An Unholy Communion
By Matt Farrell
A 9-year-old girl recently had her first Holy Communion declared invalid by the Catholic Church because the wafer she consumed in the sacrament did not contain wheat.
The girl, Haley Waldman, suffers from Celiac Spruce Disease, a digestive disorder which makes it dangerous to eat anything with gluten, including the average Jeez-It communion wafer.
The girl’s mother is appealing the decision and has scheduled an audience with the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trenton.
Okay, so it seems ridiculous, I know. Organized religion is a bad idea, I should just get “spiritual” or devote myself to atheism and seizing every opportunity to make Christian bashing jokes. I’m almost convinced; it seems to be pretty hip to reject religion and put on a “Jesus is My Homeboy” hat with a heretical smile on my face.
I definitely do not agree with a lot of the strict doctrines of my religion, and its hard not to be ashamed of its sometimes violent past, but I want to make a plea for the value of organized religion.
The wheat thing sounds insane, but there is a theological reason for it. The Catholic church restricts its own power over the sacraments it performs and strictly follows the example set by the Bible. The idea is that if sacraments are left up to the church and are reworked to fit into different cultures, they will slowly lose their connection with Christ. To the church it’s not a matter of really liking wheat, it’s part of an absolute policy that prevents the church from tampering with the specifics of the holy sacraments.
The church is not preventing the girl from receiving communion and damning her to hell for her disorder. The church will allow her to drink wine without receiving the wafer and still consider it Holy Communion.
Two Benedictine nuns in Missouri also developed a host with 0.01 percent gluten after two years of experimentation. Doctors have confirmed that the host is safe for consumption by almost all Celiac sufferers as long as they consult their physician first to make sure they do not have a rare extreme case.
Organized religion has a lot of problems, there’s no denying it. It has a history of war, oppression and corruption. It forces people into strict spiritual beliefs that often contradict their personal values. It can lead to fundamentalism, which often leads to violence.
But there are elements of organized religion that are lost when people become “spiritual” and stop organizing faith. The Catholic Church, for example, runs hospitals, schools, orphanages, soup kitchens and food drives and sends missions that bring those services to Third World countries. I may disagree with some of the former Pope’s policies, but he took a defiant stance against the invasion of Iraq, which I did not hear from the nation’s Democrats.
Organized religion also provides us with physical churches, places to meet and pray and experience your religion with other people. It allows people to devote their lives to helping others through spiritual guidance and works of charity without having to struggle to make a living.
It took me a while to come to terms with aspects of the Catholic Church that I am completely opposed to, but I eventually saw through the value differences to what is really important: spirituality. I may not agree with how the Church reacts to abortion and the rights of homosexuals, but the underlying message of the faith is something I can connect with. There are plenty of people at Ithaca College I don’t like much, but I still respect it as an academic community that for the most part is made up of good people.
I am not trying to convert anyone I’m just suggesting that you not give up on organized religion altogether because of fundamentalists who give religion a bad name.
If the religion you were brought up in left you unsatisfied, maybe there’s something else out there that will change your life, like Buddhism, the Church of Mel Gibson, or some esoteric cult that worships the oldest member of ‘80s latin-pop supergroup Menudo.
That being said, the gluten thing is fucking ridiculous and they should have just let her take a non-gluten communion wafer instead of developing a new and improved low-gluten body o’ Christ.
That’s the strength of religion, though: two nuns in Missouri who are so devoted to helping others share in their religion that they would spend two years experimenting with crackers to make one that fit Jesus’ standards and met the needs of disabled Catholics.
Matt Farrell is a freshman TV-R major who likes little girls in white dresses. I mean Communion wafers. I mean God. E-mail him at mfarrel1@ithaca.edu.