"Is this where the cannibalism happens?"
January 15, 2018 11:29 AM   Subscribe

 
"Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”"

Giggle.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 11:42 AM on January 15, 2018 [14 favorites]


This went on swimmingly for a few weeks until The Bishop showed up for a surprise visit the same week Maria decided to experiment with rainbow sprinkles.

****

Father Patrick returned in late March, full of spite and some fascinating new ideas.


I am ded. Thank you for posting this bit of genius. This is the internet writing I love so much.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:43 AM on January 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


"Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”"

I dearly wish to believe this is true, and if Christianity teaches anything, it's that the most important tenant is, ultimately, belief.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:46 AM on January 15, 2018 [17 favorites]


Jesus would neither be a nasty bland cracker nor want his children to suffer as such and so instead, she made Mexican wedding cookies.

This is where I lost it. Frankly, I might not find it all day. That was fucking hilarious.
posted by loquacious at 11:49 AM on January 15, 2018 [23 favorites]


As someone who was raised (sometimes dragged kicking and screaming) in the church, a lot of this resonates with me. The severe authority, the rebellious inclination to push back, and yes even the "creative" Easter crucifixion plays. I laughed nearly all the way through this!
posted by xedrik at 11:51 AM on January 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't even care if it's true. I want to live the universe where it really happened.

Metafilter: a horrifying glutinous effigy of your lord and savior
posted by stevis23 at 11:56 AM on January 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you.

I’m pretty sure they become flesh and blood before you eat them, but, given the story, this is small-beans quibbling.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:05 PM on January 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


I love this and it is 100% too good to check.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:10 PM on January 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


One of the coolest and most rebellious people I've ever met has to be the dropout anarchist Jesuit priest that ran a homeless mission. He was often continuously swearing a blue streak like a woke Father Ted about the injust state of the world, usually while doing something about it.

He had this bracing knack for making everyone in the room feel simultaneously warm, safe and loved yet chastised for their laziness and lack of charity and a little alarmed at the starkness of reality.

I honestly have no idea how he could be so cynical, so realistic and so pragmatic and still keep the faith at all, but there's a Jesuit for you.
posted by loquacious at 12:12 PM on January 15, 2018 [53 favorites]


become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie

Shut your mouth. Maybe it was the parish I was at, but those wafers were the second best part of being an altar boy. I loved those things and stuffed my pockets when the priest wasn't looking.

The first best thing was helping myself to the leftover wine.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:19 PM on January 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


Wafer cookie certainly sounds preferable to what my dad's church had, which was this sort of very thin, flat, brittle square kind of like a cross between matzoh and hardtack but with less flavor and less texture. They would put a cloth over it and break it into small shards manually before passing it around.
posted by inconstant at 12:27 PM on January 15, 2018


i want a piece of jelly jesus
posted by poffin boffin at 12:38 PM on January 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


"It's all true." As they would say in Ireland.
posted by lagomorphius at 12:38 PM on January 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Rainbow Sprinkle Christ just might bring me back, at least twice a year.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:00 PM on January 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Goddammit, I was literally just about to post this. As an ex-Catholic, I about pissed myself laughing.
posted by sciatrix at 1:04 PM on January 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


Can we get a warning on this article please? I read the article first, as is Right and Proper, but I read it at work, so I've spent 20 minutes having a fit of the hysterics that was ALMOST under control until the boss walked in, took one look at my reddened, tear-filled eyes and asked me with great concern "Are you okay?". Which set me off again, and now my management think I am a complete loon.

I mean, they're right, but I had been mostly hiding it from them.
posted by ninazer0 at 1:08 PM on January 15, 2018 [15 favorites]


“THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”

Of course not. The sprinkles transubstantiate. I'm surprised a bishop has to have this explained.
posted by ckape at 1:22 PM on January 15, 2018 [43 favorites]


I was doing fine, all "haha, this is cute, I dig it," until I got to the jam and then I lost it, being unable to stifle my giggles just like jam in a bread Jesus.

However, this time the loaf was torso-sized, still hot from the oven and upright, so when dad speared the very end of the loaf, all the steam-pressured jam had collected at the bottom and a spray of lukewarm smuckers exploded out from bread jesus, turning the first three pews into a splash zone of symbolic entrails.

posted by paisley sheep at 1:35 PM on January 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


the boss walked in, took one look at my reddened, tear-filled eyes and asked me with great concern "Are you okay?"

Aaaand I just lost it again. Damnit, I swear I just found it, too.
posted by loquacious at 1:49 PM on January 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


As a atheist with celiac disease, I noted with amusement the Pope's recent decision that no, communion wafers could NOT be wheat free . . .

because that was exactly the right decision: wheat ==> gluten ==> putative connection with some cases of schizophrenia; and the fact that the Middle East is the Center of Diversity for wheat (and therefore the best candidate for its region of domestication), as well as the birthplace of the three major Abrahamic religions.

But that can only be a coincidence, of course.
posted by jamjam at 1:56 PM on January 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


Ahh...memories of west coast “liberal” Catholicism, and being dragged against my will to mass as a child of the 70s. So many acoustic guitars and long hair and macrame.

I recall sermons based on Star Trek episodes. I recall the Church choir doing a rendition of Soul Man with lyrics altered to celebrate The Ascension. I recall an outdoor sunrise mass on Easter at a county park that was marred (improved) by 2 dogs fucking in the distance behind the priest. I recall a mass in the parking lot of the Oakland Coliseum because it was Sunday and the A’s were in the playoffs.

The end result, predictably, is that I’m a lapsed Catholic with a healthy “Jesus was a pretty cool guy” attitude and my folks took a hard right turn in the Reagan years, disowning all of that hippie shit. Now they probably protest abortion clinics, and think Pope Francis is a heretic.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 2:08 PM on January 15, 2018 [15 favorites]


As someone who has been following this person's blog for some time now - you people have got to dig into the Family Lore tag. You'll love it. Even if it isn't ultimately true, it's a blast.

(Like the time Grandad nearly burned the house down trying to get rid of a Christmas Tree; Mazel the wolfdog; Great-Great-Grandma's nude photos; the adventures of Uncle Popeye; and both the Doppelganger stories...)
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 2:26 PM on January 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


As a Catholic child I used to have a lot of weird daydreams about meat-bread. Like a loaf of bread that you break in half and it's all raw-meaty inside. But not in a body-of-Christ way, just in a really yummy way, like using a hunk of bread to mop the fond out the pan after frying some steak and deglazing with a slug of stout. And every Sunday I hoped against hope that they would bring out the meat-bread, instead of that fucking awful wafer.

But then I was also a fat and hungry child, and sometimes used to fantasise about having a whole pile of those wafers, and stacking them up like cookies and biting through the stack, because they did have a fairly satisfying "snap" to them. Sacra-snacks, I used to call them (not really).

The wine was good too. Altar wine is usually about 18% ABV. And since it's the job of the priest to polish off the chalice after communion, you can guarantee there's a couple for the house in there. No wonder all the Catholics I know have such a problematic relationship with booze.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:37 PM on January 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


HypotheticalWoman, thank you for pointing me at the rest of that blog. The Turkey Story is excellent.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 2:45 PM on January 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


Oh god, this was amazing.
posted by fever-trees at 3:21 PM on January 15, 2018


splash zone of symbolic entrails.

I'm dying.
posted by beandip at 3:47 PM on January 15, 2018


There were words with the youth pastor when the youth group decided to do communion with doritos and coke- however as baptists there isn't the issue of transubstantiation.

This article made me laugh so much. Thanks. :)
posted by freethefeet at 4:24 PM on January 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


I sometimes wonder if mass didn’t start as a bunch of people just LARPing their favorite bits from the bible.
posted by um at 4:30 PM on January 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


Some of my relatives went to a school in old Europe where the breakfast was a porridge made from the cut-off parts from the communion wafer stamping device. They said it wasn't very appetizing.
posted by ovvl at 4:31 PM on January 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


You know, incidents like this are probably why they originally established the Inquisition.
posted by acb at 4:45 PM on January 15, 2018 [10 favorites]


*quietly kicking the bread-dick under the altar*
posted by The otter lady at 5:22 PM on January 15, 2018 [12 favorites]


ever, this time the loaf was torso-sized, still hot from the oven and upright, so when dad speared the very end of the loaf, all the steam-pressured jam had collected at the bottom and a spray of lukewarm smuckers exploded out from bread jesus, turning the first three pews into a splash zone of symbolic entrails.

The posting of this quote was what spurred me to read it..... bless you, bless your family, bless all your things.......

I needed a good belly laugh today.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 5:28 PM on January 15, 2018


I love Mexican wedding cookies and would happily cannibalize a human made of them.
posted by bendy at 5:29 PM on January 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


I used to have a lot of weird daydreams about meat-bread. Like a loaf of bread that you break in half and it's all raw-meaty inside. But not in a body-of-Christ way, just in a really yummy way

This made me suddenly, desperately hungry for peroshki from that nice store that's open til ten.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 6:08 PM on January 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


I am a bad atheist (by this I mean that I have lots of guilt about things and am sure I'm going to hell, not that being an athiest is bad) but my parents are very religous, so on the rare occasions I return to my hometown, I humor them by going to church with them. One time I was not only home for Christmas, but apparently in a good mood and my parents talked me into going to a midnight service on Christmas Eve. It was a cold, snowy night and the crowd was sparse, and apparently one of the lay pastors decided to stay home, so the pastor spotted me as the youngest person in the room, and the mostly likely to help, and cornered me into helping with the communion. This was fine by me, as communion by intiction is a long boring event as everyone has to file up, tear a bit off the bread, dip it in the grape juice (Methodists, doncha know) and head back their seats. It meant I would have something to do other than just sit on a hard pew and stare at the walls. I was assigned to hold the chalice, and mumble gently at the folks who came by. Everything went fine until one lady came up and forgot the order and had already put the bread in her mouth before she got to the chalice. She then proceeded to remove the soggy morsel from her cheek and begin to move it towards the cup. I yanked the cup away snarling, "You can't double-dip in the host!!" I aparently said it a bit louder than I meant to and half the chapel heard it. The lady turned beet red and scuttled back to her pew. The pastor gave me a sideways glance, but kept up his incantations. My mother was mortified and demanded I apologize after the service, but I refused, becuase it was now Christmas and I was hereby absolved of any sins due to having been in church at the moment of the glorious change and I just wanted to go home. My father chuckled and obliged me and herded the group out to the car faster than a seal team hustling to an extraction helicopter.

To this day I haven't discussed the event with my family, but they don't badger me into going to church with them any more. I'm not sure if this is due to their own embarassment or a request from the clergy. Either way, I count it as a win.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:01 PM on January 15, 2018 [28 favorites]


Once, I was at a retreat in France, and to be honest we were half meditating and half partying.
An other group were working hard at reenacting the Eucharist, and made their own bread and maybe also their own wine, or at least they engaged closely with local winemakers. The result was delicious, and the party group and the reenacting group had a fine mass together. The Church is a wide tent.
posted by mumimor at 7:20 AM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


Another ex-Catholic who thought this was the funniest thing, and certainly far to good to fact check. But growing up in the '70s I had just enough hippie-influenced Catholics around me that this is plausible.

Of course not. The sprinkles transubstantiate. I'm surprised a bishop has to have this explained.

Rainbow sprinkles can't be transubstantiated I don't think. Priests can transubstantiate bread, but not things like Brussels sprouts (which are a creation of the devil and not god.) Similarly I'm pretty sure rainbow sprinkles are the domain of leprechauns.

Source: years of Catholic elementary school.
posted by mark k at 7:55 AM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Yeah, I should have listened to the warnings not to read this at work. Trying to laugh silently so much that tears are pouring from your eyes is really, really hard.
posted by seyirci at 9:44 AM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Ahh...memories of west coast “liberal” Catholicism, and being dragged against my will to mass as a child of the 70s. So many acoustic guitars and long hair and macrame.

I recall an outdoor sunrise mass on Easter at a county park that was marred (improved) by 2 dogs fucking in the distance behind the priest.

Now that's my kind of Catholicism...
posted by strelitzia at 10:48 AM on January 16, 2018


Metafilter: splash zone of symbolic entrails

Metafilter: quietly kicking the bread-dick under the altar
posted by Anne Neville at 6:25 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Similarly I'm pretty sure rainbow sprinkles are the domain of leprechauns.

Unicorns, surely?
posted by acb at 10:55 AM on January 17, 2018


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