You're worshipping in a church when the priest or pastor begins the communion
ceremony - tearing bread and raising a cup in symbolic memory of Jesus' death. On your
left is old Uncle Igor the trucker whose rotting teeth are hoarding small remnants of chewing
tobacco residue. To your right, Aunt Gertrude sneezes into her hands which you happened
to notice she didn't wash after going to the bathroom before the service - it's flu season,
but she never got her shot. The priest lifts the bread into the air, "And Jesus said, 'This
is my body broken for you.'" He tears the bread and the congregants begin filing forward
to receive the blessed sacraments all from the same cup.
If you can't help but feel a little queasy, you're not alone in wondering if this is sanitary.
Are you going to get sick? You probably don't want to even ask and risk offending your entire
social circle by questioning such an ancient revered tradition. But is communion actually
safe? Whether it's safe or not, even in times of
global pandemics, priests and pastors continue this practice with the religious convinced
that no one can get sick from communion. So it's important to find out whether this claim
is based in reality or is simply a repeated trope by misinformed religious leaders incentivized
to get butts in pews. Now the answer to this question is actually
a lot more complicated than you might think. And while, full disclosure, I'm not personally
religious, in this video I'm going to try my absolute best to provide a fair and nuanced
position, avoid loaded language, and stick strictly with the facts, so as to best equip
you with accurate information. Now before I dive in, I need to specify what
kind of communion ceremony I'm talking about because there are almost as many different
ways to take communion as there are Christian denominations and arguments over the right
way to observe it have literally split denominations. Like in the 1890s, after J. G. Thomas patented
individual communion cups, the entire Church of Christ denomination split over whether
to use multiple little cups or a single larger cup.
Churches are divided on everything from how it's taken to where it's taken, when it can
be taken, how often it's taken, who can deliver it, who can receive it, what it is, what it
does... Is it desecration if some crumbs or drops
fall on the ground? Excuse me, sir. Is everything ok?
No! Jesus is on the floor!
Some Christians, like Quakers, don't take it at all. And in the early days, some churches
even used holy communion straws. While some denominations shun the legalism
of these differences and say it really doesn't matter. To others, proper observance of the
Eucharist is a matter of eternal salvation. Historically, when someone was kicked out
of the church, the term ex-communication literally meant, "to cut someone off from taking communion."
Excommunicado.
But personally I don't really care about church dogma, so I'm only going to be covering the
physical act of taking communion by drinking from a shared cup as many Catholics and some
protestants do and from a shared spoon as the Eastern Orthodox church does. Both practices
have fallen under heavy scrutiny during the Covid-19 pandemic as many of these churches
have not only remained open, but have held services and shared communion. Just how much
are they putting their congregants at risk? Well, they argue that they aren’t. The main
defenses for both the spoon and the shared cup are the same and consist of 4 main claims:
Claim number one. Wine is alcoholic. And alcohol kills germs.
Obviously, this one only applies to churches that use alcoholic wine and not juice. While
it's true that ethyl alcohol, the kind found in both wine and disinfectant cleaners, can
break down bacteria and viruses, the effectiveness of a disinfectant depends predominantly on
two factors: One: How much alcohol is in the cleaner, as
a percentage of the whole. And, two: How long has an object or surface
been exposed to the disinfecting solution, allowing the alcohol time to chemically break
down the pathogens? Globally, the average wine is only about 11.6%
alcohol by volume (ABV), and most Catholic or Orthodox churches use sweet wines which
are even less, between 5.5% and 10% ABV, and that's before they dilute them down with water.
You also probably noticed that I poured water in there. During the early days of communion,
it became canon law that the wine be mixed with water.
The CDC, on the other hand, recommends that disinfectant cleaners have at least 60% ethyl
alcohol content to effectively sanitize surfaces and even then, the surface needs to sit visibly
wet for anywhere from 60 seconds to 10 minutes depending on the cleaner. Compare that to
how long the communion spoon has contact with the wine between recipients. One, two three
four. One two three four. One two three four. One two three four. Literally less than 5
seconds from wine to lips. Claim number two: The communion chalices and
spoons are made of antimicrobial metals like silver or gold which kill all germs on contact.
It's absolutely true that certain metals like copper, gold, and silver have antimicrobial
properties. But as with the alcohol claim, it takes time. How much time? Well, one Cambridge
study found that H1N1 (better known as swine flu) could survive up to 4 hours on hospital-grade
silver cloth material. And a study at Manchester Metropolitan University found similar results
with silver and food pathogens. Now, wiping the side of the shared cup, like Catholics
often do, was able to decrease, but not eliminate the number of bacteria on the cup (that said,
the practice of rotating the cup between recipients had no noticeable impact on limiting the spread
of bacteria).
Claim number three: Communion itself has healing, spiritual properties, and "God would never
allow harm to come to Christians, via Holy Communion." Or as the Bishop of London put
it: “No genuinely believing Christian can for one moment accept that the Holy Mysteries
might bring or be the source of sickness or ill-health... The Mysteries of Christ are
the true medicine of our souls and bodies, and bring nothing but life - and life eternal”
Whether this Bishop accepts it or not, it's true. As I showed in my video on the Orthodox
church, religious groups that continue holding services and sharing communion during a pandemic
are rapidly becoming contagion hotbeds. And there's a system-wide problem of priests covering
up infection outbreaks in their church to protect the faith. This is not only dishonest,
but it's criminal negligence. There's no evidence whatsoever that communion has any kind of
unusual healing properties - this is an absolutely extraordinary claim, which if true, you should
find statistically longer lives and fewer health problems in devout countries. But that
is absolutely not the case. Some priests will even admit that the members
of their monastery get sick a lot but will fail to make the connection between that and
poor communion sanitation measures because doing so would be blasphemous.
And while there is an old 1940's study that deemed communion was in most cases fairly
safe, multiple more comprehensive studies since then have found that bacteria and viruses
can and are spread via communion, including one study that literally swabbed the side
of multiple shared communion cups 10 minutes after the service and found bacteria in and
on all of them. Specifically pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria. And that was with silver cups with
alcoholic wine in them.
Now according to the CDC, usually, the practice of shared communion still isn't that big of
a deal. Not because there's divine protection over the communion cup, but because there's
more to getting sick than just the mere presence of bacteria or viruses - things like whether
or not the specific bacteria you're exposed to are pathogenic, whether or not you've been
exposed to them before and have developed an immunity. You also have to take into account
the viral load, amount of exposure, the condition of a person's immune system and whether or
not they're immunocompromised, etc. Of all the ways you can get sick, the mouth
isn't necessarily the best vector for disease transmission. At least not compared to the
mucus membranes of your nose and eyes. But depending on the disease, you very much can
get sick by sharing cups and utensils with sick people. Especially if your immune system
is weakened or you're exposed to a new pathogen you're not immune to or vaccinated against
- as is generally the case during pandemics. Different diseases are spread in different
ways. So when Christians jumped on the fact that HIV, a blood-borne pathogen, isn't likely
to spread through communion, scientists weren't exactly shocked.
The final defense of shared communion cups and spoon is the claim that there are no cases
of clergy becoming infected as a result of consuming the Holy Gifts after the Liturgy.
I genuinely have no idea how anyone is able to make such an utterly unfalsifiable claim.
Priests will brazenly tout this as fact with absolutely no way of either proving or disproving
it. But here's why it's so outlandish. Most bacteria and viruses have multiple possible
ways they can be transmitted: it could be through a sneeze or by shaking hands and then
rubbing your nose. You could get sick from eating old meat or any number of possible
ways. And you don't get sick the second you're exposed. There's usually an incubation period
of several days or even a couple weeks between the time you're infected and when you start
showing symptoms. So tracing infection back to a specific runny bread crumb would be like
trying to trace your cold back to a specific handshake or cough. Just because you don't
know which handshake gave you your cold doesn't mean you don't know that handshakes spread
germs. Just like communion does. And as mentioned before, rates of disease among religious people,
including priests, are just as high or higher as non-religious people.
Sure, they're not gonna get sick every time, even most times, they'll be fine. But that's
just the immune system at work. Porn stars aren't exactly sickly either and they tongue
punch each other's fart boxes on the weekly. That doesn't mean the buttholes offer sacred
protection from disease. Although, it'd be cool if they did.
The fact is, there is no divine protection. Priests and Christians get sick at exactly
the same rates as everyone else. But many religious believers think there is. And because
of that, you have cases like this. A church choir in Mount Vernon, Washington
decided to hold singing rehearsals during the pandemic. 45 out of 60 of them became
infected with coronavirus and 2 died. A Sacramento Megachurch is linked to over
70 covid-19 cases. 2,500 cases in France were linked to one large
church gathering/prayer meeting. By early April, Coronavirus had killed over
100 priests in Italy after they went door to door delivering communion to people.
They think that their faith will protect them, but when they ignore safety measures during
a pandemic, their churches become hotbeds of disease and they put their entire congregations
needlessly at risk. In March of 2020, a South Korean Church claiming
to offer divine protection and healing was linked to over half of the cases in the entire
country.
And Kansas reported 3 church-related Covid-19 clusters as of early April.
These are just a drop in the bucket of the countless thousands of church related outbreaks.
One Bishop, attempting to downplay safety concerns, argued that taking communion is
no different from letting a chef prepare your food and pointed out how several restaurants
were shut down in Chicago after health inspectors found rats in the kitchen. But that's exactly
where the difference comes into play. There are no health inspectors for communion. A
church is never going to get shut down for violating health codes.
Now don't take this as professional medical advice, but from every study I've read so
far, if you're not immunocompromised, on a typical Sunday in June you're most likely
fine. Taking communion is probably as likely to get you sick as making out with a stranger
in a club the night before. But during flu season, or during a pandemic, you shouldn't
be taking that risk with the lives of your congregants.
I know that Communion is extremely important to Christians, but it doesn't have to be done
in such an unsanitary way. The data is in, and the claims of priests and pastors do not
hold up to scrutiny. When making this video, I found very few video
resources like this on the topic. It took weeks of thorough research to write, edit,
and produce. So if you did find this video useful, this is normally the part of the video
where I plug my Patreon and I go off some script telling you to like and share, but
I’m going to be super real with you guys. I have been extremely close to burnout, and
yesterday, I had a video that I was trying to get out by the end of the month, and I
just… I… I could not stay awake. I have a tier on Patreon for hiring an assistant,
and right now, I can’t afford it, but I would so, so, so love to have a lot of the
tasks that I do - to have some help with them. And if you guys are able to pledge a little
bit to get me to that point, it would make all the difference in the world. You can also
donate either on Paypal or SubscribeStar. As always, dare to be curious, but don’t
drink the Koolaid.