Church bans non-alcoholic wine and gluten-free bread from holy communion. According to a ruling by the Church of England, gluten-free wafers and non-alcoholic wine are prohibited during Holy Communion.
According to the guidelines, the wine must be fermented grape juice to be consecrated, and the bread must be baked with wheat flour.
The injustice experienced by people unable to invest in alcohol or wheat flour was recognised by rulings described in documents made public before the church’s General Synod meeting on Monday.
After priests called for a stop to the “injustice,” the Church of England decided that gluten-free bread and non-alcoholic wine could not be used during Holy Communion rituals.
According to church regulations, wine must be the fermented juice of a grape and bread must be baked with wheat flour for a priest to dedicate it.
However, a priest requested that the regulations be altered to stop the “injustice” for those who are unable to consume alcohol or gluten in advance of today’s General Synod meeting of the Church’s ruling body.
Reverend Canon Alice Kemp, a member of the Synod, criticised the Church’s governing body, asking: “Is it possible to alleviate the injustice of this exclusion by allowing the legal use of gluten-free and alcohol-free components during the Eucharist?
“If a priest or a member of the congregation cannot consume either gluten or alcohol, they are either forced to receive only one type of substance or may not be allowed to receive both,” she stated.
Such a change would have to reverse two long-standing positions in the Church of England, according to Michael Ipgrave, the head of the Church’s Liturgical Commission and the Bishop of Lichfield.
Mr Ipgrave said: “First, that bread made with wheat and the fermented juice of the grape are the elements to be consecrated in holy communion; and second, that receiving holy communion in one kind in a case of necessity is not an ‘exclusion’ but full participation in the sacrament, as often practised in the communion of the sick, or with children,”
“Indeed, even believers who cannot physically receive the sacrament are to be assured that they are partakers by faith of the body and blood of Christ, and of the benefits he conveys to us by them,” he further added.
Even Christians who are unable to partake in Holy Communion in person are “to be assured that they are partakers by faith of the body and blood of Christ,” he continued.
One of the main sacraments of Christianity is holy communion, in which the bread and wine represent the flesh and blood of Christ.
Communion wine should be “the fermented juice of the grape, good and wholesome,” according to Canon B 17 of the CofE, and bread “whether leavened or unleavened, shall be of the best and purest wheat flour.”
Certain communion wafers made with highly processed wheat that drastically lowers the quantity of gluten have previously been approved by the Church; however, other gluten-free options created with non-wheat flour are not.
In a 2017 letter to bishops, the Vatican declared that “hosts that are completely gluten-free are invalid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist,” meaning that the Catholic church forbids the use of gluten-free bread during mass.
While wine ‘of uncertain authenticity or provenance’ is prohibited by Vatican regulations, museum, a non-alcoholic grape juice, is permitted for use by congregations and ‘priests suffering from alcoholism’.