle the idea that supernatural explanations are scientific.

And that is what’s obnoxious.

A Perfect Example

Today, I read a perfect example of how religious dogma transcends all rationality and practicality. The link to the article is at the end, but here’s the synopsis.

A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.”

Evidently, the priest distributed a letter to parishioners telling them that they are “putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.” The article goes on to say “A few church leaders said parishioners risked their immortal soul by voting for candidates who support abortion rights.”

Doing penance for their vote? Risking their immortal soul by voting a certain way?

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