60% WINE? GOD, NO
Church of England BANS non-alcoholic wine and gluten-free bread from Holy Communion
One Synod member called the ruling unfair
NON-ALCOHOLIC wine cannot be used in Holy Communion, the Church of England’s governing body has ruled.
Gluten-free bread has also been barred, says the General Synod, its “parliament”, which opens today.
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Church guidance stipulates that, in order to be consecrated — made holy by a priest — the wine must be the fermented juice of the grape and the bread made using wheat flour.
They symbolise the blood and body of Christ when presented to members of a congregation.
Synod member Rev Canon Alice Kemp said the ruling was unfair to the gluten intolerant and those who avoid alcohol.
She asked: “Can consideration be given to enable the legal use of gluten-free and alcohol-free elements at the Eucharist to remove the injustice of this exclusion?”
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She said the status quo meant priests and congregants “unable to consume gluten and/or alcohol” could be “prohibited from receiving both”.
Bishop of Lichfield Michael Ipgrave, however, said allowing booze-free wine and gluten-free bread would “overturn two settled positions in the Church”.
Bishop Ipgrave, chair of the Church’s Liturgical Commission, said the first was that bread with wheat and fermented grape juice were the elements to be consecrated in Holy Communion.
Second was that doing without “in a case of necessity”, as often with children and the sick, was still full participation in the sacrament, not an “exclusion”.
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He said: “Even believers who cannot physically receive the sacrament are . . . partakers by faith of the body and blood of Christ, and of the benefits he conveys to us by them.”
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