Bring back communion wine

The Church of England has always been clever at producing theology to suit itself. If we don’t start protesting, we may never get communion wine back again. Too many risk-averse clergy have discovered how efficient, hygienic and cheap it is just to give us a wafer each. They explain it away by reminding us that ‘Christ is sacramentally and equally present in both the bread and the wine, so if you receive only one, nothing is lacking’.

‘But it’s so unfair,’ I want to hiss at the presiding priest when I see him or her having a sip of wine ‘on behalf of the congregation’. ‘It’s one rule for you, another for us.’

How docile we’ve all become, as we tramp forward via the hand sanitiser to receive our Styrofoam-like circular wafer from the outstretched fingertips of a silent administrator, then walk back to our pew, chomping self-consciously as we go. What a prosaic, dismal and antisocial process it has turned into.

By that time in a Eucharist service — about 11.50