> No doubt, nearly every American who attended an
> evangelical church (hell, why limit it to
> evangelicals?) can call up a similarly irritating
> memory.
Goodness gracious yes. While Catholicism is better about keeping its assertions on a more safely abstract level, it does manage to trip up here and there. I remember a scene from my confirmation class, where the teacher affirmed the increasingly specific queries of an incredulous classroom about the wafers and wine being transubstantiated into the literal body and blood of Our Saviour, and I do mean the meat and plasma and corpuscles that had been held in by JC's unpunctured skin. That this sacrifice did not, thank heavens, taste like pork (or is it beef?) and some ironish coagulating goo was, we were told, part of the miracle.
While I don't ordinarly think of this episode as a turning point in my thinking, the memory remains vivid.
Back to the kitchen...
-- Andy