Vatican Says No to Gluten-Free

Catholics with celiac disease are going to have a more difficult time with communion at Mass after the latest Vatican ruling, which forbids the use of gluten-free bread. It sounds like the idea is that bread used must not contain additives, which are often necessary to make decent gluten-free bread, but still. That's why GMO bread is still allowed, because GMO is basically just a faster version of what we call "breeding" in any other context.

Bread used to celebrate the Eucharist during Roman Catholic masses must not be gluten-free - although it may be made from genetically modified organisms, the Vatican has ruled.

In a letter to bishops, Cardinal Robert Sarah said the bread can be low-gluten. But he said there must be enough protein in the wheat to make it without additives. The new rules are needed because the bread is now sold in supermarkets and on the internet, the cardinal said.

Roman Catholics believe bread and wine served at the Eucharist are converted into the body and blood of Christ through a process known as transubstantiation.

The Roman Catholic belief in transubstantiation has a number of odd ramifications, and this is just one of them. It also leads to the belief that consecrated hosts must be protected at all costs, because Satanists could work powerful magick with the actual flesh of Jesus Christ. As I see it, it's actually the Anglicans who are closest to the truth. The communion ritual is not entirely symbolic (as one commonly hears in Protestant churches), but at the same time the presence that the bread is endowed with (called the "real presence of Christ" in Anglican Christianity) is a spiritual/magical transformation, not a physical one.

I suppose it should go without saying, but the Thelemic Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica is way ahead of Roman Catholicism on this issue, too. Our churches have no problem whatsoever with gluten-free cakes of light. After all, it's the magick that counts.