Thursday, July 10, 2008

Communion wafer hate crime!

As an ex-Catholic, I find this story really funny.

College student Webster Cook goes to school in Florida.  He went to mass, and as people do, went to communion. 


Now, let me pause for some explanation so this story will make a little more sense to non-Catholics.  The Catholic church believes very strongly in the doctrine of transubstantiation, which means that once the priest does his hocus-pocus over the communion bread wafer, the bread actually turns into the body of Jesus.  Not physically - the bread doesn't turn into human flesh - but spiritually. When you eat the communion wafer, you are eating Jesus.  A sort of holy spiritiual cannibalism.

Anyway, back to the story.  Webster Cook went up to communion, took the wafer, but didn't eat it.  Instead he took it out of the church and walked around with it.

As people found out, they became furious.  He took the communion wafer back, but apparently that wasn't enough.  He says he's getting death threats for messing with someting sacred.

The University says that Webster Cook is not in any trouble.  This really pisses off the Catholic League, which is a national organization concerned with Catholic rights.  The Catholic League expects the University to take this seriously, to send a message that "this kind of really complete sacrilege will not be tolerated".  They also believe that "if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like it might be it."


So let me get this straight.  Eating Jesus is fine.  But taking him for a walk is a hate crime.  If it were all that serious, why didn't Jesus make an escape from the godnapper?  Why didn't God strike him dead or paralyze him or something?  No, Jesus just sat there in the guy's hand.

Kind of like a plain old piece of bread would do.





No comments: