Saints and Sinners: Drinking from the common cup
President Bush had returned to his ranch in Texas but his father was in the congregation at the 8 o’clock outdoor communion service at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport, Maine. The noise of the ocean waves lapping at the gigantic rocks a few feet away added to the magnificence of the setting.
I was sitting four rows behind the former president and got to exchange a few pleasantries with him after the service, but I didn’t get to ask him whether he drank from the “common cup” when he went up to the altar to receive communion.
The visiting minister had told those who were to partake of the sacrament that they could drink from the common cup or use the method of intinction, a way of receiving communion that involves holding the wafer between the thumb and forefinger and dipping it in the wine in the cup.
This is for the over-fastidious who are fearful of “catching something” by drinking from a cup that has touched another’s lips.
Other alternatives have been tried in some churches — from the use of “shot glasses” passed to communicants on a tray to the use of straws and plastic spoons that are made available to people as they approach the altar.
Germs were unknown in Bible times. Hygienic practices were therefore lax. It was more important to be ceremonially clean, following the rituals prescribed for worship in the Old Testament.
Medical doctors and epidemiologists do not all agree on the health dangers posed when many people drink from the same communion cup.
Those who say the common cup may be a means of transmitting disease admit the risk is very small.
A doctor quoted in a Catholic brochure says, “The alcoholic content of the wine, plus the practice of wiping the cup and turning it to a new position for each communicant, seems to remove any danger of disease being transmitted.”
Other physicians, however, dispute the claim that the wine (14.5 percent alcohol in sacramental wine) kills any bacteria. Some churches, nevertheless, urge people with colds or other communicable diseases not to drink from the common cup.
A certain amount of protocol goes into the receiving of communion, particularly in churches such as the Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran.
A Catholic church in Florida has a sign on the door at the back of the church for those who skip out early. It reads, “Judas left early, too (John 13:30).” This is a reference to the story of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples on the Thursday evening of Holy Week. The gospel records that “as soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out.”
George Washington, a lifelong Episcopalian, had an even worse habit. He would slip out of church even before the communion part of the service began.
This so incensed one rector that he preached a sermon, with Washington in the congregation, deploring the bad example of “those in elevated stations who turn their backs on the Lord’s Supper.” Washington promised not to repeat the offense.
He didn’t. He never appeared in church thereafter on a communion Sunday.
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)