WiseFawn, how the heck do you get "My Favorites" on your site? I'd like to build one on mine.

That is unbelievable!!!!

Go to the part under your name that says my account. There will be a manage custom links with instructions. I should build an updated one myself! Let me know if you need any help!

What are all these !

web_poet- Do you mean the favorites links? You can list on your site,other bloggers and other websites that you like.

That's one of the biggest problems with transubstantiation. Has she ever tried taking it? If she was a real Catholic she'd believe totally and utterly that it ceases being bread and becomes the body of Christ before it is taken. She just needs to have faith.

threatened by a disease that mandates a gluten-free diet

Has she ever tried taking it? If she was a real Catholic she'd believe totally and utterly that it ceases being bread and becomes the body of Christ before it is taken. She just needs to have faith.

Yeah? Suppose she did just that and she died? I don't know how serious that disease is, but some could be very serious.

Even for alcoholics trying to break the habit must take the wine with alcoholic content.

That IS bad. Some of alcoholics convert alcoholic not to sugar, but mangled into a powerful drug. That is pretty rare, but one cup IS enough to make that person really drunk.

I guess all I'm saying is that if she lacks the faith to believe, then she shouldn't be in church. After all, I've never heard of any cases of someone dying due to taking communion - maybe it does become divine.

stevendedalus:

Ah, more good publicity for the church. Yes, there are many examples of how the church acts incoherently because as an institution it is incapable of discerning the "good" from the inappropriate. What would the media's reaction have been if they had served communion with gluten-free wafers? Probably the press would not have reported the story. But now, the church is attacked once more for something small and inane.

It's great advertising....not!

Haley--afflicted with a deadly disease--indeed could die in receiving the orthodox wafer; why chance it? It's not a question of lack of faith; on the contrary, the poor girl loves the Church but wishes it would love her and make an exception. We're talking about an eight year old here, and doubt she can fully understand transubstantiation.

"afflicted with a deadly disease

*sigh*... DOn't you people get tired of being so hateful? Steve, you are an unending font of bitter bias.

A) celiac sprue is not a "deadly disease", I deal with people with it, and see them deviate from their diets all the time. The idea that a wafer the size of a quarter is somehow a death threat to someone with sprue is the same knee-kerk stuff steve posts all the time.

celiac sprue is not "rare". The Celiac Sprue Association estimates that 1 in 133 people have it, but most remain undiagnosed and ignore the symptoms.

C) Has anyone bothered to ask if she is going to "burn in hell"? Has anyone bothered to ask if they offered to excuse her from the sacriment, or give her something else to do instead? Nope, you guys just go off the deep end and start church bashing.

"The diocese has told Haley’s mother that the girl can receive a low-gluten wafer, or just drink wine at Communion, but that anything without gluten does not qualify. Pelly-Waldman rejected the offer, saying her child could be harmed by even a small amount of the substance. Haley’s Communion controversy isn’t the first. In 2001, the family of a 5-year-old Massachusetts girl with the disease left the Catholic church after being denied permission to use a rice wafer. Some Catholic churches allow no-gluten hosts, while others do not, said Elaine Monarch, executive director of the Celiac Disease Foundation, a California-based support group for sufferers. “It is an undue hardship on a person who wants to practice their religion and needs to compromise their health to do so,” Monarch said. The church has similar rules for Communion wine. For alcoholics, the church allows a substitute for wine under some circumstances, however the drink must still be fermented from grapes and contain some alcohol. Grape juice is not a valid substitute. Haley, a shy, brown-haired tomboy who loves surfing and hates wearing dresses, realizes the consequences of taking a wheat wafer. “I’m on a gluten-free diet because I can’t have wheat. I could die,” she said last week. "Girl with digestive disease denied Communion""

This is another one of those "Girls in the Boy Scouts", equal-access cases. The saddest part is the little girl is telling reporters that if she eats a communion wafer she could die. Sad to think that a mother would be so dead-set on forcing the church to change that she would victimize her child in this way.

Jesus, who's being hateful here? You equate Haley with being a spoiled brat owing to an overly protective mother. 

"You equate Haley with being a spoiled brat"

I dare you to show me where I characterized her as a "spoiled brat", either literally or implied. I made the point that many of the characterizations about the disease were wrong, that from personal experience I know that this is not nearly as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be, and that given one out of every couple hundred people suffer from it, many people with celiac sprue take part in Catholic communion.

Don't make intolerably one-sided posts and then act outraged whe people offer the other side, steve. You think everything you believe is self-evident, and it rarely is...

Sad to think that a mother would be so dead-set on forcing the church to change that she would victimize her child in this way.

This is implicit enough for me: what you're saying is that because of the mother is overly protective she has spoiled her child. Perhaps the mother is the brat. Has anyone bothered to ask if she is going to "burn in hell"?

Since she is but a child she may not have your proud sophistication and really believe she will burn.

No, I think the mother is a fault, granted, but I don't recall calling the child a spoiled brat. I can tell you with practical certainty that no one with Celiac Sprue would ever die from eating a small bite of a communion wafer. Considering the child says she could die in the article, I just have to assume she got that impression somewhere. Seems like an awful thing to tell a child.

The point is that many people with her illness take communion will little or no effects at all. Granted, I don't agree with the stance of the Catholic Church, but then again, it isn't my church. I think that the articles are pretty skewed. You'd think the church had announced she was going to burn in hell.

" Since she is but a child she may not have your proud sophistication and really believe she will burn."

I would think the mother would have made her understand otherwise, but again, I wouldn't have thought the mother would give her the impression a wafer would kill her, either.