WELLINGTON Caritas is strongly supporting legislative steps to allow the use of Communion wine in prisons, part of the Corrections Amendment Bill (No. 2) currently before the law and order select committee. In April 2007, NZ Catholic revealed that Masses were not being celebrated in prisons because of a blanket ban on alcohol in correction facilities. Wine consecrated as the Blood of Christ must be used for a Mass to be valid.
Corrections officials and Corrections Minister Damien OConnor eventually allowed priests to take small amounts of wine into prisons for celebrating Mass. The bill before Parliament would enshrine that exemption to the ban on alcohol in legislation.
Other religions
While acknowledging that the Bill of Rights assessment suggests the exemption might discriminate between Christian and non-Christian faiths, Caritas said it would support similar exemptions for other religions, including the possible use of wine in Jewish celebrations.
The claims of some groups that particular substances are part of their religious experience must be considered in a different light, it said.
We note that we would distinguish between a sacramental or symbolic consumption of wine, in which very little alcohol is consumed, and any claims for religious use of alcohol or drugs based on achieving an altered state of consciousness, the Catholic agency said.
