Religious Crackpot of the Month, August 2008

This month, I’m awarding the title of Crackpot to Father Sean McDonagh, and to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, whoever they might be. He has decided, based on scripture, that you can’t use GM wheat for the Eucharist. Which is fair enough, you might think, but… well, there’s really very little non-GM wheat available. It’s about the most artificial plant there is. Even if God created man, man created things like poodles and bread-wheat.

But even so, all this was done before Jesus supposedly lived, so let’s grant him that God picked a man-made crop, and let’s even grant him literal trans-substantiation (albeit because it’s irrelevant rather than because it’s even remotely reasonable). The mental acrobatics he must have done before this made sense are enough to win him the award:

Fr McDonagh quotes from Canon Law 924, section two, which stipulates: "the bread must be wheaten only, and recently made, so that there is no danger of corruption." But he says that genetically-engineered wheat is not "made solely from wheat" because of protein added to make it resistant to a weed killer. "For example, people who suffer coeliac disease are unable to absorb gluten, a protein found in wheat. Eating even small amounts of wheat can make them ill. "In recent decades, it has been possible to extract the gluten from wheaten bread so that people can eat bread without endangering their health. Despite the fact that gluten-wheat poses a health threat, which can often be serious, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith stated in a reply in 1982 that, 'the local Ordinary could not permit a priest to consecrate special gluten-free hosts for the communion of coeliacs'," writes Fr McDonagh.

So your theory is that God, in his infinite wisdom and compassion, gave loads of people a medical condition that means they can’t eat wheat, and then required them to eat wheat every Sunday? That regular wheat can literally become the body of Jesus but GM and gluten-free wheat can’t? What part of that is supposed to make sense?

And even ignoring all of the above, basically allow him to invent his own reality, he’s still wrong – because gluten-free wheat is “made solely from wheat”, just with a bit taken out, and the whole analogy is nonsense in any case.

How shitty a person do you have to be to expect people to eat poison for God?