Breaded bliss [one company makes 80% of all Catholic Eucharist wafers sold worldwide]

The Boston Globe ^ | November 30, 2008 | Mark Arsenault

[Alex Murphy]

SMITHFIELD, R.I. - There are very few recession-proof businesses left in the world, but the Cavanagh family of Rhode Island thinks they may have one - they make Communion wafers for millions of churchgoers each week.

These days, the company connected to the prayer business is enjoying an uptick.

"When times are tough, more people seem to go to church," said Brian Cavanagh, the chief executive officer of Cavanagh Co. He said sales of the company's altar breads are up as much as 5 percent this year, a possible indicator of the national mood. Sales spiked 10 percent after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In its 62d year of operation, the Cavanagh family business is the nation's leading supplier of Communion wafers. Their commercial bakery in this northern Rhode Island town runs 24 hours a day to make about 25 million wafers a week, primarily for Catholics, but for other denominations as well.

The company's manufacturing floor is a humming assembly line of weird, Willie Wonka-like machines. Contraptions custom-built by the Cavanaghs will thud, click sharply, and whoosh at odd intervals, like the percussion section of a highly experimental jazz band.

This effort goes to make one of the most revered products in the world, which faithful members of the Catholic Church believe will become the body of Jesus Christ.

The family markets its bread as "untouched by human hands" until they are delivered to parishioners in the Communion line. "You just want to make it as perfect as possible," said Andy Cavanagh, a member of the family that runs the business.

Before the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, Communion wafers were shiny white, much thinner than they are now, and designed to dissolve on the tongue, the Cavanaghs explained. The Church now celebrates the Eucharist with wafers that

[Alex Murphy]

The family boasts of an 80 percent market share in the United States, and similar or even greater percentages in Canada, England, and Australia. With those kinds of numbers, the Cavanagh Co. is the Microsoft of altar bread....

....The company employs 36 full-time people making altar bread. The family is Roman Catholic, "but you certainly don't have to be Catholic to work here," said Brian. "It's a manufacturing company. There's no fake reverence for the product." Until the wafers are used by a priest in the celebration of the Eucharist, "it's just bread," he said.

[ConservativeMind]

It’s always amazed me to note there never seems to be blood on those things.

[Proud2BeRight]

Why don’t churches simply use bread? After all, didn’t Jesus break bread and not compressed styrofoam?

[Smedley]

Until the wafers are used by a priest in the celebration of the Eucharist, "it's just bread," he said.

Bread?

I thought for sure I was forced to eat styrofoam all these years

[beelzepug]

“A local pig farmer feeds the waste to his hogs.”

Yet one more reason for the mooselimbs to hate us. And I’m not buying the part about Episcopalians being one of their customers. I know they buy from Gai’s Bakeries.

[gman992]

The Jesuits at my high school just used regular bread...they can use candy, but just as long as the priest turns it into the Body of Christ, it will be okay...Now, let’s talk about the wine, because the Jesuits use an excellent Merlot!!!

[iowamark]

Christ's Last Supper was a Passover meal. He used unleavened bread made of only flour and water, as Jews use for Passover.

[SoothingDave]

The Jesuits at my high school just used regular bread...they can use candy, but just as long as the priest turns it into the Body of Christ, it will be okay...

"Candy" and leavened bread are invalid matter. There is no sacrament, but rather a farce.

[Campion]

Communion hosts are also only flour and water, for exactly that reason.

[jla]

Until the wafers are used by a priest in the celebration of the Eucharist, "it's just bread," he said.

I thought for sure I was forced to eat styrofoam all these years

The fact of transubstantiation would dictate that it is neither bread nor styrofoam.

[D-fendr]

Actually, I believe the accidents remain bread.

;)

[TASMANIANRED]

I like the “new style” wafers. When I was a kid the shiny ones tasted like fish food.

[Big Giant Head]

cool article. Moronic replies on the Boston Herald website.

[Alex Murphy]

"Candy" and leavened bread are invalid matter. There is no sacrament, but rather a farce.

Genetically-modified (GM) wheat may not be be suitable under canon law to be used to make hosts for the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist, it's been claimed.

Fr Sean McDonagh, a Columban priest and well-known commentator on environmental issues, questions whether the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith which oversees Catholic doctrine could ever sanction GM wheat. Writing in Intercom, a publication of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference, Fr McDonagh cites the example that gluten-free hosts are outlawed for use in communion -- even though it can endanger the health of those suffering from coeliac disease, which is a bowel disorder. Low gluten hosts are permitted.

"Crops which have been genetically engineered to date include maize, soya beans, canola (derived from rapeseed) and potatoes. Many biotech companies would like to genetically engineer wheat. If this is pushed through, the question will arise as to whether GM wheat can be used in the Eucharist?"

from the thread
No Genetically Modified Jesus! (Important Issu!) [Catholic Caucus]