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The saga continues.  After I did the previous post, and was truly mortified,
we had to take Alana to Brisbane (over 800 klms away) for further
neuroligical tests.

In our absence, the following was published in the Catholic Leader, the
weekly Catholic newspaper in Queensland.  It is long but I will reprint it
in full here.

Celiac disease and Eucharist

Readers of the Catholic Leader who suffer from celiac disease must have been
dismayed and confused by the recent sad story from Boston (CL 11/2/01).

A five year old girl was refused permission to receive her first communion
using a rice wafer and, after a very public row, her family left the
Catholic Church.  This would never have happened in Australia.

It is true that the unleavened bread for the Eucharist must be made from
wheaten flour and wheat contains a protein called gluten to which celiac
sufferers are intolerant.

After studying for a number of years teh plight of people with celiac
disease, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith approged some norms in 1995.  These stated that, to celebrate the
Eucharist validly, low-gluten hosts could be used but not those from which
all gluten had been removed, because this would alter the nature of the
substance of the bread.

The Australian Bishops' Conference then sought advice from an industrial
chemist working in the baking industry.  It was explained that the process
of removing gluten from flour is a washing procedure and that it is
technically impossible to have a completely gluten-free flour extracted from
wheat.  The milling process does not allow the wheat to be ground so finely
that the most minuscule particles of gluten are removed.

Therefore the "gluten-free" flour used to bake special foods for people with
celiac disease is in fact technically "low-gluten".  Its gluten content is
less than 0.2 per cent (normal wheat flour has a gluten content of between 6
per cent and 16 per cent).  On this basis the Australian Bishops approved
the so-called "gluten-free" hosts as valid matter for the Eucharist.

These hosts are usually made by the same people who make other eucharistic
bread for Catholic liturgy and are available to people with celiac disease
from their celiac societies.  There is no fuss, no embarrassment, and no
difficulty.

In the parish I belong to, there are three or four people with celiac
disease.  The priests know who they are.

When they come to Mass, they bring a special "gluten-free" host in a pyx and
slip it onto the plate with the bread near the church entrance.  It comes to
the altar with the rest of the bread at the preparation of the gifts.  At
communion time, the priest recognises the person and gives them the special
host in the pyx.  What could be simpler?

There are very rare cases where the intolerance to gluten is so strong that
even the host made from "gluten-free" flour causes problems.  In these
extremely rare cases the person receives holy communion only in the form of
the consecrated wine.

Unfortunately there was no indication in the news report that this was the
situation with the little girl in Boston

(signed) Rev. Dr. Tom Elich,
Director,
The Liturgical Commission,
Brisbane, Qld, Australia.

Having typed all that out, I now have to state that I find several errors in
it.  Firstly the statement that the "gluten-free" flour is in fact
technically "low-gluten".

Whilst this may be true for commercially produced products, those of us who
live with an "extremely rare case" never buy commercial products and mix our
own flours from products that we know do not contain gluten.

Also I think that "extremely rare case" is more the norm.

Alana (our daughter and the extremely ill one) has served on the altar of
our church for the past six years since she first received the Blessed
Eucharist.  In fact, she is our longest serving altar server.  She is now
nearly 16 years of age, and has read all this information.  She has made a
decision, based on her own informed choice, to not take Holy Communion under
either form, but rather to take a blessing for the following reasons:

(1)  Our priests crumble the Host into the wine in all chalices so therefore
she still will be receiving some gluten.

(2)  One of our priests actually takes the low-gluten host out of the pyx
and places it on the salver with the normal hosts, thereby causing cross
contamination.

(3)  Our other priests places all the pyxs on the alter, including those for
the special ministers, and you cannot find your own in the crush.

(4)  After having two brain seizures and being clinically dead both times
because of gluten, she refuses to take the risk.

And, yes, she still serves on the altar.

I am also rather angry that people have been ingesting low gluten under
false pretences and have not been told by the celiac societies in Australia.

Regards,
Sylvia,
Gladstone...Q...Australia