THE COMMUNION CUP.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1922, Page 5

THE COMMUNION CUP.

ALLEGED DANGER DENIED. AUCKLAND VICAR’S VIEWS. The discussion regarding the use of a common communion cup jn churches, which has lately taken place in Sydney, was referred to at All Saints’ Church, Ponsonby, on Sunday, by the vicar, the Rev. F. W. Young. Members of the medical profession in Sydney, remarked Mr. Young, had stated that there was danger in the use of a common cup in the communion service, and that the use of individual cups would obviate any danger. Doctors, whose profession was concerned mainly with the body, thought in physical terms, and were apt to forget that God could take material things and lift them on to a higher spiritual plane, where infection did not reach. History would seem to prove that this ‘was the case. Were it not so, the clergy of the Church of England would be the most sickly members of the human race, and would be suffering from all manner of contagious and infectious diseases, because they not only communicated from a common cup more frequently than any other section of the community, but were required by the Prayer Book to consume the elements and even the ablutions after all else had communicated. Yet clergy were put by insurance companies next to the best lives to insure. Mr. Young said that it was unthinkable that the Saviour, who gave Himself to healing the sick, should have instituted and commanded a,service involving the slightest danger. Was it not just possible that the doctors forgot that when our Lord took the cup He first blessed it and then said. “Drink ye all of this.” The preacher added: “Reverence and common sense—not thought of danger—suggests that in cases of extreme sickness or weakness the Greek method of intinction he used—that is., communicating with the consecrated bread dipped in the wine. So far from there, being any danger in the cup, in maker? for physical as well as mental and spiritual health.” '