Sure. I think that a consensus could be achieved among a group of people who would prefer to not share a common cup with someone infected with any type of communicable disease. To suggest that such a concern is “ignorant” only means that it is your personal, subjective opinion which has no impact upon the position of others. I would not be surprised that if the matter were brought to the pastor, then he would make some kind of special provision for this particular individual while attending to the safety and concerns of the other parishioners. Would he be “ignorant,” too?
The real answer to this question is for the particular individual to refrain from receiving from a communal chalice. Why is it so necessary for you to put others at risk, no matter how small, to support a form of reception that isn’t even necessary and, in my opinion, shouldn’t even be offered? I still maintain that anyone who has a communicable disease should show charity towards others by not putting themselves in such a position. Why does this one person’s desire trump the possible safety and peace of mind of everyone else?
Oh, I don’t think so, at all. There are people who knowingly spread the virus; people who will take the chalice when they have cold sores and colds. There are some who wouldn’t care enough to skip it.
What you would like to think is not necessarily the case. There are several people on these forums who can attest to getting sick from receiving the chalice.
I think the “ignorance” was pointed at the tenor of the specific response. I suspect no one here really knows the probability of passing on the HIV virus via the chalice. While I suspect it hovers somewhere around zero I don’t know either but at least I can admit to that. I also happen to know that I have never heard of HIV being passed on in this manner nor have I ever heard of any official cautions on this matter so it’s not really up to me (nor anyone else here) to say that someone should not receive via the chalice.
The only way that one can be sure enough to gain any sort of “piece of mind” is personally abstain from receiving via the chalice. That’s where YOUR choice comes into play and not by trying to control others. I am sure there are many thousands of people who receive each day via the chalice who carry the HIV virus, many who do not even know they are infected.
From the tone that your post appears to have I believe that you mis-understand the word ‘ignorant’. You seem to take it as an insult. I do not use it as an insult. I use it in its proper sense: a lack of knowledge. It is a lack of knowledge regarding the ways in which HIV can be transmitted that give rise to fears that need not exist.
How can they do this? It is known, from research, how various infectious diseases are communicated from one person to another. In the case of individuals it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to know how exactly you have obtained an infectious disease. It is very possible to catch a common cold from the chalice. It would be difficult to prove your cold came from the chalice. You could have caught it in so many ways.
We only want to receive the sacred blood
Nice…We only want to receive the sacred blood
Then don’t. The only vessels to touch the Precious Blood should be sacred vessels, not everybody’s little goblet from home (who’s going to do all the pouring? are you going to have 80 of them up there on the altar?), or the sacrilege of a paper cup. Anyway, Jesus said “take this cup,” not “run home and grab your own little cups; my germs are on this one.”
Do you think the germs are greater than Christ?
At least he correctly understands that germs can be transmitted by drinking from the same -]cup/-] chalice. It’s his choice whether to receive under that species or not.
Byzantine priests aren’t dropping like flies in a could of bug spray despite having to consume all of the Eucharist at the end of Divine Liturgy using the same Liturgical Spoon he distributed the Eucharist with for everyone in church. Despite the fact that we aren’t supposed to close our mouths on the spoon, certainly the priests do hit people’s lips and teeth (I got hit in the teeth before) and kids do close their mouths on the spoons. Consider where toddlers mouths have been.
I realize this is your own little pet theory (not supported by anything except your wishful thinking and armchair theologizing, of course), but I find it uncharitable in the extreme to ask a question implying that someone is lacking in faith or respect for God in this way.
So you don’t believe there’s anything in the Eucharist but bread and wine and germs?
Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, plus whatever else might be in it – maybe a fly or a spider. Maybe dust. Maybe germs. What is so hard to understand about this? Your view is, “Jesus magically makes all the germs vanish!” Does Jesus make a spider vanish when it falls into the chalice? Would you want to drink it that way? Does it make sense that the Church has directions about how to remove the spider? And if you went ahead and did it, would you think, “I drank the Precious Blood, with a spider in it,” or “I drank the Precious Blood, under the species of wine and of spider”?
How did germs become a spider? I learned in elementary biology that they were different things.