I was once in a basilica when a Eucharist minister tripped and spilled the remaining consecrated hosts on the floor. However, I’d never seen it intentionally desecrated, until now.

A YouTube user, fsmdude, has put up a series of videos in which he desecrates consecrated Eucharist wafers. In one video, he shows how he gets them: he holds them in his mouth until he’s outside the church, then he takes out the host and pockets it.

I must admit: he has some fairly original ways to desecrate the host. He feeds one to a duck, another to Venus Fly Trap, and a third to a groundhog. He grinds one up and burns another with a magnifying glass. Some methods, though, are predictable, like flushing a host down a toilet.

The reaction is what one might guess. A few samples of text comments left on his videos include:

• Satan will do worse to you. Fag.
• Believe me, this toilet was far cleaner than the putrid heart of the Judas who did this.
• i’ll pray for you.

There are also video responses. One video response, from p3martab, was, “This is probably the worst thing you could do to mankind, in terms of its relationship to God.” Yet he continues, “All I’m asking you to do is please stop this.” Another user has initiated a flagging Campaign.

I learned about all of this from Blogging Religiously:

I got an email yesterday from a Catholic group praising YouTube for removing a series of videos showing the desecration of the Holy Eucharist.

But today the group—America Needs Fatima—is reporting the videos are back up on YouTube.

America Needs Fatima has initiated a petition:

It seems you removed a video showing the desecration of a Holocaust memorial and a trailer to a Dutch documentary that claims Islam inspires murder and terror.

But Catholic bashing seems to be acceptable.

I therefore vehemently protest your decision to give a platform for anti-Catholic bigotry. I will urge my friends and family to protest YouTube for as long as it takes, until you change this decision, and no longer facilitate blasphemous postings.

A fairly good point, I think.

However, I want to concentrate on something I haven’t seen: death threats. Some of course are saying, “You’ll burn in hell for this,” but I don’t know of anyone adding, “And I’ll send you there myself!” We don’t see massive protests with people holding sights saying, “Decapitate those who desecrate the Holy Eucharist!”

Instead, we hear someone asking politely, “Please don’t do that.” And as such, I’m more likely to be sympathetic.

I think, though, banning the videos would be the wrong move. User p3martab has the right idea: find out where fsmdude is going to mass and deny him access to the Eucharist.

Simple solution that protects free speech.

Catholics of course believe in something they call the “Real Presence,” which is the belief that the bread and wine are the actual body and blood of Jesus. It’s based on an Aristotelian concept of accident and essence — what a thing looks like and what it really is. So the Catholic explanation of why it still looks suspiciously like bread and wine is that the outward appearance has remained, but the essential reality has changed.

This is why there’s all the genuflection in churches and especially before monstrances, because if that really is God in the flesh flour, then it only makes sense to bow.

This also goes a long way in explaining the controversy about how a parishioner can take the host: standing, kneeling, on the tongue, on the palm of the hand. I think the variety is strictly American. In Poland, the issue is vastly simplified: stand or kneel. There’s no way a priest will give it to your hand in Poland.

“Real Presence” also explains why some might be a little uneasy with the idea of anyone other than a priest handing out the host. In the States, members of the congregation hand out the blood and wine (though the priest has consecrated it and all that). Again, this is probably a completely American thing.

All this is to explain the significance of why I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone tripped and — whoosh — there’s God, all over the floor.

At this morning’s Mass, my question was answered.

An elderly woman, serving as Eucharistic minister, was heading back up to the altar (and so her chalices were probably almost empty) when suddenly there was a stumble, shuffle, and crash. I saw the whole thing out of the corner of my eye, and I immediately directed all my attention there — as did everyone else in the basilica.

The priest kept right on going, but not many people were giving him their undivided attention. Everyone was looking at the aisle, watching the lady pick up the hosts as another Eucharistic minister helped her. Then a deacon came with a cloth that had been dampened, I’m assuming with holy water, and wiped the spot.

The woman was obviously quite shaken. She said some words to the priest, and he sympathetically comforted her. Returning to her seat, she muttered something to her husband, and that was that.

It highlights how atypical Catholicism is in modern culture, where all sense of the scared has disappeared. “And so much the better” many of us would add, but sacredness fosters a certain respect that I’m not sure you can get any other way. It’s simplistic to explain it, “Well of course it’s respect — born out of fear, a terror that some deity will toast you.” There’s certainly an element of truth in that.

Communism tried to foster some sense of the sacred — the working masses were the vessels for salvation. The working man is the communist messiah. Marches, songs, flag waving, speeches — all these things to foster a sense of the sacred in the people. Yet it didn’t work. My wife grew up in that culture, and it was all a joke for everyone. Why?

It lacked mystery.

Without mystery, without an element of the unknown and inexplicable, nothing can be sacred. Indeed, sacredness could be defined as a sense of mystery about something thought to be of divine origin. If you see the little old man putting together the wizard show, hanging the curtains, preparing the control panel, it is only through an act of supreme wishful thinking that you can put your faith in the Wizard.