From the department of “you just cannot make this shit up” my local Catholic Archdiocese is demanding legal redress (full PDF) for a very small amount of allegedly missing foodstuffs. Specifically, they want one particular snack back. Now. Damn it.
Archbishop Coakley requests that the Court . . . [e]nter an Order directing that the Consecrated Host should be immediately delivered to Archbishop Coakley and directing the Sheriff of Oklahoma County to take the Consecrated Host and deliver it to Archbisop Coakley;
Respect. Mah. Authoratah.
In order to justify putting my taxpayer dollars to work in forcibly retrieving a single small piece of unleavened bread from the Satanist trolls, the Plaintiff took the trouble to school the courts on Catholic theology:
Instead of treating this as an ordinary case of theft, the Church wants the State to defer to their faith-based notions regarding magic transfiguration spells. Why? Because they have been doing this ritual since Jesus was only 14 years old, apparently. (Check my math.)
The court filing provides no evidence showing that the host was stolen, but if it was, then of course the defendants should return it out of common decency rather than using it in their upcoming Black Mass. That said, let’s be frank about what is happening here. The Church is demanding special treatment that would be afforded to no one else who managed to lose track of something mass-produced (pardon the pun) and of negligible monetary value, and they are giving an explicitly faith-based rationale for the special treatment that they demand. That might make sense for Vatican City, but this is Oklahoma City.
