"excepte necessitie otherwise require" [Matthew's Journal]

The Sacrament Act 1547 established that communion should be given in both kinds (i.e. bread and wine), "excepte necessitie otherwise require"[1]. In response to government advice[2], the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have advised that Communion should be given in one kind only for the time being.

This struck me as slightly odd advice, so I went and looked at PubMed. There isn't a great deal of literature on the subject, but there are a few papers from the late 1980s, when there was concern regarding transmission of HIV. For example, this article from someone working at the Public Health Laboratory says "No episode of disease attributable to the shared communion cup has ever been reported. Currently available data do not provide any support for suggesting that the practice of sharing a common communion cup should be abandoned because it might spread infection." Maybe the HPA has more up-to-date research on the risks involved?

I wonder if the advice was based on the idea that there is no cost whatsoever involved in people receiving in one kind only, so even if there is no evidence of risk reduction, "it can't hurt"? It strikes me that the effort would be better spent in encouraging people who have (or have recently recovered from) flu-like symptoms to stay at home - an infectious individual is going to transmit flu more readily to the people they sit next to in the pew than they are to people via the chalice.

[1] picking out the nuances from Sixteenth-century legalese is left as an exercise for the reader.
[2] page 19 of the PDF downloadable from that page

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At church on Sunday we received by intincture, and my priest strongly implied that this move wasn't because of any actual risk, but so that people worried about flu wouldn't feel anxious during Communion. That seems to make sense to me, even though it necessitates some inelegant queue jumping on my behalf, as I don't really fancy ingesting something that has had 200 lumps of gluten dipped in it!

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How was the intinction practised? The vicar has displayed on the church noticeboard a letter from the archdeacon of Hampstead in which he indicates that he cannot see how it could practically be done. I understand that the archbishops' letter indicated that intinction by the people would be no good (I'm not sure whether on theological or health grounds), but that intinction by the minister would be acceptable. However the archdeacon points out that having intincted the host, the minister would either have to put it on the communicant's hands, which would be messy and pose a risk that the elements would not be wholly consumed, or on the communicant's tongue, which would pose a risk of cross-contamination.

Fr Patrick referred expressly to Paul's teaching about food given to idols in I Cor 8. It is certainly true that some members of the congregation are very worried about swine 'flu, while others think it is a silly fuss about nothing.

I'm not sure that complies with the statute though. One could say that an actual health risk constituted a necessitie, but it seems difficult to see that a perceived risk does.

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The host was only dipped in a little tiny bit, so it wasn't soggy - there weren't any visible or tangible bits left on my hand. I think the priest cleaned his hands with antiseptic/antiviral etc. spray before administering it.

That's how I've seen it done- just before it was served the wafer would be dipped partially into the wine. They used to do it at my parents' church for a young woman who had cerebal palsy and found drinking from cups very difficult if not impossible. It was a very simple way around the problem for her.

The elements are never going to be wholly consumed -- have you ever tried getting the last little dribble out of a cup?

S.

I quite often try getting the last little dribble out of chalices! After draining them, we wash them with water and consume the water. I accept that even that probably leaves a tiny amount of the consecrated wine in the chalice, but we then use purificators to wipe the chalice, and when the purificators are washed, the water is poured into the sacrarium, onto the earth. If there still remain some molecules of the consecrated wine on the chalice, then it matters not, because the vessel will never be used for any other purpose. At all points the chalice and the water and purificators used to cleanse it are treated with due reverence.

None of this would be true if people get the consecrated wine on their hands. If they wash their hands afterwards, then the water will pass into the common sewer. If they fail to do so, then they'll end up spreading the consecrated wine all over things they touch.

Edited Date: 2009-07-29 01:34 pm (UTC)

There's respect, and then there's obsession!

What happens if one of the biscuits breaks?

S.

One of the biscuits (or 'wafers' as we usually call them) is always broken, but this is done over the ciborium or patten, so any crumbs will fall into it, and the ciborium and patten are cleansed afterwards as with the chalice. The wafers are quite robust, and I've never heard of one breaking by accident. However, it does seem to me one advantage of receiving on the tongue, that there's no danger of any particle of the wafer getting left on the communicant's hands.

Cool. When I break things like that crumbs fly everywhere, but I'm glad all yours always fall straight downwards.

(Of course, you should be using proper bread, but if we were to start, why start there?)

S.

The Orthodox church does use bread.

So does Coventry Cathedral.

Do they really? Interesting.

To our own special (and secret!) recipe, I'm told. Occasionally they ask for more volunteers to bake it.

I know. So do properly reformed churches. It's just that Anglicanism was regrettably infected by Catholicism back in the nineteenth century, the attempted inoculation back in '46 obviously having failed to take.

S.

I don't think it has anything to do with being "properly reformed". I've been to Lutheran churches where wafers were used. Wikipedia states that several protestant demoninations use unleavened matza.

Believe me, if you try to break normal matza the crumbs will get everywhere.

Anglicanism is (by its own definition) both Catholic and Reformed (http://www.ireland.anglican.org/index.php?do=about). Perhaps you don't consider it to be "properly" reformed, whatever that means. By "proper" bread you presumably mean leavened? Of course St Paul has something to say about the yeast of sin.

(http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/5-8.htm) ()

This person posted anonymously, so LJ has eaten their links. They were:

i) Catholic and Reformed

ii) yeast of sin

Sorry, in was in fact the archdeacon of Hackney, whose advice is here.

Last Sunday we had the wine served in tiny individual glasses to avoid the risk of swine flu.

This was, of course, in total indifference to the fact that we were having the chunks of bread passed from hand to hand at the same time...

You Anglicans and your common cup.

Bread is certainly more likely way to transmit it, I would have thought, or would be if you used bread instead of biscuits.

S.

When I was a student, the college had an annual scholars' dinner involving an ancient pass-the-big-silver-cup-full-of-spiced-punch ceremony. That part got cancelled one year because there was meningitis about. I wonder if bacteria (if it was bacterial meningitis and not viral) are more likely to spread via that method than viruses, especially as the standard ritual didn't include wiping the cup. Or maybe they just went for the "it can't hurt" option too.

Isn't silver supposed to have some sort of antiseptic qualities?

I think that whereas it's probably not likely that things like HIV or Hepatitis would be transmitted by use of common vessels, flu germs are supposed to live for up to 4 hours on hard surfaces, so they are just being cautious. Even wiping the chalice will just transfer germs onto the wiper so that they spread better.

As someone else said, the use of individual glasses would give people a better sense of "safeness", but that requires organisation. I've been to many different churches with many different methods of distributing bread & wine. Some would seem to be more likely to spread germs than others.

Yes, you're more likely to get it from the people sitting next to you and from shaking hands. I was amused by a report the other day about church members being told to hug rather than shake hands to avoid passing on swine germs.

We have been told to avoid physical exchanges of the peace all together. This is possibly sounder than the advice about sharing the chalice, as I understand that shaking heads is in fact a common way for 'flu to propagate. On the other hand, I can't see anything about it in the archbishops' guidance, and the archdeacon's letter seems ambivalent on the subject, so I wonder if the vicar wasn't passing the buck slightly, since he strongly implied he was merely repeating advice which had been strongly urged upon him.

We were told to do this, also.

We've been told this at HT&SA, too.

As hinted at by others, are they mostly saying this out of concern that people will freak out and either stay at home or refuse to receive based on (largely) irrational germphobia? On the principal that having people actually attend and receive in a modified form is better than losing 10% of their congregation to panic along with whatever percentage are actually stuck at home ill?

Providing you're actually using communion wine, instead of ribena, surely the alcohol in the wine will easily fry the fragile flu virus?

Wine isn't a terribly good antiseptic, really.

A pupil of mine once explained that the blood of Christ was so holy that it would destroy any pathogens.

Any chance of substituting neat wodka for the duration?

It would have to be GIN :)

Yebbut, as Sue Ellen Ewing pointed out once, wodka doesn't smell! Not that anyone in a communion service (except in one of the temperance type churches) is going to be complaining about anyone boozing in public.

A friend comment that it needed to be 70% alcohol for antiseptic purposes and so suggested Communion Absinthe!

As to the advice, the government advice specifically mentions the chalice (and a Sikh ritual) when referring to not sharing vessels. Interestingly for St James at LSM we were reminded that one receives the fulness of body and blood in both elements and one could receive in one kind if one were worried, but that the cup would be offered. I think everyone took the chalice. On Sunday, only the priest had the cup and we received in one kind. Shaking hands at the peace was left to our disgression and most people went for bowing. Though I did see a couple doing something different.

I do think that probably breathing the same air is the biggest risk factor.

Whisky?

We've run out of gin here.

Because I drank it all (!).

dj

No-one's ever gotten a cold sore, for example, from a shared cup? Personally I doubt it (it'd just be hard to verify - and as you say, not much in the literature).

I do agree with what you have written though, and also defer to your greater scientific knowledge over flu. Etc. Of course. To me though it seems sensible to encourage people who aren't well to stay home, AND encourage greater-than-normal hygiene as well. But it probably is much lower risk that all sorts of other things people will be doing, isn't it?

The HIV thing is interesting. Yes, people were worried early on that you might get it from sharing utensils &c &c and most of that has been proven to be either wrong, or unlikely in the extreme. BUT I remember (being a teen-of-the-80s) an awful lot of the next phase of things involved pooh-pooing things that COULD be a risk, other than the glaringly obvious. And yet, if you look into it now, there ARE known cases from certain "lower-risk" practices; and the safest-sex advice is to avoid things that in the late 80s/early 90s were deemed "okay".

Um...I've gone off at a tangent but I hope you get my drift.

didiusjulianus

No episode of disease attributable to the shared communion cup has ever been reported

I'd be surprised if it was possible to attribute every case of disease to a specific cause.

And that's where being Methodist is an advantage.