Bishop bars autistic boy from receiving communion
The Arizona Republic
5th March 2006
PHOENIX A Lake Havasu City father is furious with the Catholic church because his autistic son has been barred from taking communion.
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of the Phoenix Diocese says 10-year-old Matthew Moran won't be allowed to take communion until he can actually swallow the wafer of unleavened bread. He's instead offered alternatives, education and other support for the family.
Nick Moran is Matthew's father, and he and his wife are extremely upset about Olmsted's decision. For three years, Matthew has taken communion by placing the wafer on his tongue. But because he can't swallow it, his father then removes it and eats it himself.
Moran says Matthew cried and screamed when he learned he couldn't take communion at the end of Mass.
ENDS
How very strange. I wonder why they allowed him to do it for some time before saying it was forbidden?
If it was wrong according to their rules, why allow the boy to do it and get into the routine of it, they expect him to change.
Perhaps it was just an excuse for shutting the little lad out.
I remember one devout catholic explaining to me that "the blood and body of christ" (ie. communion) *literally* becomes flesh/blood on being consumed (Yes, well I always did say you had to be lacking certain mental faculies to believe the bible THAT literally)
Anyway, I suppose him taking it back out his mouth and munching it, would disprove the theory that it had turned to flesh because it's still clearly a wafer. If you've ever attended a church at least ocne and looked REALLY closely at the whole thing, it's like a giant OCD ritual, with bizarre and pointless utterings, and fixed procedures for doing stuff. Breaking that is like breaking the priest compulsion and they get pissy.
The main difference is the Vatican has some power in enforcing the obsession.
It is heavy on ritual. So the change will be more confusing for the boy.
To me the relevant issue is whetehr the 10year old has a conception of what the sacrament of communion means and, knowing the meaning, wants to participate. The "how" of participation is details. The "why" is important. If it's just a ritual and the problem is now a change in ritual rather than deprivation of something genuinely felt to be religeous would affect what I thought and how hard I'd want to fight on the 10year old's behalf.
Someone does not have to know the meaning of communion in order to participate. That is not required.
In fact the 'how' is what is important to the catholic church rather than the why. Important to the rules I mean. Someone dying or in a coma could be given communion and not even know it was being given.
I was probably the most religious I've ever been when I was between 9 and 12. So I can identify with the pain of the autistic 10 year old here if he or she was like me as I was then. Back when I did care about the meaning of the rituals. Amy I agree, most people don't know the meaning or don't care, because participation serves a social rather than a symbolic function for them. Losing ability to perform a social function because of a stupid rule bothers me less than losing a symbolic function because of a stupid rule.
I didnt mean that they dont know or dont care, I meant that the church rules are not about why people take it but how they take it, ie not removed from the mouth.
Here a person can hold it in their hand and then put it in ther own mouth.
But their problem may be that the boy does not intend to swallow it, but for it to be transfered.
At the Catholic Church my wife attends you are allowed to receive the host in your hands and then place it in your mouth. Also you are allowed to chew it if swallowing is a problem. This bishop is just being a jerk, :frighten: ]:-) pure and simple. There is no doctrine against what that poor kid was doing!
Back in my day, 1960's, in a catholic grammer school, we were told we couldn't chew and had to swallow the host whole. During religion class leading to our first communion, many a classmate wound up choking as we practiced our "swallowing" technique. Now doesn't that conjure up a wonderful image!
To this day, I have no idea why that was way things were done! But, then I say to this day that I was taught by the "Nuns from HELL!" aka Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
I think its the texture which makes the boy gag even if he did chew, as usually chewing is allowed discreetly. I think the problem is the fathers actions of removing it and then eating it himself.
Personally I would not want to watch that happen if I was in church, it would make me feel sick. :?
I think that it was a strange practice to have started in the first place, and an error of judgement on behalf of the father, that has now ended in the boy suffering.
The communion wafers that is used in most Catholic churches is hard and tastes like cardboard. It is not supposed to be chewed but if left on the tongue it will dissolve into a starchy paste that can be swallowed. This boy probably has a sensory adversion to it. I think that having the father remove it and eat it is an acceptable practice. It would be objectionable to people if he spat it on the floor or took it out and threw it away. Probably some people complained that they did not like seeing the father taking it out of his son's mouth and eating it.
Some solutions might be just to explain to others in the church that an acommodation needs to be made in this case (in other words, get used to it). Or giving the child a very small piece of communion wafer they he might not find difficult to swallow. My church uses real bread (though technically it should be unleaven bread) and we chew it. That is because we do not believe in transubtation. But the Catholic church is very authoritarian and the family will just most likely accept what the Bishop says. The child is upset because he is not allowed to participate. Maybe his family could get some unblessed wafers to practice with.
Yes a very tiny piece of wafer that could be prepared beforehand could work.
I've never really "got" religion. When I was in primary school I used to try and have a logical discussion with the minister who came in every Thursday for religious class. My problem was that the stories he told us obviously had to be fairy tales for their lack of logic, which I could accept and even enjoy for their imaginative value, but that he insisted they were true, which to me was a nonsense. He told me I was being a smart-alec (what, school is supposed to stop you thinking?) and I eventually got "excused" (banned) from the class for RE.
Alison