sometimes, you just sigh

There are whacky people out there. The linked story describes a renegade 'priest' who is offering - for a fee - 'consecrated' communion by post. (Only the bread/wafers... I guess wine would be a whole lot more complicated).

I guess we'll always have such curiosities. The man's charges are not high, so I guess he's doing it from pure motives, not to make money.

But the really weird bit is the chatter of blog responses - from apparently faithful Catholics who are discussing whether, through a series of exceptions and loopholes, the items received through the post are really transubstantiated flesh. Who needs Dan Brown when you have this stuff? Come to that, who needs role-playing games with bizarre rules, when you have an ongoing disucssion about Old Catholic Orders and the mispronounciation of the Tridentine Mass?

Now, I suspect that my own spirituality (changing as it is) would also look absurd if pressed to extremes and held up to skeptical analysis. But I'd like for it not to be (absurd, that is). The gospel is counter-intuitive (foolishness, even): the last, first; others before yourself; things that don't come easily. But that's a far cry from making up crazy, arbitrary rules, surely?