August 25, 2006
Rules
Pentecost 12/16B Jn 6.60-69
A Roman Catholic bishop up in New Jersey ruled a child’s first communion invalid because the priest used bread made of rice flour. He made no exception even when he learned that the child is allergic to wheat.
I don’t know of any scriptural qualifiers about the bread — or the wine — at the Last Supper. Of course, there are those who would not welch(sic) even on their death bed in their conviction that it was grape juice all along. And then there was the frenzied rapture a few decades ago when plain old bakery bread began to replace the fish food.
One other story against the grain is that the Jesuits or some other hard-nosed missionaries managed to entice a lot of Chinese into baptism over the years by providing them one of their main staples during times of drought. Maybe old +New Jersey could figure out how he might invalidate all those baptisms so he could disenfranchise a few generations of Chinese Rice Christians.
Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven… (whoever) eats this bread will live forever” [Jn 6.60]. It was a big saying, and it bothered a lot of people, probably still does. When he first said that, church membership dropped off noticeably to an unprecedented low leaving pretty much the original twelve.
Obviously, as if it made any difference, he never went far enough to say whether this new bread was of wheat or rice or barley or whatever, just mostly of himself which was problem enough. Leave it to the church and to its bishops like the astute Bishop from New Jersey for major theological decisions like that.
As for the rest of us, we’ll keep avoiding the real bread by busying ourselves, thank you, with and about who can love whom and how and even whether.