![](\"http:\/\/images.theglobeandmail.com\/archives\/RTGAM\/images\/20051227\/wxwafers1227\/1227wafer.jpg\")
Shana Rose enjoys a communion wafer with her tea in Montreal on Christmas Eve. Communion wafers and their cuttings are standard and popular snack foods in French Quebec.<\/p>\nShana Rose enjoys a communion wafer with her tea in Montreal on Christmas Eve. Communion wafers and their cuttings are standard and popular snack foods in French Quebec.<\/p>\n
"They melt in your mouth, and they’re not fattening, so it’s better than junk food," said Françoise Laporte, a white-haired grandmother of 71 who buys packages of Host Pieces at her local IGA in east-end Montreal. "I’m Catholic. This reminds us of mass."<\/p>\n
"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."<\/p>\n
Unfortunately not a parody but appears in this article<\/a>. While not exactly a sacriligious snack but a barometer of religious decline. <\/p>\n Hosts with the most "Now without Jesus!" No worries about a sacrilegious Communion with this non-sacramental snack. Confection without confession and for the health conscience you are free to intinct with Diet Coke! <\/p>\n [Via Sed Contra<\/a> via The Sheepcat<\/a>]<\/p>\n Update<\/font>: I think Fr. Dowd<\/a> in my comments has the right take on this.\n<\/p>\n Being from Montreal, I feel compelled to comment on this.<\/p>\n First of all, the use of the round wafer in the photo seems staged. Most of the time the "retaille d’hostie" is the trimming around the cut-out wafers, and are not in a round shape, or are hosts that got shattered somehow.<\/p>\n Next, while this is an old custom here in Quebec, today most of the RdH that you can get here is actually not from manufacturers of hosts, but from bakeries. They are artificially sweetened, for example, and so would not be valid matter. Often this extra sugar colours the bread in an odd way, as the sugar caramelizes in the heat of the oven.<\/p>\n So it doesn’t usually look like a host, and doesn’t usually taste like a host. It strike me then that the problem, then, is with the reporting, not with the actual practice. It seems designed to delight in a "sacrilegious" practice that really isn’t that bad in itself.<\/p>\n I should not be surprised if the article was played up to make it seem disrespectful. Tom’s take<\/a> was also on point.<\/p>\n What fresh outrage is next? People drinking wine?<\/p>\n