Health News

Parishioners See AIDS Peril In Communion

AP
Published: December 8, 1985

Responding to parishioners' fears about getting AIDS from communion cups, America's Roman Catholic bishops are telling pastors to stick with their regular services but be ready to offer alternatives.

Partaking of consecrated wine as well as bread can be an important part of communion services, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' liturgy committee said in a formal statement Friday. But it added that there was no apparent reason to fear the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome by means of a shared chalice.

The bishops said that ''pastors should exhibit common sense,'' following reasonable rules of hygiene and asking people with contagious diseases not to drink from the cup.

AIDS, a disease that attacks the body's immune system, has struck about 15,000 Americans to date, and more than half have died.

Virus Found in Saliva

The virus believed to cause AIDS has been found in human saliva, a fact that may have given rise to communicants' fears about drinking from a common communion cup.

However, the bishops cited a letter solicited from the Centers for Disease Control, an Atlanta-based Federal agency, saying, ''There has been no suggestion of transmission of the virus by sharing utensils, including the common communion cup, or through any other means involving saliva.''

Until recently, most Catholic churches distributed only wafers of bread in communion services, but many have begun ceremonies using both bread and wine.

Some offer communion in which the communicant dips the wafer into the wine rather than drinking from the cup, an alternative that the liturgy committee suggested for those who feared AIDS.

Option of Bread Alone

''At the same time, pastors should advise those who are fearful that they have the option of receiving Christ under the species of bread alone,'' the bishops said.

Many Christian denominations conduct communion services simply to commemorate Jesus' distribution of bread and wine at the Last Supper. But Catholic doctrine holds that after consecration the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

''Above all, the committee affirms the preference for receiving communion from the cup or chalice because of its sign value - that is, the symbolic significance of ministering and receiving communion according to the manner of Christ's own institution of the Eucharist,'' said the Rev. John Gurrieri, executive director of the committee's secretariat.