I don’t see what is so mockable about this. I mean, everyone here denounced the Koran burnings by those churches (in florida?) a few years back.
The Koran holds no special value for me, but I can still disapprove of people setting out to desecrate it.
Raised Catholic (it didn’t take), I thought the wafer was transubstantiated when the priest said “the body and blood of Christ” just before he gave it to you. Maybe some churches do batch transubstantiations, but you’d think they’d have them under lock and key until needed. As one taste will attest, they’re absolutely worthless until consecrated.
Yes, but I think there will be a wardrobe malfunction on one of the teams…
I was raised Catholic, too. Transubstantiation happens when the priest raises the host and says, “This is my body, take and eat.” Same with the wine. That’s why the altar boys ring those little bells at those two times.
Edit: Oh! and it didn’t take for me, either.
I’d say the difference is that, here in the US, Muslims are minorities and frequently subjected to (officially sanctioned) prejudice. That makes it seem not so cool to joke about things like Koran burning. On the other hand, Christianity is very much on top here, so many feel perfectly comfortable joking about Christian beliefs.
Oddly enough, I recall a case a many years ago (some time before the current gluten madness, when it was all about debilitating celiac disease and not “gluten sensitivity”) when someone requested communion wafers made with rice flour, and the church authorities said nope, can’t be done.
This is a thing.
http://www.improbable.com/2013/06/25/official-word-the-body-of-christ-is-not-and-cannot-be-gluten-free/
The obvious question is, how can anyone tell that they’re returning the wafers that were stolen and not some cunningly substituted replacement wafers…?
Joking about it, sure, but the attitude here seems to be like “stupid catholics, getting offended by someone setting out to desecreate something they feel is sacred, how dare they”. It’s just kind of assholish, you know? Especially considering the details. There’s a line. I’d feel the same even if we were talking about a school mascot.
Because one is the body of Christ and the most sacred, respected and revered thing in the world, and the other is just a worthless wafer. Duh.
So Jesus was literally made out of cracker? Maybe that’s why he’s always white in the paintings.
When I was growing up as a Methodist I always assumed the Body of Christ thing was symbolic. Some Catholics later corrected me that it is in fact literal and my mind was blown.
Hey, if it was rational and made sense, you wouldn’t need faith, would you? Then where would religion be?
Oh! So, sort of weird history question then… I wonder of people in, say, the Middle Ages, had allergies to whatever the wafer is made and had a reaction to it, would have been considered possessed or cursed in some way, or just evil? Interesting thought.
All churches do batch transubstantiations. All the hosts allocated for the mass are transubstantiated at once and given to the congregation shortly thereafter. The leftovers are stored in a chalice placed in the sacristy (a little ornate lockbox off to the side of the altar). It wouldn’t be too hard to sneak into an unattended church, pick the lock on the sacristy and steal a host from there.
I’m still looking for a church where I can see the priest open the sacristy with a thumb or retina scanner, personally… gotta keep them pesky satanists out.
Actually it’s Club A claims Club B stole the consumables …
Coakley claims Daniels possesses a consecrated host without authorization and that it “must have been procured from the Catholic Church by theft, fraud, wrongful taking” by Daniels or a third party.
(Emphasis added.)
I particularly love the “without authorization” bit. That’s quite a statement to attach to a vanilla wafer.
If I understand this correctly, transubstantiation is dependent on the efforts of a priest. Until and unless the priest consecrates the host, the host cannot be considered to be anything more than an ordinary unleavened wafer-- we’ll call this the “ordinary wafer”. Depending on your level of belief, the priests actions turn it into something more. We’ll call that the “consecrated” wafer.
Now, the Satanists believe that the “consecrated wafer” differs from the “ordinary wafer”. To get this “consecrated wafer”, the Satanists have to enlist the services of a Catholic priest, who similarly believes that the "consecrated wafer"differs from “the ordinary wafer”. And an average Catholic Priest probably would not consent to being involved in a Satanic Mass, which is what stealing a consecrated host really means.
I can think of several possibilities
Perhaps the Satanists received the host from a sympathetic priest (or, perhaps more likely, blackmailed priest)?
Well, as I said before, Christianity is pretty powerful in the US (and other areas as well, of course) and having been in power for so long, many people have developed grievances over the years.
In Methodism, forms are practiced by a congregation in order to achieve a state of merit or sanctity. Thus, “The Method” from which the sect draws its name. Correct (or at least, adequate) belief will be achieved through the repetition of acts which are known to be pleasing to Jesus and God - for example, you will observe the 10 commandments, you will practice charity, you will love your neighbors and refuse to cast stones at sinners, etc. Methodism discourages theological nit-picking over things like the precise meaning of Paul’s statements concerning the communion, and would encourage you to follow the literal method - you should consider the eucharist to be the literal flesh and blood of Christ while you are eating it and believers should treat the Host as sacred, but without bothering themselves at all about the mundane physics of it. If the Host should be stolen or profaned by unbelievers, well, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. The Method is kind of easy compared to Quakerism or Unitarian Universalism, which explains lots of its popularity.
I don’t think it’s accurate to call that a “correction” - I’d call it merely a statement of their belief and their church’s dogma. Catholicism is intellectually even easier than Methodism, since it’s a top-down hierarchical authority structure - just do what you’re told, and believe what you’re told!
I have read many thousands of words on the subject of transubstantiation (and let’s not forget cosubstantiation, consubstantiation, and transignification… I probably read too much) and it’s not really something condensable to a simple statement unless you’re a practitioner of faith-based atheism. If you really want a short primer, I suggest the Wikipedia article, which is several pages long… even though it only hits the high points. Humans complicate everything.
It’s worse than you imagine. They’re not even vanilla.
I’m wondering why they’re suing in civil court instead of pressing criminal charges for the theft. Do they just have absolutely no idea where the Satanists got the wafer, so they’re just guessing in the dark that if they have a consecrated one that they must have obtained it through force or fraud, but that’s not enough to get police involved and get a Prosecuting Attorney to take it to court? Or is it a situation where they know (or pretty strongly suspect) how they got the wafer and it wasn’t so much theft or fraud in the criminal sense so they know there’s no way to make that stick criminally, like if someone who is a Satanist or Satanist sympathizer attended a mass and was given a wafer and instead of eating it slipped it in their pocket and left with it? Since the wafer was technically a gift given freely to them, they didn’t steal it. Even fraud seems like it would be tough to make stick, even in a civil suit sort of way. This case should never see the inside of a real courtroom. It’s a waste of everyone’s time, the Satanists’, the Catholics’, and the court’s.
