Sunday 6 January 2008

Gluten Free Wafers

The church is bringing in gluten-free wafers for their coeliac parishioners.

I thought Transubstantiation took place as the wafer is placed in the mouth? Or is it the throat? Or perhaps the stomach? Maybe it only takes place when the wafer has been digested?

Are these coeliacs allergic to the body of christ? Does taking away the gluten make the wafers less able to transubstantiate? Does the gluten-less wafer still represent the body in the same way as the gluten-containing wafer?

These are questions that should be asked before Catholic and CofE coeliacs partake of the wafers - don't you think? Maybe it will bother the CofEs less, as the wafers only represent the body of christ, but it should seriously bother the Catholics.

An interesting conundrum.

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A Christian Registrar has brought her employers to court, in an attempt to sue them because she refuses to wed gay couples, on the grounds that to do so goes against her beliefs.

If she dislikes the idea that much, she should resign and find a new job, one that does not 'force her' to do anything that goes against her personal belief system. When you get right to the crux of the issue, it basically boils down to homophobia.

As a Christian, if she wants to refuse to wed a gay couple, then she should also carefully question any and all heterosexual couples about their sexual histories - if any of them have had sexual relations outside of wedlock, she should refuse to marry them.

This is a two-way street, she cannot refuse to marry gay couples because of her beliefs on the one hand, but happily marry promiscuos heterosexual couples on the other. And if she thinks that gay marriages undermines the sanctity of Church marriages - what exactly is she doing working at a Registry in the first place?

Every single marriage she has ever performed as a Registrar has undermined that sanctity.

I should have thought that a gay couple getting married would be a good thing - just like heterosexual couples, they are putting aside their sex-out-of-wedlock days and settling down to perhaps have children, but certainly to continue life-long monogomous relationships.

Hopefully, this woman will be fired - because if she wins this case, it will open the door for people such as doctors and paramedics, to lawfully refuse to treat people because of personal beliefs. and then what will we have?

Christian doctors refusing to give out contraception or treat sexually transmitted diseases. Racist Paramedics who refuse to treat mixed race patients. Charities refusing to help certain people because they are the wrong creed/colour.

1 comment:

Sean Wright said...

Maybe the needn't give out wafers at all. Maybe the parishioners could extend their imagining a little further and pretend they are eating a wafer while pretending it is the body of the Zombie King of the Jews.