Can Receiving the Eucharist Transmit Disease?

Now that public spaces, including churches, are starting to open up again, there’s some concern and confusion about the public health implications of receiving Communion. In particular, there’s a fear that receiving from the Chalice will lead to the spread of disease. There are some big mistakes being made on both sides of the issue, so let’s clear up a couple of things.

First, I’ve seen several Catholics claiming online that it’s impossible for receiving the Eucharist be a cause of contagion, since Jesus is the source of life, not death. I’ve even seen the charge of heresy thrown around – that people who are afraid to receive from the Chalice must not really believe in transubstantiation! That might sound like a pious sentiment, but it’s theologically off-base, and totally misunderstands transubstantiation. Here’s St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa, explaining:

If a fly or a spider falls into the chalice before consecration, or if it be discovered that the wine is poisoned, it ought to be poured out, and after purifying the chalice, fresh wine should be served for consecration. But if anything of the sort happen after the consecration, the insect should be caught carefully and washed thoroughly, then burned, and the ‘ablution,’ together with the ashes, thrown into the sacrarium. If it be discovered that the wine has been poisoned, the priest should neither receive it nor administer it to others on any account, lest the life-giving chalice become one of death, but it ought to be kept in a suitable vessel with the relics: and in order that the sacrament may not remain incomplete, he ought to put other wine into the chalice, resume the mass from the consecration of the blood, and complete the sacrifice.

Rather than a denial of transubstantiation, this is transubstantiation (Aquinas is the theologian most associated with articulating the doctrine, after all). The substance of bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, but the accidents remain, and so it’s still possible receiving the Chalice to raise your BAC, or for receiving the Host to trigger a celiac intolerance to gluten. Likewise, if you poison the chalice (including with a virus!), the species of wine will still be received into the body like poisoned wine. Anyone claiming otherwise isn’t defending Catholic teaching, but a false version of Catholic teaching. And this false teaching isn’t piety, any more than it’s a pious belief to believe that if we throw ourselves off of the Temple, God will catch us (Matt. 4:6-7).

I have shared Aquinas’ teaching with the people spouting this false Eucharistic theology, and twice I’ve received the response that Aquinas isn’t a pope, and he’s not infallible. To this, I would say a few things. Pope Pius XI said this of Aquinas:

We so heartily approve the magnificent tribute of praise bestowed upon this most divine genius that We consider that Thomas should be called not only the Angelic, but also the Common or Universal Doctor of the Church; for the Church has adopted his philosophy for her own, as innumerable documents of every kind attest. 

But Aquinas is not just a brilliant philosopher and theologian. He also had an intense love of the Eucharist, and is the author of the Pange Lingua and Tantum Ergo, the two hymns used throughout the world during Eucharistic adoration. And so Pius says:

Lastly, our Doctor possessed the exceptional and highly privileged gift of being able to convert his precepts into liturgical prayers and hymns and so became the poet and panegyrist of the Divine Eucharist. For wherever the Catholic Church is to be found in the world among whatsoever nations, there she zealously uses and ever will continue to use in her sacred services the hymns composed by St. Thomas. They are the expression of the ardent supplications of a soul in prayer and at the same time a perfect statement of the doctrine of the august Sacrament transmitted by the Apostles, which is pre-eminently described as the Mystery of Faith. If these considerations are borne in mind as well as the praise bestowed by Christ Himself to which We have already referred, nobody will be surprised that St. Thomas should also have received the title of the Doctor of the Eucharist.

So if your first thought is that you might be right and Aquinas might be wrong (or even heretical!) on the Eucharist, I would suggest that this sounds more like pride than anything remotely Catholic. The Church’s teaching on the Eucharist is most clearly taught at the Council of Trent. And as Pope Leo XIII notes, this was largely the fruit of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas centuries earlier:

The ecumenical councils, also, where blossoms the flower of all earthly wisdom, have always been careful to hold Thomas Aquinas in singular honor. In the Councils of Lyons, Vienna, Florence, and the Vatican one might almost say that Thomas took part and presided over the deliberations and decrees of the Fathers, contending against the errors of the Greeks, of heretics and rationalists, with invincible force and with the happiest results. But the chief and special glory of Thomas, one which he has shared with none of the Catholic Doctors, is that the Fathers of Trent made it part of the order of conclave to lay upon the altar, together with sacred Scripture and the decrees of the supreme Pontiffs, the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, whence to seek counsel, reason, and inspiration.

So while it’s true that Aquinas isn’t infallible (and in fact, we can point to areas in which the Church has clarified that he was wrong!) he is nevertheless the single most esteemed theologian in the Church, and particularly on the Eucharist. And he makes it very clear that it’s possible for reception of the Eucharist to lead to death, if the Eucharist has been poisoned.

Now, having said all of that, I want to avoid the other extreme, as well. The far more common error, I would suspect, is not that the Chalice is divinely-protected from germs, but that it has a tremendous number of germs, given that you have lots of people receiving from the same Chalice. It’s a sensible enough objection, but it actually seems to be wrong. As the L.A. Times notes,

“People who sip from the Communion cup don’t get sick more often than anyone else,” said Anne LaGrange Loving, a New Jersey microbiologist who has conducted one of the few studies on the subject. “It isn’t any riskier than standing in line at the movies.”

So to conclude, receiving from the Chalice doesn’t seem to be exceptionally dangerous, but neither is it supernaturally protected from the ordinary spread of disease.