Is non-alcoholic church wine valid for consecration?

Q: I'm a parish priest and recently, when I went to order hosts and sacramental wine for my parish, I noticed the company I usually shop from was offering something called "non-alcoholic church wine." I told the lady on the phone that I imagine this isn't valid matter for consecration at a Mass, and advised her to look further into this. She said some priests have been asking for it. I've been doing a bit of my own research now, but it doesn't sound like that question has been faced before. Maybe I am wrong? Is a wine that has been produced using the normal fermentation procedure, but then has its alcohol removed, valid matter for consecration? (Ireland)

A: The short answer is that it depends on exactly what the church supply company is referring to as "non-alcoholic church wine."

As you know, for sacraments to be valid -- that is, for them to "work" -- there must be both a valid formula (i.e., the words of the prayer to be said) and valid matter (the physical "stuff" used in a sacrament).

Canon 924 of the Code of Canon Law discusses the valid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist, noting that "the wine must be natural, made from grapes of the vine, and not corrupt" (with "not corrupt" in this context meaning "not spoiled"). In a nutshell, Canon 924 is telling us that the wine, which is to become the blood of Christ, must be something which can truly be considered "wine" in a strict sense.

To start with an obvious example, even though some people use ginger ale or sparkling apple juice as a non-alcoholic wine substitute in some social situations, these are not "made from grapes of the vine" and therefore cannot validly be used as wine in the Eucharistic celebration. Likewise, a wine-flavored beverage that was chemically engineered in a laboratory with artificial flavors also could not be used for the Eucharist as it clearly is not "natural." And a beverage that was wine-based, but contained other non-wine additives like flavorings or preservatives, would not be considered valid matter for the Eucharistic celebration.

Furthermore, for wine to be truly "wine," there must be at least some level of fermentation and thus alcohol content, however minimal. So even though grape juice is made from the same basic ingredient as wine, it cannot be used in place of wine at Mass. Unlike wine where the grapes are crushed, grape juice is usually made by boiling grapes down, which prevents any fermentation. Typically, the grape juice you would find in grocery stores is pasteurized and possibly made from a concentrate, which makes it insufficiently "natural" in the sense that it is of a fundamentally different nature than true wine.

In a similar vein, boiling wine, or using some other process to remove the alcohol from the wine after it was already fermented and bottled, would alter the nature of the beverage to the point where it would be technically something other than wine, and hence would not be valid matter for the Eucharist.

But there is one acceptable form of what could be called "non-alcoholic wine," which is something called "mustum." Mustum is the juice of grapes which have been crushed in the manner of wine-making, but which has not yet fermented to the point where it would have the alcohol level of normal table wine.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) wrote in a 2003 letter from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith: "Mustum, which is grape juice that is either fresh or preserved by methods that suspend its fermentation without altering its nature (for example, freezing), is valid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist."

So, if the "non-alcoholic church wine" your church supply company is offering is actually mustum, it would be valid matter for the Eucharist. Anything else would be invalid matter and therefore should be avoided.