Does Communion Cup Runneth Over With Germs?

Church member J.H. Brittain worried about the spread of disease caused by hundreds of parishioners drinking from the same Communion cup.

The Englishman wrote to the editors of the Lancet, an international medical journal: "I venture to think that there is a strong prima facie case against the use of one cup, but the task of the hygienic innovator would be made much easier if he could cite actual example of contagion."

Brittain wrote the letter in 1903, and a century later, no evidence has surfaced proving what so many churchgoers intuitively fear: that the Communion chalice contains more than wine. They suspect that the cup, used by scores of fellow worshippers during a service, teems with germs that could cause colds, the flu or worse.

"People who sip from the Communion cup don't get sick more often than anyone else," said Anne LaGrange Loving, a New Jersey microbiologist who has conducted one of the few studies on the subject. "It isn't any riskier than standing in line at the movies."

Traditional worry over illness-producing microbes lurking in the Communion cup had been heightened because of an earlier national shortage of flu shots. From Boston to Seattle, congregants within denominations that use a common cup have been urged in church bulletins and from the pulpit not to take a sip if they are sick.

Some have gone further. Priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, Vt., have been ordered by their bishop to stop offering the Communion cup until the spring. The Archdiocese of San Francisco took similar measures during a flu outbreak.

In California, it appears there has been no formal declaration from any denomination to refrain from taking a drink from the Communion cup.

However, many local church leaders, like those with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, have offered common-sense suggestions to reduce the chance of infections.

Those include having their ministers wash their hands thoroughly before Communion, wipe the chalice rim thoroughly after each sip, and wash the cup with soap and hot water after each service.

A written statement by the Los Angeles archdiocese also asked those in church "to be considerate of others and not drink from the chalice when sick."

For Christians, whether to sip from the cup is no small decision. The act of Communion, in which worshipers eat a piece of bread or wafer and drink wine or, in some cases, grape juice, replicates the Last Supper.