Interesting dialogues from the movie ‘Verbo’:
Sara: Our history teacher told us something. A big mess in the Church a long time ago. He said there was this debate about the digestive process and holy wafer. Stercorism or something like that. One side said the wafer stopped being holy when it dissolved in the mouth of the communicant. I mean the guy eating it. But things got out of hand when an old monk said the wafer never loses its holiness. Well, that it’s always holy, even when it becomes excrement. When you take a dump.
Mother: I don’t believe it.
Sara: Neither did the Vatican. They were totally pissed off. So they told the priest to repent or he’d be tortured and excommunicated.
Comments: When does sacredness begin or end? Nothing is sacred to the non-spiritual. Everything is sacred to the enlightened. Even defilements; because they can spur the quest for spirituality. For most of the unenlightened, they are in between – as they only perceive some things to be sacred, missing the interconnected nature of all things.
Guide: This is a wax representation of Elena’s body. She died about 50 years ago. She threw herself off the bell tower, hoping to go to heaven. As you know, the Church considers suicide a sin, but the bishop ruled the girl was driven by an act of faith, wishing to be closer to God, to escape a world she did not understand.
Comments: Not that I believe in the God and heaven ideas above, the ‘original sin’ then, is to create anyone incapable of such an act of faith instantly when born, who is thus born to suffer, who is however able to understand the world later, in ways that counter such faith.