A student at the University of Florida has made off with a biscuit. Oh, it had undergone the transubstantiation thing first, so it was no ordinary biscuit, you understand. This was the Body of Christ, in all its crunchy crispiness.
There's a delicious take on this by Barry Duke on the Freethinker blog, where he tells the tale of Webster Cook, who didn't consume the sacred Host in church one day, but took it off to show a friend. But Webster is now receiving wholesome Christian death threats for his heinous crime, because the itty bitty bickie is supposed to be consumed before the magic wears off – er, as soon as possible after the blessing.
According to WFTV.com, Cook is "holding hostage" this wafer thing after church officials said he was disruptive and disrespectful during the service at which he "kidnapped" this bit of his Lord's body.
"When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show [my friend]," Cook said. "I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they'd leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth."
There's more to the story, with filings of complaints and goodness knows what else – all too boring to go into here. What is important is how much fuss can be made over the nicking of a little disc made of crispy unleavened bread.
Perhaps Kellog's or someone ought to launch a new breakfast cereal for Catholics, suitably blessed by the Vatican, of course: Corpus Crispies.
A case of snap, crackle and pope.
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FOOTNOTE: Since posting the above this morning, I've come across another good read on this subject. Go take a look. Oh, and the cracker has now been returned. It's still a cracker.
