Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
Many thanks to those readers who have become regulars at the Catholic Answers discussion forums. Now that the initial excitement has died down, we have a better sense of the activity there.
In August we have averaged 12,000 new messages each week, down only slightly from the average in July, and this month we added 1,200 new members.
We have tried to keep the forums orderly and friendly--not always an easy thing to do with so much activity and so many people with strong opinions! My thanks to our moderators for doing a fine job and to the many members who informally help to keep things steady.
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.
A LOT BETTER THAN MY CCD CLASS
I no longer have a child of school age, but many of you do. You no doubt want to have your offspring know the three Rs but also the fourth: religion. And how do you accomplish that?
I attended public schools, which meant we were packed off to CCD classes one evening a week. The acronym stands for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, but it could have stood for Catholic Children Daydreaming. That's how boring it seemed, and the result was that that was the last religious instruction many of my peers had.
So what to do for your kids? You might want to take a look at an online program called CatechismClass.com. It is for kids through twelfth grade, though I suspect not a few adults would find it a good refresher. The entire program is given over the computer at the student's own pace. I've taken a look at the site, and it certainly looks to be a step up (a very big step up) from the CCD classes I took.
The web address is:
www.catechismclass.com
LOOK AT TODAY'S "USA TODAY"
We have taken a big financial leap in the dark (that is, we've ponied up $20,000 that we don't really have) to run the full text of our "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics" in four regional editions of "USA Today."
The full-page ad runs in these editions:
Los Angeles (including San Diego and all of Southern California)
St. Louis (including all of Missouri and parts of Illinois)
New York (including the entire state plus the western half of Connecticut)
Washington, D.C. (including Baltimore, Richmond, and most of Virginia and Maryland)
Our plan is to send tear sheets of the ad to our supporters, asking them to cover the $20,000 and to help us raise enough to run the same ad again in October, ideally in all the regional editions of "USA Today."
According to the newspaper, the ad placed today will be read by more than one million people. If we can raise enough to run the ad in every edition of "USA Today," about four times that many will see it. To that we can add the several million copies of the voter's guide that will be distributed in booklet form--already we have sent out a million copies and expect carloads more to go out over the next 60 days.
I wish we were in a position to mail the voter's guide to every Catholic household in the country, but that isn't remotely in our budget. For that matter, today's ad is not in our budget, but we have confidence that our friends will be happy to underwrite the cost.
One more thing I'm sure of: We'll be fielding lots of calls from the media this week.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' new discussion forums at:
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
p.p.s.,Catholic Answers' third annual apologetics cruise will take you from Montreal to Boston by way of the Canadian maritime provinces. Our voyage is from October 2-9. Find out more at:
www.catholicanswerscruise.com
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