Yay shrift!
I have no opinion on the holy cracker controversy. The church I was raised in used grape juice instead of wine, and I like to think that if they believed in literal transubstantiation they wouldn't have started with Wonderbread. Or maybe that's exactly the sort of bread they should have started with. Anyway, after a few UU "love feasts" featuring sweet rolls (with raisins—yes, lets follow that along food-to-flesh thought lines) and apple juice (this is My plasma, given for you) it's hard for me to work up more than a "huh" over the whole deal.
Speaking as a Presbyterian agnostic here, stealing communion wafers is horrible and disrespectful at the very least, and I do wonder if it wouldn't be possible to prosecute it as petty theft of some kind.
(And based on the definitions as I understand them, it's at least arguably a hate crime.)
who is the victim? Plus, even if stealing a communion wafer for the purpose of desecration is a crime, the student who originally took the wafer did not do so for that purpose.
I do wonder if it wouldn't be possible to prosecute it as petty theft of some kind.
I dunno. The Church gave him the wafer (during communion), with the expectation that he'd eat it right there. Instead he took it home. Is that theft?
To call it a hate crime really, IMO, just cheapens the phrase. I actually do believe in transubstantiation, I believe that it's literally the creator of the universe right there in your hand (or, in the case of this college kid, who appears to have been doofy and clueless, not remotely malicious, your pocket), and I would still argue, fiercely, that doing some bad or stupid thing to it is categorically VASTLY different from targeting another plain old garden-variety mortal human being for some monstrous act because his/her skin color offends your miserable shittorific world view.
(eta, in case it wasn't clear, that IMO the latter IS a hate crime and the former is a world of not. And, WTF, is some official person supposed to prosecute it as a hate crime? How does that not completely piss all over the separation of church and state? Clearly, the people calling it a hate crime must really hate America.)
What JZ said about the hate crimes and the shittorific (even if I'm totally off the JZ spectrum when it comes to transubstantiation).
Mirren looks amazing, but the article:
Most women only a few days away from their 63rd birthday would be steering well clear of the beach.
is the worst kind of twaddle.
Go shrift, much Google-ma to you.
