Holy Communion invalidated by Church
 

Article Here




First off I want to get it right out there that this is absolutely NOT, and I thank you for your help here, NOT a religion bashing thread. We all have our beliefs, no matter what they may appear like to others, they are valid for those who hold them. And I've seen plenty of "This is why religion sucks etc." threads, so lets not make this another one.....

I'm posting this because it was very personal to me. I was raised Catholic, I went to private schools K-8 and I had nuns, went to church Friday and Sunday, etc. Been there done that.

The article resonated with me because I feel that the reasons I left that faith stemmed from the Church making up so many rules I just didn't get. I'd look at what we studied, and realized that at least half of what we learned wasn't God's teaching at all, but what the Church had come up with. The more I realized that, and came to disagree with the men who made these rules, I realized I couldn't keep with the Catholic faith.

The power has always resided with the priests, and I think this particular sect (all of Catholisism) has let it go to thier heads. The Church really should read all of these news stories and question it's behavior.

Seems to me that believeing the Trinity gives a shit about what the host is made out of is nuts. I've read my bible, and nowhere did Jesus mention that to worship him you had to go through a wheat based host, OR a male priest. God told of infinite love and acceptance through Jesus's words, and I swear I don't remember reading about how a dressed up male had to give you a wheat based host to express love for god. The Church has piled rule after rule on what it means to love god, and I hope one day when they come to meet Him, God says "WTF?"

I wonder if anyone else out there has tried explaining to thier parents why they're breaking away from a faith they were raised in? It's a pain in the ass.
Anyone else out there like the idea of thier faith, but come to think it's simply too dominated my human thought, and not enough of God's teaching?

I wish this lady luck, it's going to take a lot to make the Catholics conisider anything they haven't decreed as Church law. (which is so different from God's law, I can't believe they haven't noticed.)

"violating Catholic doctrine" -- At this point I stopped reading.

In my book, any institutions, religious or otherwise, where rules are followed and enforced blindly and inflexibly by its members, and common sense is chucked out the window... SUCK. Period.

I've been seeing this sort of mindless drone behavior in many parts of society, not just religion.

I have no respect for people who cannot think for themselves, and instead displace their brains with policy and doctrine.

Sometimes people don't want to give, because that might make people think they were "wrong" about something. In this case, I'm not sure it really should matter. I honestly don't think God wants anyone to die because they had to eat bread.

Please observe that this is not a religion-bashing thread. Any such comments will be dealt with. Thank you.

Recovering Catholic here... I understand the whole Canon Law thing, but there's such a thing as exceptions, there's more than one company out there that makes gluten-free hosts. The host is symbolic of the body of Christ (a gluten free host should be substituted)

Yes, I understand wheat was used at the Last Supper, and it's a recreation of that... but the Last Supper they also didn't serve Gallo jug wine either...

Personally I was raised Roman Catholic, I received my first communion but never made it to Confirmation. My family started losing touch with the church around that time and I went right along with. I did attend a Catholic High School however.

I think the fact that my family wasn't pushing the doctrine down my throat (as was the case for some of my cousins) I had the benefit of deciding on my beliefs for myself. Eventually I came around to the idea that I just don't know.

Any Church out there will give you their version of what is and isn't, but from my point of view they are just repeating doctrine and that doctrine isn't based on any historically accurate facts because the facts are colored by thousands of years of interpretation designed to control and influence the hearts and minds of the people. That debate aside (because its a hot one for those with faith), I never had a need to explain this to my parents, they were already there ahead of me, although they still believe definitively that there is a God and I don't necessarily.

To answer your question, yes I have had this conversation with my parents but since we were both on the same side of the conversation it was short. However, discussing this with my cousin it is a very different story. While I totally respect his ability to "keep the faith" so to speak, it is a dicey conversation. He so vehemently attacks anything that challenges it. I knew that topic was off limits with him when he vociferously professed the Prime Mover argument as a proof that there is a God. I ended the discussion there since logic clearly wasn't going to be part of it.

Things like this make me wonder if god is looking down and saying stop looking at the trees and see the whole forest. So many relegions these days focus solely on details that people miss the big picture.

As for cannon law, the bible is all you need. One should always look to the bible for guidence before any church or any person.

The wheat host necessity seems a bit strange to me- following the letter of canon law, but forgetting the spirit of the belief. Still, the necessity of wheat seems no different to me than keeping Kosher if you are Jewish, or any other dietary restrictions followed by people of other faiths


Not to be splitting hairs, but as I recall, in Catholic doctrine, the host is more than a symbol. Through the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the bread and wine are "transubstantiated" into the actual body and blood of Christ. In consuming the Eucharist, Catholics are actually consuming the body and blood of Christ (according to Catholic Doctrine). Unlike Catholics, I think that most of the other Christian faiths view the host as a symbol. (I'm not sure how this affects the gluten/no-gluten debate).

How could this develop into anything more than a religious bashing thread? I think it speaks volumes about the clash of science and religion. It's a catch-22 for the church. You either do the LOGICAL thing and bend the rules a bit, thus invalidating age-old law, or you stick to the hard law and look like a really bad example of what faith 'should' be. Just another crack in the fascade.

Furthermore, I'm seeing a few posts from ex-catholics. Yeah, I know you're all sensitive about your faith and your roots, but you guys seem to be the first to point out what's wrong with the system. I think others can do the same just as well from the outside looking in. I was raised Jewish and I've studied the culture like mad. I can pretty much say that I've developed a healthy utter dislike of the Catholic faith. It's hardly a faith... it's a phalanx. The Spanish Inquisition. The birth of the Anglican Church. The Puritans. All brands of Catholicism. It's all there in the past and it's all here in the present.

Through my eyes, how can any discussion about this NOT turn into religion bashing?

as an altar boy I used to take extra slugs of gallo wine just before services to help "keep it interesting"

as far as the doctorines are concerned... i'm not a cafeteria catholic, thus i don't subscribe to the dogma anymore.

This type of thing is typical to just about everything these days, not just religion. I was raised Catholic and I'm so glad to be free from that. Luckily, even when we were going to church, it was only once a week and never more than that.

That was a big part of me turning away.

The wine they use is so nasty, I took it like twice for communion and never took it again.

I'm not Catholic so perhaps someone can explain to me...if they don't relax the rules what is the fate of this girl as a Catholic? Will she burn in Hell or be excommunicated?

~wondering

We could experience this kind of asinine treatment with any kind of organization, religious or otherwise. It's hard to imagine a group of people denying something as important as Communion over a stomach condition, but blatant obedience to the rules is not uncommon in any group of dedicated individuals.

I think it's amusing that transubstantiation requires wheat in order to work.

Nope you don't get excommunicated, you just can't recieve any of the other sacraments, including, technically, marriage - or at least getting married in a Catholic Church.

So, even though the priest blesses it and turns it into the body of christ, it isn't Jesus if it doesn't have wheat? Yeah, that makes sense.

How can anyone know what sort of bread Jesus ate 2000 years ago? We could know what sort of bread was typical then... but I cant see what else. Presumably Jesus would have eaten kosher food, or the equivalent of it at his time, so why dont the Catholic church want to make you eat the same sort of food as Jesus did all the time?

That would be so funny if the communion wafers had to be blessed by a Rabbi before it could be used!

Re: Holy Communion invalidated by Church
 

Hooboy...Born and raised Catholic but decided it was not for me. My first two kids were baptized in the church only to pacify my folks. The third child was not because the priest hadn't seen me at mass lately and wouldn't perform the ceremony. So he made a deal with me...I go to mass for 6 months and he'd think about the baptism. Needless to say, there *was* no baptism. The child is grown now and has chosen her own religion...no, it's not Catholicism.

Catholic here, and I've gone through 12 years of Catholic schooling thus far.

My impressions of a lot of Catholic bishops in America is that they are rediculously out-of-date and close-minded. Many of them are resistant to changes that have already been made decades ago and their actions are perfectly representative of it.

According to Vatican II - which took place in the early 60's - it doesn't matter significantly if this girl takes communion or not anyway. Vatican II basically stated that 1) there is Truth in most all religions and 2) since there is Truth in most all religions, any good person is capable of receiving salvation (or, closeness with God as I would prefer to call it).

The important thing to recognize about ANY religion is that there is the religion and there there are the humans involved in the religion. As humans, these people make mistakes. In this case, I see what seems to me to be a lot of American Church leaders who resist the fact that they do not have the same "power" that church leaders had when they were growing up as children. They grew up in a climate of intolerance, where one "had to be Catholic" in order to find God, and now the Church community is slowly shifting toward a climate of tolerance with greater understanding of other people's religious choices and greater respect of them. This is a shift that will likely take over a century IMO.

To sum it up, I think there are many bad (not evil, just misguided) people in the Church today - and in most religions today. I also know from experience that there are many good people as well. People who are in touch with the discoveries we have made about the universe, humanity, and the individual in the past 100 years. People who are recognizant of the fact that it makse no sense to believe that a good person would not be capable of closeness with God simply because they did not eat something, or go to a certain building.

The people we read about though are similar to Linux zealots (never thought you'd see Catholicism and Linux in the same thread did ya?! ;)). Linux zealots are a loud group of Linux users and they're completely insensitive to the actual needs of the computer user. As good as Linux may be, they turn the average computer user off to Linux because of the zealotry. Similarly many current religiousleaders do the same. The message of the RELIGION is drowned out by THEIR message and, thus, pushes people away.

One of the most important - and most dfificult - things to do regarding religion is learning to seperate the RELIGION from the people IN the religion.

Again, depends on who you talk to. Just another example of the fact there are good leaders in the Catholic Church (and any church for that matter) and there are bad leaders.

My mom had a previous marriage before my dad and it was never annuled. One Catholic priest wouldn't marry my parents. So, they found one who would ;)

The Catholic Church tends to be extremely ambiguous about a lot of things, and intentionally so, otherwise things aren't open to revision in the future as our understanding of the world changes. Of course, the changes take time in the first place due to people's natural reaction against change. Just like, even though the Catholic Church has supported the theory of evolution for something like 75 years now, I still can't convince my 50+ year old mom about the fact or why it makes sense. People resist change. Religion itself does not. It's all about getting beyond the limitations of other people.

See, and that's just the thing. A lot of the "age-old laws" have already been invalidated to varying degrees about 40 years ago. It's the people IN the church resisting it, not the religion itself. If one reads the statements of the church from Vatican II and draws conclusions from things like that and not from what people in the church say and do, it's clear that there is an undercurrent of tolerance and acceptance throughout the church.

That's an absolutely hilarious article. Sounds almost like something I would expect to see on The Onion!

I interpret this to mean that the Catholic Church is invalidated by science.

There is no need to violate cannon law for her to recieve communion. She could have the smallest sliver off the priest's large host. It could be smaller than the piece he puts in the chalice. She could then recieve the wine and everyone would be happy. That amount of gluten would not bother her sprue, as long as it was miniscule. It is not as if you have to get a whole host.

Also, according to the Catholic Catechism, wine alone or bread alone is just as full a communion as both, so she could have only wine and be just fine, just like many people have only bread.

Of course, that's beside the point that I disagree with this generally meaningless action by the priest considering that the communion is no longer seen as a "necessary" thing by the Catholic Church.

There was a version of the story where the girl's mother refused to let her child have even a sip of wine - because it contained alcohol. Having the girl just have the wine was presented as an option to the mother and the mother flat out refused it.

I always thought that the communion was symbolic, and it could have been anything, as long as it was blessed...I guess I misunderstood.

Wow... my mommy teaches at St. Denis... lol.