Christ on a Cracker!
A University of Central Florida student was manhandled and is now receiving death threats and being accused of hate crimes by his local Catholic diocese after a recent incident at the local church. His crime?
He took the communion wafer he was given back to his seat.
Webster Cook attended Mass at his local Catholic church. He claimed he wanted to show his non-Catholic friend what the wafer looked like, so when the priest gave him the wafer, he started to take it back to his seat. He was grabbed by parishioners and his way was blocked. In order to get back to his seat, he popped the wafer in his mouth. When he returned to his seat, he removed it. A church leader saw him, grabbed his wrist and tried to pry the wafer from his hands. She refused to release him despite repeated demands that she do so, so Cook left the church with the wafer.
Father Migeul Gonzales made a striking comparison of the cracker abduction--"Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."
Mr. Cook returned the cracker to the Catholic Church, but that's not enough according to Susan Fani, a spokesperson for the local Cathlic diocese--"[I]f anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it." Mr. Cook claims that he has received death threats over the "incident".
Now please note, this isn't some odd cult in the backwoods of Appalachia. This is the Roman Catholic Church. If ANYTHING can be considered mainstream Christianity, the numbers are on their side. And this isn't some rogue sect off in some uncivilized corner of the world. This is Florida (okay, okay, but it's NEXT TO civilized parts of the world, so I expect better). These aren't some whacked-out parishoners who equate taking a cracker that was freely given to him with kidnapping, or calling the cracker caper a "hate crime". This is an ordained priest and an official spokesperson of the diocese making these claims. Any why? Transubstantiation. They think that this guy literally kidnapped a piece of Jesus (instead of eating him like a good cannibal, I guess).
If anyone dares to tell you that mainstream Christianity doesn't take the mythology literally, just point them to this story. Religious myth isn't just morality stories to many, many mainstream Christians; it's real (yet always unverifiable) fact. Fortunately, no one has died over it yet, although a complaint has been filed with the Student Union at UCF against Mr. Cook and his friend. Also, armed UCF police officers (that Florida residents paid for) are standing guard over the crakers at Mass to ensure that the Catholic Church retains its ability to serve Jesus "dine-in only".
He took the communion wafer he was given back to his seat.
Webster Cook attended Mass at his local Catholic church. He claimed he wanted to show his non-Catholic friend what the wafer looked like, so when the priest gave him the wafer, he started to take it back to his seat. He was grabbed by parishioners and his way was blocked. In order to get back to his seat, he popped the wafer in his mouth. When he returned to his seat, he removed it. A church leader saw him, grabbed his wrist and tried to pry the wafer from his hands. She refused to release him despite repeated demands that she do so, so Cook left the church with the wafer.
Father Migeul Gonzales made a striking comparison of the cracker abduction--"Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."
Mr. Cook returned the cracker to the Catholic Church, but that's not enough according to Susan Fani, a spokesperson for the local Cathlic diocese--"[I]f anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it." Mr. Cook claims that he has received death threats over the "incident".
Now please note, this isn't some odd cult in the backwoods of Appalachia. This is the Roman Catholic Church. If ANYTHING can be considered mainstream Christianity, the numbers are on their side. And this isn't some rogue sect off in some uncivilized corner of the world. This is Florida (okay, okay, but it's NEXT TO civilized parts of the world, so I expect better). These aren't some whacked-out parishoners who equate taking a cracker that was freely given to him with kidnapping, or calling the cracker caper a "hate crime". This is an ordained priest and an official spokesperson of the diocese making these claims. Any why? Transubstantiation. They think that this guy literally kidnapped a piece of Jesus (instead of eating him like a good cannibal, I guess).
If anyone dares to tell you that mainstream Christianity doesn't take the mythology literally, just point them to this story. Religious myth isn't just morality stories to many, many mainstream Christians; it's real (yet always unverifiable) fact. Fortunately, no one has died over it yet, although a complaint has been filed with the Student Union at UCF against Mr. Cook and his friend. Also, armed UCF police officers (that Florida residents paid for) are standing guard over the crakers at Mass to ensure that the Catholic Church retains its ability to serve Jesus "dine-in only".
7 comments:
Death threats? Christian love never fails to humble me...
This is actually the perfect metaphor. My whole religious life, I took the eucharist. But unfortunately, Jesus turned to shit in my body and I crapped him out. Over and over I repeated this process. Now I know where the phrase, "holy shit" comes from. We should probably encourage people to save their first movement after communion. After all, that's God in the flesh. Hey, now we know the real secret behind holy water too!
So (ahem) if "someone" were to smuggle a cracker or two out of the church under their tongue, and then demand a bucket full of cash for the safe return of this holy slice of christ, the catholics (who have more money than they could ever really use) would readily fork it over.
Right?
I mean what else could they do? Call the police? Have them arrest someone for first degree snack food theft? Or kidnapping a sub-section of an imaginary messiah?
["Officer, were you able to catch him?"
"Yeah but I don't think we'll be able to make it stick."
"Oh, why not?"
"Well, appearently he heard us coming and flushed the evidence"]
Nope, they'll cave in.
Then, after they pay the ransom and they get their cracker back, this "someone" sends them a polaroid of another cracker with a note reading "You didn't think I'd actually give up the REAL wafer, did you? Bwaaahaahaahaahaa!"
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
When I was around 12 or 13 my parents sent me to a Catholic church camp. It really was like a regular camp, fishing, canoeing, bug juice and the like; I really can't even remember talking about Jesus or God, although we still attended Sunday mass. This particular mass, I was one of the alter boys. When the other alter boy and I were preparing to get into position to help deliver the Eucharist we kind of knocked plates and some of the wafers hit the floor, but one wafer -- I kid you not -- rolled the length of the middle aisle, about 30 feet. We watched, in awe, as the wafer seemed to roll for an eternity. We did everything to stop laughing but we just snorted and guffawed through our pursed lips. The only thing I was thinking was that Jesus joined an acrobats troupe for the circus and was doing consecutive forward roll down the aisle -- Ta Da!
--S.
And in case anyone was wondering...
This is why I don't write under my real name.
More delicious goodness on the cracker crisis, this time from the ever-reliable Catholic League.
"It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ."
Remember, this quote is brought to you by the religion that features instances of priest-on-child action like these and these. And yet violation of a cracker is the most vile thing they can think of.
Pathetic.
I've been following this on another blog and the comment count from 4 posts is over 3500. The Catholics don't get it. They demand that their beliefs be respected, they want those who defame them punished and they claim to take the high moral ground.
As an example, one letter contained three wishes. The blogger to be fired from his university teaching job (even though he has tenure), wanted him killed, and lastly, claimed he only picked on Catholics because they were so kind hearted and mild.
At first I felt uneasy finding enjoyment in the Catholic’s stress. After reading a sampling of Catholic comments I think disrespecting their host is almost a must. Just like Islam, these nutty beliefs need to be mocked; otherwise, there will be this untouchable, unmentionable nonsense that promotes death threats, and other despicable acts.
We should respect the rights of anyone to be free to believe what they will but we are not required to respect the belief itself or else we would be forced to respect racism or misogynistic thinking.
If they wanted to continue unbothered in their cherished beliefs then they shouldn't have given death threats and yelled about kidnapping the host and this cracker napping being the most heinous of crimes. That is what needs to be challenged here, the lack of perspective and the loss of rational thought leading to harmful behavior, all for a cracker.
And yet, even when confronted with the fact that they are overreacting and behaving in a vile fashion, they only seem to up the ante and out do themselves.
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