gluten free?  First, if we have a valid priest, then it becomes Christ.  My daughter is gluten free and takes the full size host, Christ.  Also, even a crumb is all and totally Christ.

Has your daughter ever had an issues as a result of receiving the Host?

And, yes, I mentioned that if somehow it did happen (I don't believe it would), the priest could even give a small fraction of a Host to the communicant, and she would receive Holy Communion.  I'm sure that a tiny crumb will cause someone to go into anaphylactic shock.

Our friend's daughter has Celiac Disease. Her's is rather acute, if you put a hotdog on a bun and took it off to give to her that will trigger a reaction which usually is vomiting. She receives Communion regularly, a full size Host and she has no reactions from Him.

I hope this helps,
JoeZ

Thanks, JoeZ.  That's in line with my pious belief that Our Lord would not allow Holy Communion to harm anyone.

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No, it is Catholic dogma that the accidents of the Holy Eucharist remain. So if a host has, as one of its accidents, that it will cause someone some sort of harm, then that will not change after the consecration.

St. Alphonsus even talked about the case where someone poisoned the altar wine in order to murder the priest, and then confessed doing this to the priest in confession right before Mass (I know, the whole concept is bizarre, but he was trying to illustrate various points), but refused to change the wine and was refused absolution. So, the priest has to go and say Mass anyway, right? He can't act on anything heard in confession.

The problem here is, how does the priest deal with this? St. Alphonsus doesn't say the priest doesn't need to worry about anything, because "Our Lord would not allow Holy Communion to harm anyone". No, he says the priest would have to figure something out or he would die. The question was extremely difficult, as he said it would be intrinsically immoral for the priest to use the altar wine knowing it would kill him, since that would be ѕυιcιdє, and he suggested that the priest drop the cruet on the floor and smash it during Mass, making it look like an accident. That was the best thing he could think of, though this is one of the classic "insoluble" problems of the Seal of Confession.

No theologian has ever answered this problem by saying Our Lord will not allow the Precious Blood to poison the priest.

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No, it is Catholic dogma that the accidents of the Holy Eucharist remain. So if a host has, as one of its accidents, that it will cause someone some sort of harm, then that will not change after the consecration.

St. Alphonsus even talked about the case where someone poisoned the altar wine in order to murder the priest, and then confessed doing this to the priest in confession right before Mass (I know, the whole concept is bizarre, but he was trying to illustrate various points), but refused to change the wine and was refused absolution. So, the priest has to go and say Mass anyway, right? He can't act on anything heard in confession.

The problem here is, how does the priest deal with this? St. Alphonsus doesn't say the priest doesn't need to worry about anything, because "Our Lord would not allow Holy Communion to harm anyone". No, he says the priest would have to figure something out or he would die. The question was extremely difficult, as he said it would be intrinsically immoral for the priest to use the altar wine knowing it would kill him, since that would be ѕυιcιdє, and he suggested that the priest drop the cruet on the floor and smash it during Mass, making it look like an accident. That was the best thing he could think of, though this is one of the classic "insoluble" problems of the Seal of Confession.

No theologian has ever answered this problem by saying Our Lord will not allow the Precious Blood to poison the priest.

I don't think believing the Holy Eucharist cannot harm the gluten intolerant is at odds with the accidents remaining. Why could Our Lord not make the gluten-intolerant tolerant of gluten during, and for some time after, the reception of the Eucharist?

This thread comes at an apropos time.

My chapel (SSPX) has a number of attendees who are celiac/gluten intolerant of some sort. So for years they have received some kind of low gluten host.

Recently, somebody from my chapel sent a letter to the district superior arguing that low gluten hosts were of doubtful validity (whether they were arguing that ALL low gluten hosts were doubtful, or that the specific type that my chapel/the district was using were doubtful, I’m not sure. I didn’t see the letter.) anyways, I understand that the issue went all the way up to Menzingen, who instructed that the entire district pause distributing low gluten hosts, and distribute the Precious Blood to the gluten intolerant instead.

I am curious of more of the details here, what exactly the complaint was etc. but because the issue doesn’t concern/affect me at all I don’t want to seem like a busybody by bugging the priest about this.

Interesting, I'll keep that in mind.

Here's a "Catholic" one, which I also hold would be invalid.  Is this really bread, where the main ingredient is starch and they stick a tiny amount of flour into it?  Just because they can get it to sortof look like bread doesn't make it bread.  To me, this would be like putting too much water into the wine at Holy Communion time, which if it's too diluted would be held to be invalid.

I looked this up, and supposedly it's made out of "wheat starch".  But wouldn't anything coming from wheat have gluten in it?  I have no idea how this works.

And just for the heck of it, if this is valid matter, then why don't they just make ALL communion hosts this way, and avoid having to make special accommodation for gluten-sensitive folks?  The first time I ever saw communion hosts, I had no idea what they were, and would never have recognized them as bread.  They looked like Styrofoam discs to me.

Interesting, I'll keep that in mind.

"Less than .001% gluten".
Pre VII era, even the candles used for liturgical functions were required to be a minimum of 51% beeswax, but .00099% gluten makes a host into the wheaten bread required for validity? Hmm. (Not that wheat is 100% gluten, all-purpose flour is said to be in the range of 8-11% gluten)

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An accident is some quality that an object has that are not its substance. These are things like taste, color, smell, and so on. This would include chemical reactivity, and every other physical property that it has. So, if some substance makes a person sick, that is an accident of that substance.

This can be more easily explained by saying there is no experiment that someone can do to a host to determine if it is consecrated or not, since any experiment would only tell us the accidents of the host, not its substance.

So, if a certain type of host makes a particular person sick, that is an accident of the host.

Let's see what the Council of Trent says:


So the Council of Trent tells us that the species or accidents of the bread and wine remain after consecration. Therefore the bread and wine will behave exactly the same, on a physical level, both before and after consecration.

If this idea were true, then it would be possible to do an experiment with a sacred host to tell if it is consecrated or not, by giving it to someone with celiac disease, and then based on whether they get sick or not you would know if it is consecrated. This is not only contrary to the Council of Trent, it is contrary to the entire Catholic concept of the Holy Eucharist, which is that Our Lord's presence is a mystery since He is physically undetectable in the sacred host.

Nonsense.  There’s nothing contrary to Trent in considering that God would prevent the accidents from behaving in such a way as to not do harm.  In Eucharistic miracles, God changes the accidents entirely.  God can do whatever He wants.  Some saints were protected by God from being affected by poisons.