You know, the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is perhaps that most sacred of the Catholic sacraments.
This sacrament is a recreation of the Christ’s Last Supper where He broke bread and drank wine with his apostles before he was crucified.
Through a process called transubstantiation, Catholics believe that the communion wafer actually becomes the flesh of Jesus and they eat it. The wine becomes His blood and they drink it.
I only recently found out that Communion wafers have to be made of wheat. Otherwise they don’t count. Apparently rye, barley, and other flours don’t convert into flesh well.
There is a problem because God created a substantial number of people who have allergies to wheat or coeliac disease, an autoimmune disorder caused by the gluten in the wheat.
From Wikipedia:
Roman Catholic doctrine states that for a valid Eucharist, the bread must be made from wheat. In 2002, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith approved German-made low-gluten hosts, which meet all of the Catholic Church’s requirements, for use in Italy; although not entirely gluten-free, they were also approved by the Italian Celiac Association.[76] Some Catholic coeliac sufferers have requested permission to use rice wafers; such petitions have always been denied.[77] The issue is more complex for priests. Though a Catholic (lay or ordained) receiving under either form is receiving Christ “whole and entire”—his body, blood, soul, and divinity—the priest, who is acting in persona Christi, is required to receive under both species when offering Mass—not for the validity of his Communion, but for the fullness of the sacrifice of the Mass. On 22 August 1994, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith apparently barred coeliacs from ordination, stating, “Given the centrality of the celebration of the Eucharist in the life of the priest, candidates for the priesthood who are affected by coeliac disease or suffer from alcoholism or similar conditions may not be admitted to holy orders.” After considerable debate, the congregation softened the ruling on 24 July 2003 to “Given the centrality of the celebration of the Eucharist in the life of a priest, one must proceed with great caution before admitting to Holy Orders those candidates unable to ingest gluten or alcohol without serious harm.”[78]
As of January 2004, an extremely low-gluten host became available in the United States. The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, Missouri, produce low-gluten hosts safe for celiacs and also approved by the Catholic Church for use at Mass. The hosts are made and packaged in a dedicated wheat-free, gluten-free environment. Gluten-content analysis found no detectable amount of gluten, though the reported gluten content is 0.01% as that was the lowest limit of detection possible with the utilized analysis technique. In an article from the Catholic Review (15 February 2004), Dr. Alessio Fasano was quoted as declaring these hosts “perfectly safe for celiac sufferers.” [79]
The church’s solution to this problem was to bar people with coeliac disease from the priesthood.
But pedophiles, now that’s a different story.