Some area Catholic churches have temporarily shelved their Holy Communion wine cups to help keep seasonal viruses at bay.

Citing an increase of various illnesses in our community, priests of the family of Catholic parishes in the Town of Tonawanda and cities of Tonawanda and North Tonawanda agreed this week to suspend distribution of wine in the chalice during Holy Communion.

The move was temporary and will be revisited as we get through this time of year when illnesses seem to rise, the priests said in a joint statement posted on Facebook.

We know many devoutly receive from the cup, but this is for the health of the community, the Facebook post noted.

The suspension applies to six parishes that make up Family #18: St. Amelia, St. Andrew Kim Mission and St. Christopher in the Town of Tonawanda; St. Francis of Assisi in the City of Tonawanda; and St. Jude the Apostle and Our Lady of Czestochowa in the City of North Tonawanda.

St. Gregory the Great is the biggest Catholic parish in the Buffalo Diocese, but the Rev. Leon Biernat says while many parishioners were enthusiastic about returning to the building worship, others were not due to worries about the coronavirus.

It had been brought up to me by a couple parishioners are we considering it? said the Rev. Michael Lamarca, pastor of the family of parishes.

Lamarca said he mentioned it Wednesday at a weekly meeting with fellow priests and it was unanimous right off the bat that weve all noticed more and more people getting sick.

Theres just so much out there, so we said, Lets just do it temporarily and well revisit it as we get through flu and Covid and RSV season, he added.

The Buffalo Diocese has not issued a directive and, so far, has left it up to pastors to decide. A diocese spokesman said officials were not aware of the communal wine chalice being removed for public health reasons at other parishes across the eight counties of the diocese.

Catholics believe bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the celebration of the Eucharist, and Holy Communion reception of the Eucharist is a central sacrament of the faith. The ritual dates back centuries.

Bishop Michael Fisher and three other bishops in the state this weekend lifted dispensations from obligatory Mass attendance that had been in place since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Body of Christ, in the form of an unleavened bread wafer, will continue to be offered at Communion in the Tonawanda parishes, and Catholic teaching promotes that receiving either the body or blood of Christ is as if receiving both.

Offering the Blood of Christ in the form of wine in a shared cup was halted during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the behest of bishops, the practice began returning to most parishes by fall 2022.

The rim of the communal chalice is wiped with a cloth after each recipient. It receives a wash in soapy water after the Mass.

Withholding the chalice during high respiratory virus season is a quite reasonable way to reduce some risk of disease transmission, said Dr. Thomas Russo, professor and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Respiratory viruses such as Covid-19, flu and RSV spread through respiratory droplets and secretions, and oral secretions potentially have infectious particles, he said.

Removing the chalice also can help limit exposure to norovirus, an extraordinarily infectious virus that causes vomiting and diarrhea and can peak in the winter, Russo said.

On the other hand, assuming the person handing out Holy Communion is not infected, receiving it in wafer form should present little risk, he said.

The bigger concern is crowded churches with poor ventilation, said Russo, who recommended that people with high-risk conditions wear masks to cut down on exposure to airborne viruses.

This applies not just to church, he said, but any venue thats indoors, particularly if the ventilation is poor, if its crowded and other people arent wearing masks and youre high-risk. That would be a setting where you would want to wear a mask to protect yourself. Masking isnt perfect, but its not bad. Its better than no mask.

Lamarca said he wasnt sure exactly when the shared cup would return.

We didnt want to put a timeline on it, he said, because we wanted to see how things play out.

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Catholic parishes in Tonawandas put wine chalice on shelf to ward off flu, Covid, other viruses - Buffalo News