Yet more evidence that the Roman Catholic Church has pretty much no interest in the spiritual well-being of its members.

NEW YORK (AFP) – Roman Catholic officials have invalidated the First Communion of a New Jersey girl with a rare digestive disorder whose gluten intolerance put her on a collision course with Catholic doctrine.

Haley Pelly-Waldman suffers from celiac sprue disease and cannot eat wheat, rye, oats, barley or malt, so when it came time for her to take the sacrament for the first time, her mother Liz asked her priest to allow Haley to eat bread made without gluten, which is a component of wheat.

The priest at St. Denis Catholic Church in Manasquan, a town on the Jersey shore refused, and Pelly-Waldman declined the alternatives offered by the church, namely a sip of wine or a grape substitute.

Pelly-Waldman found a priest who would serve Haley a gluten-free wafer.

But last month the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey, stepped in and declared that the Communion was invalid because of the substitute wafer.