Gluten free hosts

[salvorhardin]

From a discussion I saw on a Catholic friend's site about accommodating the gluten intolerant and people with celiac disease at communion:

I have a friend who gets violently ill if she ingests the Body of Christ at communion. It's a heavy cross to bear for her.

Not sure why, but that's got to be the weirdest thing I've seen all week.

[Goblinmonger]

1. There was a whole dust up about that in Religion

about a month or so ago. MineralMan posted the article (if my memory serves) and the usual suspects got their feathers ruffled. they are probably lurking right now.

Edit to add link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/121837478

[skepticscott]

2. The point being

that if the host actually changed from wheat bread to true, actual, literal flesh (as the RCC holds), that wouldn't happen. Of course, there was all kinds of Serious Theology tossed out to try to rationalize it.

[Goblinmonger]

4. The whole discussion made me think

of V for Vendetta with the poison host.

[salvorhardin]

3. Yeah, a big dust up is exactly what I wanted to avoid

So I came to our little ghetto on the internet.

I just find the idea of the body of Christ making someone violently ill indescribably funny, and then to contrast it with it somehow being that person's "cross to bear" as if they were responsible for their immune system attacking their body every time a tiny piece of gluten was encountered... well, that's sad.

[Goblinmonger]

5. God doesn't give you more than you can handle.

Or something like that.

What is even funnier is that they are going to get the shits from it. (yep, rug, I went there )

[Warpy]

6. It only reinforced my opinion that theological hairsplitters are idiots

Gluten free bread is certainly bread. Some of it doesn't even taste like sawdust. Gluten free grains are leavened with yeast with xanthan or guar gum providing the structure to trap the CO2 in it and allow it to rise instead of remaining a brick.

In any case, the host is unleavened, that's rather the point, and there should be no problem with using alternative, gluten free grain in it. There is nothing magical about wheat. It just makes some people sick and for others, it's life threatening.

Quibbling over recipes simply makes them look as ignorant as they really are, unwilling to consult cooks or medical professionals, just clinging to what is probably a completely erroneous tradition. Passover bread could have been made from a number of different grains 2000 years ago and was more likely to have been made from a mixture of farro and barley.

There isn't anything particularly funny about any of this, church bighats willing to threaten people's lives because they are unwilling to alter a stupid recipe that was developed in the Middle Ages or even later.

[salvorhardin]

11. Seriously

Considering what a communion wafer is, just use rice flour or something.

[MineralMan]

8. Yah, that was an interesting thread. I can't remember what prompted it, but I think

it was a post in another part of DU.

The nit-picking by the RCC about the composition of bread that supposedly gets turned into Jesus flesh really seemed strange to me. Surely, they cannot believe seriously that such a transformation takes place. They say they do, but I doubt very much that the Pope and his underlings actually believe it. It's a tool used to control followers.

"You must make the bread precisely this way, or you will go to Hell most certainly." If you give in to silliness like that, you will give in to more serious compromises.

That's my opinion, anyhow. I post such things in the Religion Group, because religious folk post there. Challenging religious doctrine is one of my life tasks.

And, no, there was no wheat flour in Jerusalem at that time.

[FiveGoodMen]

7. So Jesus isn't good for everyone(!)

[onager]

9. "Violently ill?" That could be demonic possession!

Last edited Wed Aug 29, 2012, 09:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Hey, that advice is all over the Internetz, so it must be true.

One example, from Catholicism @ suite 101: Signs of true demonic possession include an aversion to holy objects such as crucifixes and the Eucharist...

That's from a review of Matt Baglio's book "The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist." I'll leave you to your own spasms of demonic irony at the words "modern exorcist."

http://suite101.com/article/review-of-matt-baglios-the-rite-the-making-of-a-modern-exorcist-a362290

I love this stuff. It's like the Internet is a big ol' time machine and I can hop right back to the 16th century, without actually having to encounter icky stuff like plagues and witch-burnings.

e.g., here's Father Dwight Longenecker over at catholic.org. I think he posts in the Religion group, since this rant sounds AWFULLY familiar:

Demonic possession and exorcism remind us that the smug, materialistic and atheistic world view which secular education and the media portray as 'reality' is not big enough. In other words, there are other worlds. There is a reality that is beyond and beneath and within and without what we thought was reality.

This is also why the sacraments matter--because it is through the sacraments that each and every day that there is a transaction between the physical and the spiritual realms. Every day the simple stuff of bread and wine are transformed into the body of Christ...

http://saints.catholic.org/hf/faith/story.php?id=40261

More incredibly Sophisticated Theology from the same site. And to hell with that squishy liberal stuff about materialistic atheists, now we're just plain infidels. Oh, and Rationialistas:

The infidel policy on the question is to deny the possibility of possession in any circumstances, either on the supposition, that there are no evil spirits in existence, or that they are powerless to influence the human body in the manner described.

It was on this principle that, according to Lecky the world came to disbelieve in witchcraft : men did not trouble to analyse the evidence that could be produced in its favour; they simply decided that the testimony must be mistaken because "they came gradually to look upon it as absurd" (op. cit., p. 12).

But whatever view Rationalists may ultimately adopt, for a sincere believer in the Scriptures there can be no doubt that there is such a thing as possession possible.

http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=9541

(Edit for fat-fingered spelling)

[Mariana]

10. I'm allergic to wine

so I wouldn't be able to take communion, either. I break out in hives if I have the slightest sip.

I react to beer the same way. Now THAT'S a heavy cross to bear.