Science / Medicine : Peril in Communion Wafers

Doctors in England have found a medical peril to the pious--Communion wafers. Medical researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine that the wafers often used in Catholic and Anglican services are made from wheat flour containing gluten and its water-insoluble proteins, such as gliadin. These substances can spark an attack of a digestive disorder called celiac disease.

The disease prevents the absorption of nutrients and causes a wide variety of symptoms, such as diarrhea, weight loss, gas and abdominal pain.

The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome has not approved gluten-free wafers that have come on the market. The doctors say the health-conscious faithful must thus take only a wafer chip or no wafer at all during Communion, producing a “psychologically unacceptable stigma for many patients with celiac disease.”

A medical team studying the problem said the Vatican should at least recognize current gluten-free wafers because they contain traces of the wheat starch required by canon law.