Yeah, when I first saw this, I thought that surely it was a spoof. I mean, the 2-IN-1 thing by itself is sacrilegious. But the added use of fear-mongering regarding the Lord’s Supper is utterly despicable and shameful. It literally makes me sick thinking about it.

For the record: Even in the St. Agnes case referenced on their website, where someone distributing the elements of the Lord’s Supper was found to have Hepatitis A (acquired from some source outside the congregation), not a SINGLE person who communed was infected.

So the track record for the Lord’s Supper stands unbroken: not a single documented case in the history of the Christian Church of someone coming down with a disease from partaking of the common cup, or the wafer from the hand of the administrant.

To take this holy thing, and attribute to it the ability to bring bodily harm – Lord have mercy! This should give all those who refuse to use the common cup because of fear of infection pause as well. Is this what you really think of our dear Lord’s holy body and blood?

Christ never told us the communion chalices couldn’t be infected. But beside that point, the web site is freakish, even ghoulish.

It looks like a pez dispenser.

@Martin Diers
AMEN! I never got sick and I use the commom cup as Jesus did. I agree that this is terrible. Maybe if many people complain to the company, they’ll abandon this idea.

Quite telling that the first sentence is: “Passing the bread and wine may also be passing …” – right: may! Or not.
Technically this is nothing else than an “intinctio”, and the confessions are quite clear in what they say in regard to the intinctio.

@Kevin Yoakum
My thought as well.

Mr. Diers, couldn’t have said it better so I won’t.

I’ll continue to trust Christ’s words of institution (including the chalice), thank you very much.

Perhaps this device isn’t really intended for Lutheran, Episcopalian, RC, and Orthodox congregations, anyway. They all practice “altar communion”.

I believe most Protestant congregations, however, practice “pew communion”. And, it is in this latter practice where there is the “passing of the bread and wine”. Communicants remain in their pews. Trays filled with diced bread cubes, followed by trays filled with small, individual glass cups (jiggers) of grape juice are passed along in the pews from person to person.

Pew communion lends itself much more to many different hands having touched the elements prior to partaking than does altar communion.

Maybe this device will encourage churches in or from the Reformed tradition to return to the wafered host, the chalice, and the altar?

@Kevin Yoakum
My husband (an Elder) took one look and said, “The Body of Christ, pezzed for you.” I found their statement praising microphones, multimedia, and individual cups to be very telling…somehow the Church managed to muddle through for centuries without any of those thing either! Awful.

Sanitizing our savior…. there’s a “market” for that. Pretty soon there will be the virtual Eucharist app that will solve all our symbolizing fears. Sheesh.

@Jonathan Trost: My thoughts exactly. I once attended a Baptist Church and communion was done in the pews, with a tray being handed down the aisle. Of course, they probably wouldn’t have any issue with the two parts of the Host being mixed, either, since for them it is merely symbolic. I find the excision of “the cup” from this to be pretty weird and pretty telling with regard to this company’s audience.

Finally! An innovation which will significantly help at our drive-thru Eucharist windows at the congregations without the word “Lutheran” in their names, for those who are in a hurry to enjoy their Sunday mornings unspoiled and, therefore, have no time to stay for the main rock concert! (Would this even be legal to administer to someone in a moving vehicle, by the way?)

AND, with the money saved by not having to buy separate wine (as well as lower insurance premiums for the church because, well, the chances of having to pay out on an infection situation . . . well, how many haven’t there been? or, HAVE there been?), just think of all the official “wear-for-the-worship-service” church logo T-shirts for the on-duty clergy, neon light signs, monsters on the roof, and other great gimmicks the “church” will finally be able to afford!

And NOW, SARCASM OFF!!!!!