I was raised Episcopalian (Catholic Lite–all the salvation with half the guilt! (h/t Robin Williams)), so I have some experience with seemingly loony communion traditions, but this is just…remarkable (h/t BronzeDog and Pharyngula):

Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn’t eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it.

***

Catholics worldwide became furious.

And wouldn’t you know it, Bill Donohue got in on the act (it’s been a while since Bill was last outraged, so it’s good to have him back!)

My first thought on reading the article was to picture mortal sinner “walking with, talking with” the wafer, but I’m just being silly.

Seriously, though, the Consecrated Host is a big deal. It must not be desecrated or sold on eBay because it literally is the body of Christ. It was recently explained to me by a devout Catholic friend that one of the reasons non-Catholics should not take Catholic communion is because of concern that Consecrated Hosts might be stolen for use in Satanic rituals. I did my best to be polite, but I find the idea kind of nutty.

I heard a similar story regarding the theft of some silver bowls and pitchers used in the Eucharist from the church I attended in my youth. There was apparently some speculation within the church that these items had been stolen for use in a Black Mass. This might overlook the more obvious explanation: that they were stolen because they are made out of silver.

Since I cannot speculate on the motivations of the host-walker (although he did return the Host), I’ll limit myself to saying this: this whole thing is silly. A cracker is a cracker.

Quote of the century from PZ Myers:

Look at the bible as a pastiche, a collection of mutually and often internally inconsistent fragments slapped together for crude reasons of politics and art and priestly self-promotion and sometimes beauty and a lot of chest-thumping tribalism, and through that lens, it makes a lot of sense. It does tell us something important…about us, not some fantastic mythological being. It tells us that we are fractious, arrogant, scrappy people who sometimes accomplish great things and more often cause grief and pain to one another. We want to be special in a universe that is uncaring and cold, and in which the nature of our existence is a transient flicker, so we invent these strange stories of grand beginnings, like every orphan dreaming that they are the children of kings who will one day ride up on a white horse and take them away to a beautiful palace and a rich and healthy family that will love them forever. We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned.