Has any non-Catholic ever mysteriously died from taking communion?

April 7, 2006 7:16 AM

Has any non-Catholic ever mysteriously died from taking communion?

This question was inspired by memories brought back by this thread.

Years ago, I attended a Catholic high school. As a non-Catholic, I never particpated in the Eucharist, which was offered every so often during chapel. Catholic theology was mandatory at this school. The instructor, and aging Augustinian priest, told us that there were cases of unexplained deaths where non-Catholics partook in communion, and he warned the non-Catholic students not to participate in the Eucharist. However, when pressed about these mysterious deaths, he refused to elaborate.

I always suspected this was a tale told to keep non-Catholics away from the sacrament. Has anyone else ever heard of this? Are there any confirmed stories of actually deaths occurring where non-Catholics have taken communion? If you have encountered this, what specific stories were you told?

I realize this is a strange question, but it is something that has stuck with me for years.

posted by EmuBite to religion & philosophy (27 comments total)

I always suspected this was a tale told to keep non-Catholics away from the sacrament.

Exactly. It sounds similar to the Church of Scientology's claims that reading their higher level documents before you're ready for it causes fever and vomiting. Although in that case it's church doctrine, not the loony fearmongering of a single priest.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:26 AM on April 7, 2006

Although in that case it's church doctrine, not the loony fearmongering of a single priest.
Except in all my Catholic school days and still being Catholic, this is the first time I've ever heard this claim. The not taking Communion is Church doctrine; death as such is not.
posted by jmd82 at 7:49 AM on April 7, 2006

Well, I can give this guess about the past and why:

Immunity from germs was (is) gained through exposure to them. The chalice passed around is very unlikey to be in any way sanitary at all, especially back then. Someone with a sickness that has infected most of the church, that most of the church has recovered from, re-introduces said germ to the chalice. All those from the church drinking from the cup are alright, as they are immune to the disease. An "outsider" drinks from the cup, gets the disease, and dies.

But I'm probably way off...
posted by shepd at 7:52 AM on April 7, 2006

Yes, sounds like a one-off bit of idiocy from one priest.

Robertson Davies' novel The Cunning Man does contain the story of a Anglican priest dropping dead during Eucharist, but he either died of cardiac arrest or was poisoned by another priest. But that's Robinson Davies for you;-)
posted by orange swan at 7:55 AM on April 7, 2006

Although in that case it's church doctrine, not the loony fearmongering of a single priest.

Except in all my Catholic school days and still being Catholic, this is the first time I've ever heard this claim. The not taking Communion is Church doctrine; death as such is not.

Oh I totally agree with you. Church doctrine refered to "Church of Scientology" doctrine, not the Catholic Church. "Single looney fearmongering priest" refered to EmuBite's Augustinian. Which is to say: I think this is something that the old priest made up on his own.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:58 AM on April 7, 2006

I also grew up Catholic and went to Catholic schools until college. I have never heard off anything remotely close to this rumor. I think the priest was trying to put the fear of God into you (so to speak).
posted by j at 8:12 AM on April 7, 2006

I think it's just a scare tactic to keep non-Catholics away.

There is a slight possibility the story takes its inspiration from I Corinthians 11:29, where St. Paul states "For he who eats or drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself." and is "guilty of the body and blood of Christ".

I know they scared the shit out of us with that verse at my fundy church when I was a kid.
posted by MasonDixon at 8:15 AM on April 7, 2006

are you seriously asking? i mean - are you expecting stories of strange coincidences, or do you still honestly believe a story told to you as a child that is - i would have thought - was obviously intended to keep you in line and has no basis in fact?

i'm sorry, but i think you're just abusing this place. either this is chatfilter or you are incredibly naive.
posted by andrew cooke at 8:16 AM on April 7, 2006

Easy there, Andy. I think it's a perfectly legit question. I imagine he wants to hear there's any more Catholic floklore about this floating around, if nothing else. Saying he's abusing this place is a bit much.
posted by Heminator at 8:27 AM on April 7, 2006

I haven't encountered this one (in nine years of Catholic school).

But would it be a derail to tell you about the most disgusting homily I've heard ever?
posted by fuzzbean at 8:41 AM on April 7, 2006

MasonDixon almost reached the relevant verse, but 1 Cor 11:29-30 in total reads: "... or anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying." This page on Catholic.com, which has the nihil obstat (an assertion that the material is free of doctrinal errors), clearly states

"Another reason that many non-Catholics may not ordinarily receive Communion is for their own protection, since many reject the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Scripture warns that it is very dangerous for one not believing in the Real Presence to receive Communion..."

and then cites the passage I quoted above. While this view may not be widely held, it is certainly not the belief of just one priest. You can find many other citations of this by googling for the Bible passage above. Again, I'm not saying Catholics typically believe this, but this is not a one-off. (See here, here)

That being said, I am unaware of any instances of such a thing happening, and there are plenty of high-profile people who have done it.
posted by cacophony at 9:10 AM on April 7, 2006

If someone has celiac disease and they ate the host, they might have an allergic reaction and die...I thought I'd heard about that happening with someone.
posted by agregoli at 9:13 AM on April 7, 2006

I don't understand what the point would be of "keeping non-Catholics away" though? Are you really that hard up for the wine and crackers (or whatever) that you have to scare away those who want to take a sip and chow down? That seems very odd to me. Or are you trying to keep non-Catholics from breaking into the church and stealing ALL of it? I guess that would have a purpose...
posted by antifuse at 9:35 AM on April 7, 2006

Please let me clarify.

I'm not saying I actually believe this is true. (FWIW, I'm a non-practicing agnostic!) I'm interested in hearing whether others have come across stories of "unexplained deaths" where non-Catholics have taken communion. If so, where and by whom? What were the stories you were told?

Rest assured, this is not a late April's Fools gag. I suppose I'm interested in the folklore/urban legends surrounding the Eucharist. Again, the previous thread on attending a Catholic funeral rekindled these memories, and I was curious if anyone else was ever told this.
posted by EmuBite at 9:42 AM on April 7, 2006

I went to Catholic schools for 13 years and never heard a death by Eucharist story, though (like many things) I wonder if it was more prevalent before Vatican II.

Here's what I think agregoli is talking about.

And for anyone who's confused about why Catholics might care about a non-Catholic receiving the Eucharist: Transubstantiation.
posted by gnomeloaf at 9:46 AM on April 7, 2006

Thanks for the the explanation, cacophony.

That said: I'm sorry, but that is really the stupidest bunch of benighted silliness I've ever read. "theres too much jaysus in the wafers!--it could kill you!"
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 9:56 AM on April 7, 2006

gnomeloaf beat me to it -- it's all about Catholics believing in transubstantiation. As a Protestant I've been told by a priest "until we are one in the faith, you cannot take communion here."

Weirdly, I went to a Catholic high school and when I asked why I couldn't take Communion, no one told me about this. I learned it during my one year at a Catholic college.

I've never heard the story of someone dying, but my Theology Prof in college said she was taught as a child that if she bit into the wafer the room would fill with blood and she would drown. She coughed once and bit accidentally and was sure she'd killed the whole church! (alas, of course, she didn't)
posted by jdl at 9:58 AM on April 7, 2006

James Rollins has a book (fiction, of course) in which the communion wafer of a midnight mass is -through some weird electric shock thing- a vehicle for killing everyone who took it.
posted by Suparnova at 10:36 AM on April 7, 2006

Most disgusting homily ever:

We had a visiting priest come to our church to celebrate the mass one day. The subject was the holiness of the Eucharist and the Catholic belief in the true reality of the Eucharist being Jesus's really real flesh and blood.

So he tells us this story of a priest who doubted that the Eucharist really was the body and blood of Christ. And the priest would go home and pray to god for a sign that the transubstantiation doctrine was true. And the priest prayed and prayed and doubted and prayed.

And one day, the priest is celebrating the mass. He gets to the consecration, and holds up the big wafer of Eucharist. And he feels it *change* as he's holding it aloft. And he brings it down and finds that he is holding a piece of raw muscle.

He continues with the consecration and holds up the chalice. And when he brings it down it's full of blood.

(At this point, my mother and I turned to each other and both had this *sick* expression on our faces and went..."Ewwwwwwww!")

And later the priest went to get the muscle tested in a scientific laboratory, and it turns out that it's a piece of cardiac muscle from a 33-year-old man.

This was supposed to convince us that transubstantiation was really really true. Instead, it just made me think about how horribly grotty cannibalism was, and the fact that this is ritual cannibalism, and really, isn't that pretty fucked up?

Athiest and proud, baby. *shudders*
posted by fuzzbean at 10:38 AM on April 7, 2006

I went to a Catholic school until fourth grade. I distinctly remember (in the course of my preparation for First Communion) a story that one of our nuns told me.

This isn't so much a danger-to-the-uninitiated story, but it does show that these wild stories are out there.

The story goes that there was a couple that desperately wanted to conceive and had for several years had no luck and found much heartbreak. Finally, at wits end, the woman went to a known witch and asked for her help. The witch told the woman that she could help her, but she would need the woman to obtain the Eucharist, which she would use to cast a spell and bibbidy-bobitty-boo, the woman would then be fertile.

Well, when the woman went to mass, she palmed the Eucharist. All was well until she got home and took the Eucharist out of her handkerchief. It began to bleed what the nun told us was gallons of blood. The woman was terrified, but I never did learn how she got all of that cleaned up. I'm sure she made a full confession almost immediately.
posted by Elsbet at 11:10 AM on April 7, 2006

From Catholics.com's "Catholic Answers" section:

Who Can Receive Communion?

Another reason that many non-Catholics may not ordinarily receive Communion is for their own protection, since many reject the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Scripture warns that it is very dangerous for one not believing in the Real Presence to receive Communion: "For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died" (1 Cor. 11:29–30).

Sounds like it's more than one crazy priest!
posted by Pollomacho at 11:19 AM on April 7, 2006

Wow, how did I totally not see cacophony's post above.

*smacks self in head*
posted by Pollomacho at 11:27 AM on April 7, 2006

[a few comments removed, please keep LOL CATHLICKS snarks out of the thread]
posted by jessamyn at 11:35 AM on April 7, 2006

For the record, my pet rabbit has eaten the eucharist (seriously. there were winesses) and she is rather elderly now but quite spry. She had it about four years ago and she is healthier than she was at the time despite the fact that she is much older by rabbit reckoning now.
posted by Mayor Curley at 12:06 PM on April 7, 2006

Clearly, whether or not the common Catholic is truly supported by the verse quoted has to do with what "discerning the body" is. Most Protestants have a very different conception of what this means; that is to say, they don't think it has to do with church membership. I'm no Protestant, but it seems as though, if Paul meant "you'll die if you take communion and you're not catholic," he would've said so.

Of course, maybe we should just ask Mayor Curley's bunny, who is apparently secretly catholic. Or can "discern the body." Whatever that means.
posted by koeselitz at 12:30 PM on April 7, 2006

As a lapsed Lutheran, I admit to finding the doctrine of the Real Presence very beautiful and attractive (a doctrine believed by Lutherans).

As to non-Catholics dying or otherwise faring poorly after receiving the Catholic Eucharist, it's quite an old trope. The medieval period had many of these legends (even illustrated), especially concerning those trying to abscond with the Blessed Sacrament. Of course, many of those legends featured Jews or wannabe magicians or Jewish wannabe magicians (anti-Semitism will find any chance to burst free). There's one about a man taking the sacrament home and putting it in his beehive. The bees built an amazing beehive cathedral. I don't remember if anything bad happened to the man.

Martin Luther, besides being an anti-Semite and a demagogue, was often able to express Christian beliefs with an admirable amount of earthiness. He said, and I'm paraphrasing from memory, “Jesus could be present in my soup (or maybe beer), but it doesn't matter, because we believe and know Jesus is present in the bread and wine”. Though no longer even a theist, I believe these sorts of tales and beliefs are very damaging to one's perception of Christianity, since they limit God's power. From this view (which I would certainly have if I returned to Christianity) being a non-Catholic and eating the bread and wine at Mass doesn't “make the Baby Jesus cry”. It might not be the “right” thing to do, since it is a communion between a believer and God, but God's not going to be affected by the worst person in the world swallowing “his body and blood”.

Perhaps the danger is in hypocrisy or presenting a “whited sepulchre” (that is, appearing good on the outside and being bad on the inside) of yourself to the world, but there's no magic in the “Jesus crackers”, as the Eucharist is often dismissively referred to in popular culture. There's no magic in baptism either. In Catholicism these are aspects of God's relationship with the believer in her or his salvation.

I am not a Christian for many reasons, but Christianity is not necessarily superstitious old men in robes believing that God is helping them pull off magic tricks with a bit of “Hoc est enim corpus meum, hocus pocus abracadabra” and a few hand gestures. Nor is it necessarily loud men in bad suits on the television declaring that some country hated by America is the Gog and Magog of our time. Christianity can be a thoughtful, appealing and beautiful faith, but how often Christians (being human) ruin it for other people, especially children, and even themselves, leading to an ironic fulfilment of Paul's statement of “putting away childish things” by those running the hell away from Christianity. (And this is not to exculpate those who find it hilarious to say “Jebus” every chance they get because Homer Simpson did it once and it was funny. It's the “Rick James, bitch!” of humour about Christianity.)

On preview: Thanks, Jessamyn.
posted by Gnatcho at 12:31 PM on April 7, 2006

I'm very glad you asked this question, EmuBite; it has a lot of interesting historical and theological ramifications.

The story that your instructor told you is part of a long tradition of eucharistic miracle stories going back to the medieval period. Miri Rubin's wonderful book, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture, gives other examples:

The host rebelled violently against breaches of the eucharistic code. For celebrating the mass unworthily a priest was punished when the host turned to coals in his mouth; another undeserving celebrant had the host removed from his hands by a human figure which descended at the moment of elevation, and he was moved to confess before continuing the mass; one version places the tale in Oxford in 1356. One of St Bernard's monks was said to have received communion despite his confessor's warnings of his unfitness, and then fell dead upon reception. A monk who usually tasted honey in his mouth at communion, tasted wormwood when he once received it in anger.

Abuse of the host through unworthy reception by laypeople forms another common story-line. A woman who had killed her husband by burning their house down on him, choked to death on the host. A quarrelsome woman who had feigned reconciliation received communion at Easter and the host leapt out of her mouth. Similarly, Friar Mansuetus told Thomas of Eccleston of an event he had witnessed at the communion of a well-known sinner, who swaggered back to his place in disrespect after reception, only to see the host leap out of his mouth to the floor, to be rescued later by the priest.

And the story that fuzzbean heard, of the bread and wine visibly turning into flesh and blood, also has medieval parallels. A story in the Life of Bishop Hugh of Lincoln tells of a priest who celebrated the eucharist while in a state of mortal sin. When he broke the host, 'immediately blood began to flow copiously through the break, and the middle part of the host which I held in my hand suddenly took on the appearance of flesh and became blood-red'. He doesn't dare to communicate, but goes to the bishop to confess his sins and seek absolution.

So what should we make of these stories? Well, at one level they're obviously about the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that the bread and wine are really and substantially transformed into the body and blood of Christ. The sixteenth-century Protestant reformers rejected this doctrine -- and in doing so, they also rejected many of the weird and wonderful miracle stories that went along with it.

But that's not all. At another level, these stories are about a society where community mattered a great deal -- where getting along with your neighbour, and sharing scarce resources fairly and equally, could be a matter of life or death. The eucharist was the great symbol of community -- receiving it at Easter was a sign that you were 'in charity' with your neighbours and didn't have any unresolved quarrels. These stories are about what happens when people don't keep the rules -- they don't confess their sins, they don't make the effort to get reconciled with their neighbours, and the eucharist strikes them dead or turns to ashes in their mouth.

Today, of course, the eucharist no longer has the same meaning for us. It no longer exists in the realm of the supernatural, as it did for our medieval ancestors, and it no longer brings the whole community together in an act of reconcilation. And so the miracle stories have lost their meaning too. But we should respect the meaning they once had, and not just dismiss them as superstitious fairy-tales.
posted by verstegan at 2:32 AM on April 8, 2006