Millennials! Can’t live with ’em, can’t live with ’em. Whether it’s illegal 4:44 download codes, diamond-encrusted fidget spinners or Kylie Jenner contouring tutorials on YouTube, they’re always up to some shenanigans. But one shenanigan they won’t be up to anymore? Gluten-free communion wafers, because as it turns out, at least some things are sacred. That’s according to a letter sent out from the Vatican that re-affirmed the Catholic Church’s longstanding belief that wafers need to have at least some gluten in them. Via the Washington Post:
[lborder]The letter drew attention from media outlets around the globe, but it actually reaffirmed earlier guidelines saying that bread and wafers must have at least some gluten in them. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops already has guidelines allowing churches to use low-gluten wafers and nothing will change in American Catholic churches, said Andrew Menke, executive director of the Secretariat of Divine Worship.
[/lborder]Low-gluten wafers? What’s next? Low-cyanide coffee? Low-spider Cheerios? Why not just fly a giant flag from the highest point on the Vatican that says “Millennials not welcome.”
The Catholic Church has been wrestling with the question, apparently. Gluten-free diets are on the rise in the U.S. Some people do it because they have celiac disease, and gluten can wreck havoc on their small intestine. Other people do it because … well, you don’t always need a reason to do something. But the Catholic Church, as it turns out, does have a reason for requiring a bit of gluten in their communion wafers.
“Christ did not institute the Eucharist as rice and sake, or sweet potatoes and stout,” Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at Catholic University, told the Post. “It may seem a small thing to people. 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.”
