In Wheat We Trust

Yesterday I was discussing attitudes to food allergies with my godmother, who told me the story of the Bishop who was coeliac, and who was being made ill by the host.

Some kindly nuns nearby started baking him gluten free communion wafers, but apparently the Pope Said No. The Lord decreed that the host must be wheaten, and that was that. Gluten was a must. Sadly in those ancient days they hadn't started modifying wheat for mass production, so the Lord didn't feel it was such an issue...

Like a good bishop, this one continued to take communion every morning (it's more intensive if you're a bishop, apparently, you don't get away with once weekly) and eschewed the gluten free wafer. Given that he believed in transubstantiation, it must have been difficult to reconcile his faith with the fact that the body of Christ was slowly killing him... and apparently he did die young.

I think the moral here must be about human inflexibility, and the insanity of the sacrifices we insist on making for the sake of enforcing arbitrary rules. This is not what humanity should be defined by.