Just when you thought that Quebec couldn’t get any more evil.
Turns out that there is a product being marketed up there that sells what are effectively unconsecrated hosts as SNACK CHIPS.
I am NOT kidding.
The product is known as "Retailles D’Hosties" (lit., "recut hosts")–A.K.A. in English as "Host Pieces."
"My son can eat a whole bag while he’s watching TV," Paul Saumure, a manager at another IGA store, said of his 22-year-old. "He’s had more of them outside of church than he ever did inside one."
These things have apparently been around for a while, but they are now experiencing a resurgence due to–of all things–health food concerns.
Being made from just wheat and water, they have no added salt or fat.
And if you sacrilegiously eat bags and bags of pure flour out of healthfood concerns then you deserve the diabetes that you’ll get.
Lest you think this is just a sick joke,
HERE’S AN ARTICLE ON IT FROM THE TORONTO GLOBE & MAIL.
HERE’S INFO ON ONE OF THE MANUFACTURERS.
Oh, and there’s a very interesting number of hits you get on Google if you search for "retailles d’hosties":
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)
And if I ever go to Canada, I am *SO* buying a few packs of them. Seriously, now, what’s wrong with them? Unleavened bread was eaten well before the Exodus (in fact, before there was leavened bread), let alone before there were Communion. If you’re Catholic, you will probably notice a similarity in taste between those snacks and the Host, but it would be just that… the taste.
I’m sorry, Jimmy, but that’s like saying you shouldn’t drink wine because there is the Blessed Wine at Mass.
Now, I can agree that calling them “host pieces” or making references to this in the press release isn’t exactly good taste, but when has marketing ever involved good taste? In short, it’s stupid, but not sacrilegious.
I got 527 Google hits, how fast it changed. Anyway, this doesn’t sit right with me either. It seems to me it should take on another shape and another name. It’s blatantly obvious what their novelty selling point is–that it resembles hosts. When you buy wine, you aren’t making that connection, but with this product, you can’t miss it. Also, I rather like the way hosts taste, but sitting and eating what is essentially a bag of flour? I’m all for sensible high-carb diets but Jimmy probably has a point with his diabetes comment!
It looks to me like it was deliberately done such as to trivialize and mock the connection, which is offensive. Whether it’s sacreligeous is beyond my ability to judge, since I’m not Catholic, let alone a Catholic theologian (although my research in the area makes me think it’s likely to play into the hands of the Rad-Trads who’ve been yowling about the erosion of the sense of the sacredness of the Eucharist for ages), but I do think it’s grossly inappropriate to evoke what any religion holds sacred in order to sell a secular product, and especially one as trivial as snack food.
Unfortunately, the marketing and advertising industry seems to be heavily populated by people who think that shock is the best way to get people’s attention and get them to buy things.
It must be a Canadian thing. There’s a monastery in Vermont I visit very close to the Canadian border that sells bags of leftover host pieces in their gift shop. It is far less wasteful than throwing them out.
Maybe the marketing of leftover hosts leaves something to be desired, but calling it Sacriligious is just completely over the top. It’s FLOUR. It’s not the Body of Christ. Give me a break!
Nihil-
Would you buy wine marketed under the label “Jesus Juice?” when there sre so many other wines available?
Don’t you think you might be encouraging the derision of Christ and His Church?
The question is whether unconsecrated hosts, blessed and prepared as they are to be transformed into the Body of Christ, are sacred objects. There’s also the further possibility of blasphemy. Suppose you had a party with hosts and altar wine, served out of chalices. No “real presence” there, but its problamatic nature is evident.
Hah!
At the very least, it’s in bad taste.
I don’t think unconsecrated bread ought to be called “hosts,” as that comes from the Latin word hostia, meaning “victim.”
Something to consider…
Many years ago, my father was a chaplian’s assistant (it was a catholic priest) while he was in the army. As was standard procedure for the army, they got more than they needed of some things and not enough of other things. Their allotment of unconsecrated hosts was much more than they ever used at mass.
Both my father AND THE PRIEST regularly ate the unconsecrated hosts as a snack. What sense was there in wasting perfectly good bread? What harm was caused?
Something else to consider: How trivial does it make the mass seem if we assign the same sacredness to any piece of unconsecrated bread as we do to a consecrated Host?
I am in the military and recently went to a base chapel. After Mass, I went for the coffee and doughnuts and was horrified to see hosts sitting and scattered about in the trash can. When I raised my concern, I was told not to worry, those are all from the Protestant worship service. They take all their extra wafers and throw them in the trash. Interesting contrast.
Breier
Jeff Miller has an update on this at his blog:
http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/archives/006371.php
Yeah, and misusing a name connected with the religion, so gross, especially comparing to to, say, all the people your “church” burned alive, to death, in the last 5oo years.
Seems like you’ve got your priorities in the right place.
Remove the plank before you complain of the splinter.
I’m sure most of you are well-meaning. probably much closer to the ideal of charity Christ probably espoused than the rapacioius greedy hypocrites who killed thousands, but why do you want to be associated with an institution with such a long bloody history of murder?
Y’ever notice how bigots just can’t contain their hate?
“why do you want to be associated with an institution with such a long bloody history of murder?”
As normal people, we don’t “want to”.
But because we believe that Christ only founded one Church (and no other man can do so) we have no other choice but to stick with it. We can’t “reboot” or “reinstall”.
“why do you want to be associated with an institution with such a long bloody history of murder?”
Compare the bloodshed and murder of Christendom with any other society at the same time, not the ideals of another time. Compare the murder and bloodshed of Christendom with the anti-Catholic political systems of the 20th century alone. What do you find? To what do you align yourself?
The mental conditioning of removing the uniqueness of the host by making this item an apparent unimportant substance particulaly when it is so readily available, is just another way where we can take the Eucharistic Host for granted.
And to allow for the sacredness to become non issue.
If someone goes to Communion who regularly eats this, how will they regard the actual consecrated Host?
Personally, I would never make such a purchase.
I find the whole thing lacking in charity for Catholics, and what they revere. The lack of social descretion comes to mind as well.
bob-
I believe the situation you describe is much different than the one Jimmy posted on.
In wartime, you do what you must to get by. I’m sure food of any kind is rarely wasted.
These folks in Quebec are doing this to make a profit.
Pat said:
“If someone goes to Communion who regularly eats this, how will they regard the actual consecrated Host?”
I wonder how the early Christians handled using regular bread both as their staple food and the Eucharistic food. Though I guess they normally use leavened for their real meals.
As shocking as this may seem, I’ve actually considered making unleavened bread. The idea that this would be scandalous never crossed my mind, although admittedly I wasn’t planning a commercial distribution. As others have pointed out, the food is rather foundational. Wine, more so than water, was also very foundational in those times. Dare I say that the reason we were proscribed to use unleavened bread and wine was their commonality and their base nature, not out of their exclusivity and uniqueness.
There is absolutely nothing sacred about unleavened bread and wine. As for those who use these elements to mock Catholicism, that is a reflection on them. My goodness, we don’t worship bread and wine.
+J.M.J+
Wonder if celiac sufferers will ever demand that this company produce a gluten-free version of this “snack”?
In Jesu et Maria,
Nothing wrong with making unleavened bread, M.Z., but if you were to mold it into little host shapes for your snacks at home, I might think something was amiss.
Lutherans do not throw away the consecrated host! The pastor consumes them, if they are not all distributed to the sick and home-bound during the week.
Matzohs are fine for food, but these, I take it, are being made to look like the bread for the Lord’s Table? And marketed that way? Their intention must be blasphemy, I can’t see it any other way. These people are -mocking- the Blessed Sacrament!
Rosemarie, I’m not sure what I think of it, but our celiac in the congregation receives a consecrated host that looks like it was made from corn (maize) flour. So, apparently, something like that does exist.
Peevat:
Where did you get the number 500? Where’s your historical facts?
Get the facts, please. The Church did NOT BURN “500” people.
When you can point me to valid historical references of those burnings, then maybe I’ll listen to your bigotry.
Puzzled: If it is made of corn flour, then it is not confectable, and, therefore, does not become the Body of Christ. I hope it just looks like corn flour.
This is idiotic. They’re not sold as circles (at least, none I’ve seen), they’re sold as sheets. Flat sheets of unleavened, flour and water (occasionally something else like sugar) bread. Or, if you buy it from a monastery or something, it actually is host cuttings, and so is in all sorts of shapes, with the occasional messed up circle. It’s NOT SACRILEGIOUS! At least, not necessarily, and not in my experience. I suppose it could be, but then, a lot of things could be.
I’ve got an idea! Let’s ban all morally neutral things because somebody somewhere could do something with it that would be sacrilegious!
But the Globe and Mail article does set out to make it seem more irreverent than it is.