Sunday, July 13, 2008

Cracker mania

The brouhaha is now all over the blogosphere. Instead of swallowing the consecrated wafer given to him by the priest, a college student took it out of his mouth and brought it home to show some nonCatholic friend of his. Reports say that Catholics are outraged and some have even sent the kid death threats. Looks like loving one's enemies and turning the other cheek have gone out of fashion.
A student at the University of Central Florida says he's now getting death threats after he stole and later returned a wafer representing the "Body of Christ" from a Catholic Mass in Orlando.

The student senator, Webster Cook, originally claimed he merely wanted to show the Eucharist to a friend who had questions about Catholicism before consuming the host.

Cook, who was raised Catholic, said he decided to bring the wafer home June 29 after a church leader tried to physically pry it from his hand. Cook broke Church rules by failing to consume it immediately during Communion and then removing it from his mouth once seated.

The part about Catholics being furious and the scuffle with the church leader is most revealing. Take a second to digest that: Catholics are angry because the host/wafer/cracker has to be eaten but was not. The piece of bread has to be literally put in one's mouth and has to be literally swallowed. Keep in mind that in Catholicism the host is said to be literally the body of Jesus Christ, a being who's both fully human and fully divine (a god). Now go ahead and add two and two together. How much more literal does it have to get to understand that the Catholic Church not only accepts but in fact demands cannibalism and theophagy (the ingestion of gods)? In Catholicism opting out of eating Jesus is, to put it mildly, frowned upon.

This is the 21st century right? Forgive me for being in a daze, but WTF is this "church rule" about cannibalism being one's duty?!