Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Cathy Johnston) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Receiving the host Message-ID: Date: 17 Aug 90 07:21:26 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Department of Computer Science Lines: 40 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article cms@dragon.uucp writes: >Anyway, here's the joke: > > A seminarian was taking his final orals for ordination. The first examining >priest finished, walked out, and in came a much older priest, who threw a >hypothetical at him (this is supposedly a true story). > > "You're celebrating Mass," the old priest said. "You've finished the >consecration. Your hands are raised in prayer. Suddenly! A little mouse >scurries across the Altar, grabs the consecrated Host in its mouth, and >scurries away. What do you do?" > > Well, the young seminarian thought about it for a while and then replied: >"Well, I'd burn down the Church and throw the ashes in the sacrarium!" One day when I was in college a bunch of us were having lunch at the Catholic student center and got into an outrageous (and borderline blasphemous) discussion of distributing Communion... In the small Chapel where we had one of our Sunday Masses, we would have two Communion stations, one in the front and one in the back (actually out in the vestibule.) This particular autumn the bees had been much worse than usual, and occasionally they would fly in through the open doors and harass the congregation. One guy, a Benedictine brother, related that he had had a bee fly in and drown in the chalice he was distributing. There followed a spirited discussion of whether it was necessary to consume the bee, and if it was, who should be given this singular honor. And what if this hap- pened on a Friday in Lent? (As if there were bees in Chicago in March!) Allen (the Benedictine) listened silently for awhile, and finally remarked in his wonderful laconic Minnesotan down-to-earth-no-nonsense-Benedictine way that he had fished the bee out with the corner of the purificator and smashed it against the wall. And we'd been all set to write to the Vatican requesting an official opinion... :-) -- Cathy Johnston cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!