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After posting under this subject last week (11/10/95) I received a couple
of private postings wanting more information. Luckily, via a non CD friend
I have just received a copy of the English Guardian's International edition
(15/10) newspaper, which is published weekly. The news item I referred to in
my posting of 11th October was a precis of this article as it had appeared
earlier in the Parent edition in the UK, and I would like to quote it in
full as it not only elucidates my original posting but also mentions a
famous Celiac, which was a question asked some time back on the list as to
whether there  are any famous Celiacs.
 
WAFER ALLERGY BARS PRIESTS
 
written by Madeleine Bunting
 
"The Vatican has provoked fury by issuing a decree banning men who suffer
from an allergy to gluten from becoming priests.
        The extraordinary ruling would in theory have prohibited one of the
most prominent Catholic clerics of the postwar period from being ordained -
the Archbishop of Liverpool, Derek Worlock, who suffers from the allergy
known as coeliac disease.
        All communion wafers must contain gluten to be suitable for
celebration of the Eucharist, the Vatican has decreed.
        Gluten, the protein in wheat, triggers the debilitating coeliac
disease, which afflicts more than 50,000 people in the UK.
        'Given the centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the priest,
candidates for the priesthood who are affected by the celiac (sic)
disease.....may not be admitted to Holy Orders,' reads the letter from
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, one of the most powerful bodies in the Catholic church. The
letter was sent to the presidents of episcopal conferences around the world
during the summer.
      Monsignor Kieran Conry of the Catholic Media Office said the ban on
coeliacs was unlikely to be applied, and dismissed it as 'simply the logic
of the letter'."
 
As I am not a catholic, I feel I should not make a comment save that it is
nice to know we have an Archbishop among our midst even though it appears
his tenure may be on shaky ground if the Vatican wants to get tough.
 
RICHARD LOCKLEY
phone: +61 3 9905 5018 (work)
     : +61 3 9882 4498 (home)
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