Low-gluten wafers are OK with Vatican
The Catholic Church holds communion, also called the Eucharist, at every Mass as a recognition of Jesus’ Last Supper. Catholics receive bread and wine, believing that they are receiving the literal body and blood of Christ.
People with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder where gluten can lead to damage in the small intestine, avoid foods with the protein found in grains like wheat, rye and barley. But researchers say glutenfree diets have been on the rise in the United States even among those who don’t have a gluten sensitivity, and many Protestant churches across the country have begun to offer gluten-free communion in recent years.
Because the Catholic Church is global, it has long wrestled with how to remain unified while accommodating churches in different regions in the world to adapt its practices to cultural norms. Some Catholics have discussed whether the church should consider whether the bread could be made of something else, like rice, or whether the wine could be made from the sap of palm trees.
The Catholic Church teaches that the practice of the Eucharist should be in continuity with Jesus, who ate wheat bread and drank grape wine, describing them as his body and blood.
“Christ did not institute the Eucharist as rice and sake, or sweet potatoes and stout,” Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at Catholic University, said.
Some theologians have argued the bread and wine are simply symbolic, but the Catholic Church does not consider the elements to be symbols. It teaches that Jesus himself instituted the bread and the wine during the Passover meal, and churches should follow his lead.
“It may seem a small thing to people,” Pecknold said. “But the Catholic Church has spent 2,000 years working out how to be faithful to Christ even in the smallest things. To be vitally and vigorously faithful ... is something which is simply integral to what it means to be Catholic.”
Bread and wafers “must be unleavened, purely of wheat, and recently made so that there is no danger of decomposition,” the letter from the Vatican states. “Hosts that are completely gluten-free are invalid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist.” However, lowgluten wafers and bread may be used, it says.
The wine, the letter says, must be “natural, from the fruit of the grape, pure and incorrupt, not mixed with other substances.” Both bread and wine made from genetically-modified organisms are acceptable.
Rachel Rieger, who was diagnosed with celiac disease at 12 years old, said she was worried whether the guidelines would change something for her. She said even one wafer would make her feel sick for the next 24 to 48 hours, and her parish in Ohio began to provide her with low-gluten wafers.
Rieger, a 25-yearwho works in digital marketing, said the guidelines seem so specific for a global church that should be universal.
“It’s almost splitting hairs,” she said, wondering why the church won’t allow nonwheat wafers. “There are so many options, and it would reach that same end point.”
The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, Mo., became the first community to produce low-gluten altar breads that were approved by the U.S. bishops in 2003. A spokeswoman said they sell 15,000 low-gluten breads each week and declined to share sales figures.
In 2004, Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland, said that one of the Benedictine Sisters’ low-gluten wafers contained such low gluten that someone with celiac disease would have to consume 270 wafers daily to reach a danger point.
A regular wafer contains approximately 22 milligrams of gluten. Wafers that contain under 10 milligrams of gluten are considered lowgluten.