Just a few years ago, national media attention turned to the Roman Catholic Church after a couple of dioceses refused to offer First Communion to girls suffering from celiac disease - an inability to tolerate wheat. Under orders from the Vatican, the churches, one in Massachusetts, the other in New Jersey, would not consider using soy or rice wafers, insisting that only the traditional wheat host was legitimate.
The problem seemed solved when Benedictine nuns in Missouri developed a wheat wafer with only trace levels of gluten - a wafer that has passed muster with both the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and those with celiac disease.
But even with the new wafer, Catholics with food allergies still feel somewhat ostracized, according to Chris Spreitzer, who founded the Catholic Celiac Society.
The New York woman, whose husband and three daughters have celiac disease, said during a holiday service in Orange County, Calif., last month, the priest stopped the ceremony to reprimand her husband and the girls for joining the line for wine without having taken the bread.
"My husband had to stand there and explain," she said. The priest only relented when they explained that they had celiac. "It kind of made a small uproar. You don't want to always be the person standing out in the crowd and making a small scene."
Because Spreitzer has spent considerable time teaching her girls that no gluten is safe, she doesn't like the idea of a low-gluten wafer exception.
"I tried to teach them that no gluten is safe, and I have the church on the other hand saying you can have this wheat," she said. "We've chosen not to use them because it sends a mixed message to the children."
When Bruce Watson told the leaders at Baltimore's Cathedral of the Incarnation, which is Episcopal, that his daughter, Rosemary, will swell up and wheeze if she eats wheat, they had no problem allowing her to take a rice wafer for communion. The church, which notes the availability of the alternative wafers in its bulletin, has since discovered other parishioners with the same problem.
"We're trying to figure out what would make sense for her, to make sure she's fully included," said Jan Hamill, who is canon for Christian formation at the cathedral.
The Cathedral of the Incarnation has also all but eliminated incense from services - only bringing it out for major holidays. And then, she says, the sensitive worshipers know better than to sit anywhere near the center aisle.
