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Please Help NCPD Collect Information About Celiac Sprue For more information, also contact The Catholic Celiac Society NCPD has received many inquiries over the past years about the dangers inherent in wheat communion wafers for those individuals who have celiac sprue (also known as celiac disease and nontropical sprue). This genetic disorder causes inflammation of the intestines when food containing gluten is consumed. The difficulty is that flours made from wheat, barley, oats and rye all contain gluten.NCPD is in the process of collecting data about people’s experiences with this condition. Please share with us the difficulties you have faced; the situations reported to you by those who are gluten sensitive and what, if any, strategies you have tried in order to address the problems faced by Catholics with celiac sprue. We will keep your responses confidential if you prefer. In conversations with parents of children with celiac sprue, NCPD has learned that they view allowing their youngsters to eat substances containing wheat flour as comparable to giving them rat poison. Thus such individuals are excluded from partaking of the Body of Christ. Many also consider the Precious Blood “contaminated” due to fermentum or intinction. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in his role as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a letter addressing this situation on June 19, 1995. He noted that “special hosts” in which the gluten has been removed are invalid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist. However, in a paragraph which has confused many, he noted that “low-gluten hosts are valid matter, provided that they contain the amount of gluten sufficient to obtain the confection of bread, that there is no addition of foreign materials, and that the procedure for making such hosts is not such as to alter the nature of the substance of the bread. Efforts have been underway to remove gluten from the flour used to make the wafers. However, without gluten, the “stickiness” essential to make a wafer is lost and the substances which might be substituted would be “foreign materials,” which Ratzinger indicates would “alter the nature,” and therefore be questionable.John Norton, in a CNS story from Rome on January 7, 2002 discusses differing medical opinions in Europe and the United States and modifications which have been made in Italy, England and Wales. Italy’s bishops have approved a low-gluten Eucharist host with the backing of the Italian Celiac Association. A German firm’s wafers, which include 0.0374 Milligrams of gluten, were approved when medical authorities there stated such a small amount would not present difficulties. Bishops in England and Wales developed a certificate to be issued by the celiac patient’s priest, which allows Catholics to present a low-gluten host for consecration. NCPD has been told there is a higher percentage of individuals with celiac disease in Ireland, England and Wales.The USCCB’s Liturgy Committee agrees with scientific evidence reported in the United States and affirmed by advocates who have talked with NCPD that even a small amount of gluten can be dangerous to sensitive individuals. The Liturgy Committee recommends such individuals receive in the form of wine. "Many would hesitate to recommend the use of 'low-gluten' hosts," the committee’s documents note. The only viable solution recommended is offering consecrated wine to celiac sufferers. But some advocates have reported symptoms following partaking of the Sacred Blood for the reasons mentioned above. Please help NCPD confirm that there is a problem. Your stories and those of people you know will be helpful as we seek appropriate solutions together. Contact us via e-mail at ncpd@ncpd.org or by writing NCPD, 415 Michigan Avenue, NE, Suite 240, Washington, DC 20017-4501.
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