I was raised Orthodox. We got spoon-fed our wine. Like, a little baby spoon. And the bread would be IN the wine. We got little pieces of wine-soaked bread.
Russian. My dad’s family is actually sort of mixed Eastern European (and my mom’s is mixed Western European), so we figured “close enough”.
The consensus seems to be we are Czech/Ukranian, but when I visited Ellis Island I looked up our name and it’s Hungarian, so I guess that’s in there too.
As I recall, bread soaked in the wine rather than separate is mostly a Russian Orthodox and it’s close relatives thing. A sacrament spoon is a reasonably common, but by no means universal, Orthodox thing in general.
Yeah, that is basically what we of the Serbian Orthodox Church do too.
I guess it’s being poor thing/custom. Probably back in the days you couldn’t always have enough wine for everyone, so you took one cup worth of it, put bread int it and then shared.
But eh that’s just custom. The weird idea fro me is NOT using bread and wine.
We have the bread in the wine (grape juice) at Metropolitan Community Church Brisbane, so it’s not just an Orthodox thing, as we’re as Protestant and Liberal as you can get in a Christian Church.
Huh. Now that I think of it, churches that keep the bread and wine separate, but believe in transubstantiation, are going against literature… they’ve got their pound of flesh without a drop of blood in it!
I was raised Methodist. When we got to the Eucharist – once a month as I recall – we got a small cube of bread and a tiny glass of “wine” (real wine for the adults, Ribena for the children). We had to get up and kneel around the edge of the dais, and were given the sacrament.
…afai remember, it was like 24 years since I last went to church. (I stopped when I was 10, and am now an Atheist). xD
Look in the parentheses: Stand. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand. Stand. Kneel. Kneel. Stand. Sit. [Communion, effectively a Kneel]. Kneel. Kneel. Kneel. And technically, during the Recessional, you Stand again.
This is fairly typical during Mass, and I’ve never seen a non-Catholic visitor NOT comment on it at the time.
Canadian Anglicans (at least, at my old church), and I assume British Anglicans do the same thing, although if your knees aren’t up to it it’s okay to stay seated. They have a little padded bar to kneel on and everything.
So far as Communion went, you had to be Confirmed first (a sort of graduation ceremony following extracurricular studying with the priest), which you could do when you were seventeen. After that, you could take the Eucharist (before that you’d go up and kneel, but not put out your hands, and the priest would just bless you). Once you had been Confirmed, you could put out your hands for the half-piece of holy wafer (which had like zero taste and would basically dissolve on your tongue–may have been rice-based, thinking about it now), and then the secondary priest would come around with the goblet and give you a sip of the wine (which was really, really tasty; Wild Vines’ Blackberry Merlot is pretty close to my memory of it; very sweet and fruity).
We learned in Confirmation classes that, between the goblets always being either actual gold or silver (which germs can’t live on), and the alcohol, plus the goblet being wiped and turned slightly between each sip, there wasn’t much of a risk of germs being shared, as by the time that portion of the goblet came round again, the alcohol in the wine plus the precious metal would have killed off the few germs still left behind after wiping.
Fun fact: Confirmation, which is a Sacrament among Catholics, used to be the one and the same that Ordination of Priests (the Sacrament that makes you into a priest), and it was based on the Imposition of Hands the Apostles did to transfer the power to do miracles to their advanced disciples, which in turn was based on the transference of power by Christ when he gave his Apostles and Disciples the power to heal the sick and exorcist demons, and by the Holy Spirit, when he descended on them during Pentecost …
It’s funny because, if you think about it, priests are supposed to receive Divine Power, D&D RPG style…
It was later made into three levels: Confirmation (you were a full Christian, required a priest), Ordination of Priests (you were a priest, required a bishop) and Ordination of Bishops (you were a bishop, required three bishops). Each time you received more Divine Mojo…
Christianism originally was a very “magical” religion…
I remember a story in Reader’s Digest where someone’s husband went to their first Catholic mass. Stand, kneel, stand, sit, kneel, the husband wiped his face with a handkerchief and dropped it in his lap.
His wife, noticing this, said; “Is your fly open?”
That is because Catholicism is not just a religion, it’s an excersise regim.
Only time I had the wine was for my First Communion, where the priest dipped the host in the wine before placing it on my tongue. Not the best wine I’ve ever had by a long shot, but still not the worst.
That’s what they did here in ‘murica, too. Same stuff, new label. It’s basically the diet version of Coca-Cola Classic, as opposed to Diet Coke (which is more like New Coke). It’s good, but I still keep some regular Diet Coke on hand. Sometimes you just need the kind of nostalgia rush that only the metallic aftertaste of aspartame can conjure.
She knew she was trying a new branch of Christianity, but new food? That’s a bridge too far – this is a woman who can’t even eat most kid’s food because too many ingredients are brushing up against each other.
My parents Presbeterian church had wine on the inside cups on the tray and grape juice on the outside, and the tray of cups were passed up and down the pews. Every Episcopal church I have been to was full on wine in a chalice and you want up front to get it. “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.”
Episcopal churches mix water and wine during the prep. Though from having been the assisting acolyte for at least three different priests (back before I was a godless atheist) the amount of water used to dilute the wine can vary significantly.
Yup. It’s fun when the priest overestimates the number of people coming up for Communion. You’re not allowed to just throw that stuff out after the blessing–it’s officially “the Blood of Christ” at that point. Acolytes (not assisting with the Eucharist proper) are the last ones to receive Communion for this very reason–you learn quickly to judge how much to drink by how much the priest tips the goblet.
At every Anglican church (the English Episcopal church) I was at it was: the blood of Christ, shed for you.
Not sure about the alcohol content, but I started taking communion around my confirmation (11 years old). So I’m guessing it’s not that alcoholic.
(It should also be noted that the wine was watered down and wasn’t exactly potent to begin with. Unless you’re a child or an alcoholic, there’s no reason to skip it.)
The priest told us that germs had a hard time living on silver and gold (the metals are toxic to bacteria, apparently), so between that and the alcohol in the wine, they were pretty much all killed by the time the used spot on the cup, which is rotated slightly between each person as well as being wiped, came around to be used again.
So apparently not as bad as one might think; even if someone in the line before you had a cold or what, it was supposed to be okay.
Your priest is half right at best. Silver is toxic to bacteria (technically it’s silver oxide particles at low concentration, but unless the wine is being poured in a vacuum you’re good), gold doesn’t do much at all – gold nanoparticles do, but that’s not the same thing. However rotating the wine swishes it enough to let some bacteria move around, antimicrobials are far from instantaneous, and thus the actual sanitation effects are pretty minimal.
With that said, most peoples immune systems can handle eating and drinking communal food just fine, particularly as a lot of the really nasty diseases that can spread via mouth can only live in fairly tight temperature ranges around the human norm. Plus, it’s not like a priest is expected to be an expert here anyways; an epidemiologist saying the same thing would deserve much heavier criticism.
My experience is that most churches of the “high church” movements (along with Catholic and Orthodox) only offer wine, but that partaking of both parts of the sacrament aren’t mandatory for being in full communion. Meanwhile near universally the “low church” movements seem to have strong objections to alcohol even in the sacramental form and only offer grape juice. Some of those churches (largely Methodist and Presbyterian ones in my experience) who fit the “high church” format, offer a choice between wine and grape juice or just grape juice while still ceremonially and ritually hewing closer to the older Catholic and Orthodox sacrament.
That’s very informational, thank you.
As far as I remember, we never got wine (as a Catholic), just the ‘bread’, a consecrated wafer. Never wine, we just watched the priest and his altar servers take a small nip from the wine (and never grape juice). But that might be a country-specific thing (I’m from the middle of Europe).
Yeah, it’s regional by traditions dating to the medieval period to my understanding. Where wine was not readily produced locally and thereby an exceptionally difficult to procure part of the service, such as in northern and central Europe, the standard developed to only offer the wine on specific occasions (typically Easter) to the laity or else to only to allow it to the clergy as part of the rite (specifically the priest partakes as the spiritual representative of his flock) so as to ensure there was always some wine for the chalice. In some areas as wine has become more readily available during the last century or so that has fallen by the wayside in others it has stood as part of deep rooted tradition. In my own area of the US, for example, having heavy central and eastern European roots within the local congregation, it’s only offered as part of the Easter Eucharist in other areas I’ve visited in the US, with more Mediterranean roots, it’s weekly.
My (UK, Anglican, evangelical, but both of those words have quite different connotations here from in the US) church has actual wine by default but there’s usually a non-alcoholic option. Either a separate station or a separate cup available on request, depending on the size of the service.
For context: I do drink occasionally. (The other day I had an almost-full sampler glass of beer with dinner! And I even finished most of it during the meal!) But I am convinced that I can feel even the tiny sip of communion wine. I know that it’s a higher alcohol percentage, but it’s not supposed to be *that* high.
This definitely suggests a really low tolerance – wine caps out at about 20% alcohol, and even reaching that requires some specialized strains of yeast that can handle a higher alcohol environment. Past that you need to straight up distill alcohol to make it stronger, and that would be brandy anyways (or cognac).
A tiny sip is maybe 10 mL, and 2mL of straight ethanol (which again, high estimate) isn’t a lot. For reference, one shot is usually in the vicinity of 20 mL of straight alcohol, with larger shot glasses and stronger drinks pushing it up towards 40. A full sized glass of beer is theoretically roughly comparable.
There are a few strains in commercial use that can reach about 30% (specifically the one bred by Sam Adams for their Utopias line, but there are a few others in use for whiskey mash). None are useful for wine, but they exist ;D.
If you actually practice the typical prescribed fasting before partaking in the sacrament the alcohol present will hit your system harder than normal drinking with meals. It’ll metabolize comparatively quick since since the total volume is so low, but if you don’t typically drink on an empty stomach just enough alcohol will hit your brain before it metabolizes to seem more significant.
Used to be an Episcopal acolyte (it meant doing more than just sitting in a pew during services), and we’d sometimes get asked to serve at funerals and weddings (typically, the family would give the priest a gratuity for the service, and we’d be given a bit off the top as a tip).
So, one time, a woman who’d been in the church for decades had died, and I was tapped to serve at the funeral. She’d been a major presence in the community, and so the church was PACKED. Standing room only, which rarely even happened on the big services.
So, Father B. set up two cups of wine–the big ones. And then… virtually no one came up to the altar railing. I think we had ten communicants; the rest were local Baptists and Gospel church-goers, who didn’t do wine at Communion.
Father B. took it in stride. He made sure I got a HUGE mouthful of wine, and then he did the finishing duties himself (no discarding the Blood of Christ, after all). It was the only time I’ve ever seen him have to pause in the process of finishing the last of the wine off–he was definitely feeling it for the rest of the Mass.
I can’t speak for Achallenger, but I accidentally went to mass after my uncle’s funeral because I thought the group of older cousins I was tagging along with were going straight to the wake. Little did I know that I would have to endure two MORE hours of church before getting to hang out at my grandparents’ house. I was about 8 when this happened, and not only did I have an excess of church services that day, I wasn’t even allowed to participate in Communion because I hadn’t been baptised Catholic, just Episcopalian. It was actually a little traumatizing, because I had been raised to believe that all churches were the same in the eyes of God or whatever.
To cap off the fun, once we finally got to the “party”, people laughed at my misunderstanding. Thanks, family.
I myself once ended up at mass with a Catholic friend in college.(I forget why) And when the priest started He made a point of saying that he was sorry, but any non-Catholics were barred from partaking of the Eucharist.Being the stubborn Protestant I was at the time, I simply got in line and bluffed my way through it. No one, not even my friend who knew I wasn’t Catholic, said anything. I apologized once we were outside.
you can be catholic and not participate in communion if you haven’t had your first comunion or you haven’t confesed in a while even. Is not like people are checking if you had but I guess it can really get awkward. Sorry about that.
No offense, but I’ve never understood the attitude non-Catholics have toward the requirement that you be a practicing Catholic who’s had first communion to take communion at a Catholic mass. The Catholic belief is that the bread and wine is the literal body and blood of Christ, and that it is spiritually harmful for anyone who does not firmly believe this and hasn’t committed to it knowingly (first communion) to take it. If you say “Amen” when the priest says “Body of Christ,” you’re saying “Yes, I believe that.” Doesn’t every religion think, “Please don’t say that you believe what we believe if you don’t.” ?
Also, it has nothing whatsoever to do with how you were baptized, and anyone who told you that was in error. Protestant converts to Catholicism don’t get “re-baptized” because they’re already baptized, same as those born into Catholic families.
I mean, would you like to understand the attitude? Or is your ignorance of why protestants are hurt to be excluded from Catholic communion something you value?
Because if you genuinely want to know why non-Catholics have “the attitude” (that is, an attitude of hurt, feeling misunderstood, angry, frustrated, and lonely) towards Catholic communion, all you have to do is ask in good faith. I’m sure people here would answer in kind, then.
Most Protestant Germans wouldn’t know that Catholics think of transubtination and they they actually think they are taking in blood and body of Christ. Since I learned, I didn’t have the slightest impulse to participate in catholic communion. I suppose, if someone deigned to explain, most other Protestants would rather not participate, too.
And, yes, it’s an exclusive ritual, meant to be exclusive to people who do not subscribe to the tenets of catholicism. As are most other churches. Either embrace them or be other. That’s a large part of what churches are about.
Bear in mind this was like 26 years ago, so ymmv on my brain filling in details. There was definitely a brief conversation about whether I’d been baptised. Of course I’d been baptised, there were pictures taken and everything! But apparently it didn’t count because it wasn’t–you know what, not important. I’m sorry you got defensive about my personal anecdote. If it makes you feel any better I’m an atheist now and don’t need the fingers of one hand to count how many times I’ve Been To Church in the last fifteen years.
In the actual decades of personal growth and development that I have experienced since being an 8 year old, I’ve come to feel that church stuff is largely made up of tradition and it’s up to the individual how much weight the traditions carry. Some traditions are more, you know, traditional, and some aren’t, and that’s how Christianity became the Heinz 57 of modern religions.
Oh and before anyone jumps down my throat I don’t consider myself superior for the conclusions I’ve come to on the topic of religion. Gotta find your own way, and as long as that doesn’t include infringing on others’ personal attempts at happiness, idgaf.
As a Catholic I think I get why others would be offended. We think that our priests alone have the power to change ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ which usually taste just like bread and wine. Actually there was at least one protestant groups which we believe to have the ability as well because many of there priests were granted it by the leaders of our church. Anyways instead of claiming that anyone can change bread and wine into flesh and blood most Protestants decided that nobody can and its just a ritual.
For the record access to the body and blood of Christ was once upon a time a legitimate tool used to keep people in line, you know one of those things preventing people from saying I don’t need the Catholic church to worship God. So the Protestant groups would likely make a point of how much its just a freaking ritual. But as time goes on protestants are taught what they believe not what Catholics believe so why would they know we believe its actually the body and blood of Christ.
When I used to go to a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation, they also practiced “closed communion” and it was church members only. IIRC, the reason given was a verse from one of Paul’s epistles about how severe the consequences were for not taking communion sincerely or something. I’ve always thought of Paul as the Apostle who ruined Christianity.
You mean Lancelot was a double-agent all this time? That he himself in fact called the cops on Arthur, and that he only pretended to be “arrested” to have an excuse for why he suddenly disappeared?
As I understand it, Paul was the one who made it his mission to evangelize to the gentiles. It’s entirely possible that, were it not for Paul, Christianity might have remained a local minor sect in Judea, and might even have disappeared during the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
That said, Paul is also responsible for some of the most ultraconservative, intolerant, and misogynistic beliefs expressed in the New Testament. So one might argue he both saved Christianity and ruined it.
I once wrote a paper about Caravaggio’s painting, Conversion of St. Paul. I did research about the context and everything, and I really liked the story of Paul’s conversion, although I didn’t read much further than that. I’m disappointed he was actually very unlike Jesus Christ.
I had some clues into some of the weird things with his writings, from David Willis’s tumblr posts. But I didn’t bother to look deeply into it since I’m not Christian and I didn’t care THAT much about Paul.
So I guess Paul sucks ass. Although that conversion story is really cool.
Last time I accidentally went to mass was when some friends invited me to their wedding, and it turned out to involve a nuptial mass.
I hung back at the sides while everyone else was filing up to the communion rail, and some sort of assistant clergyman sidled up to reassure me that any baptised Christian was welcome to take communion. He looked shocked when I explained that I am neither baptised nor Christian and don’t want to take communion.
I don’t know what accidentally means in this context, but I’m imagine either an “excited doggie doesn’t know he’s going to the vet” scenario, or a “I thought this was something else entirely” one, like you showed up in fishing gear, or wearing a fursuit.
I spent a lot of time as an altar boy and I usually worked on early Sunday Mass, so there were a lot of times when guys on their way to the lake for fishing would catch the service. So some fishing gear did happen.
Though I’ll never regret leaving this particular church and running like hell, there’s one service I always feel bad about missing: half-way through were a couple of baptisms, and when the platform covering the baptismal pool under the stage was pulled back it turned out a frogman had secreted himself in there earlier and stayed quietly down there the whole time, and he calmly splooshed out splosh splosh splosh down the aisle, flippers and all, and out the door.
I hope he’s found himself somewhere better, too. Some senses of humour just deserve to be where they’ll be celebrated.
For future reference: the answer is either stay in your seat or if you don’t want to be the only one sitting there, go up but cross your arms grabbing onto the opposite shoulders when you get to the servers.
As a habitual mass-skipper, and a devout confession-avoider, I usually do the arms crossed thing when I go to mass. It turns out, in Catholicism, skipping mass is a mortal sin, and it’s also a mortal sin to receive communion with an unconfessed mortal sin, and it’s also a mortal sin to go to fail to go to confession for more than a year. So, as someone who 1) misses church often, and 2) hasn’t gone to confession in years, I’m just trying not to triple up on the mortal sins.
I grew up in the anglican church, but have since left it. Since I have got to know my husband, I occasionally go to a church services with him.
I was taught that if you don’t want to recieve communion, to lower your hands behind the rails where you’re kneeling instead of putting your hands up and cupped to recieve the bread. Usually the priest will then touch your head and give you a blessing. So you know, you’d have to be cool with that. Or you can stay seated.
I don’t recieve communion anymore, because I don’t believe in what it stands for. I do however occasionally get a blessing if the mood is right. In the church where I grew up, there was no-one looking to see if you partake or not. I’ve never felt pressured by anyone to do something I don’t want to.
I have also been to roman catholic services with my husband where the priest has said that everyone is welcome to recieve communion. So I’m frankly a little taken back that there are catholics who are so strict. I am however talking about the dutch roman catholic church who tend to be less strict and also less “let’s do everything the pope says”.
I was glad at some friends’ wedding the Priest was a) College priest who was well used to interacting with non-Catholics, and b) well aware that, as it was a wedding, there were plenty of folks in the audience who wouldn’t know traditions and assumptions.
Basically walked people through the communion, mentioned we could remain seated if we wished, or if anyone wanted to not remain seated, but not receive communion for any reason, they could cross their arms to let the priest know.
Only issue was that my row had a string of sitters on the inside of the row (including me), and noooot a lot of room for the few on the outside to squeeze by (college chapel packed to capacity).
It depends on how you define literal. The Catholic position is that it’s a literal process, just about everyone else doesn’t think that the Catholic priests* are actually doing what they claim to be doing and thus it’s still metaphorical cannibalism.
*Although this is one of those cases where I like the term “mage-priests”.
It’s been, what, two months she’s been at college and dealing with huge changes? She’s made incredible strides in so short a time; I only wish I could match her.
See, the heart, the soul, the core of Joyce is that she wants to do right. Actually, she Needs to do Right. She’s always wanted to ensure that her actions make things better for other people. As such, there probably isn’t a more loyal friend in the world than her.
What has changed is that the things she thought was doing Right… turned out not to be Right at all. It was lies fed to her by her family, by her church.
But whenever Joyce’s core is clashing with beliefs that basically comes from external sources… Joyce’s core wins. Every time. The internal need to do Right by other people triumphs over the beliefs of what other people tell is is right to do.
Would she even be welcome to take communion there, as she’s a different sect and doesn’t follow the same specific beliefs? I know this is an issue with Catholic and with Eastern Orthodox sects.
Also I’m most used to the wafers and one time when it was actual bread I got nervous and didn’t chew enough and almost choked and spent five minutes coughing and it ranks up in the 15 most embarrassing times of my life. I have an anxiety disorder so I have a lot of embarrassing times.
I’ve never actually taken communion–or been offered it, I think– but I similarly hold the expectation of it coming in wafer form. Likely because we used to get these thin rosemary and olive oil crackers and my mom would call them “seasoned communion snacks.”
I explained poorly, but this wasn’t at church. This was just something my family would buy, and then my mom would be like, “So we’ve BASICALLY gone to church.” And I’d say some shit like, “I like the way his body crunches.”
But anyway, adding on to what you’re imagining, swap the Triscuits for Goldfish crackers and it gets even better.
I mean, there’s no reason for them to stop her, and tbh the only thing that should stop her as far as I know is her own denomination specifically stating that it wasn’t okay (but also what do I know lol, my own experience is as a roman catholic being told by a boyfriend that he was “allowed to partake” in my communion but wasn’t allowed to “pray to or worship the saints”. I’m still offended at his biased religious education, and we stopped dating 3ish years ago)
Also, yoooooo how was that? all the places I’ve gone to use the wafers, I’d probably choke on it too, and then consider if drowning myself in the holy water would make it not holy anymore. Heck, I’ve considered it before over less embarrassing things, like being forced to sit in the front few pews by fam (and like, this is after mass started a few times. I’ve threatened to renounce my faith over it but alas, it falls on deaf ears) or stumbling in the line for communion lol are you okay
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/holy-communion says “As such, all persons who have been baptized, and are therefore part of the extended family that is the Church, are welcome to receive the bread and wine, and be in communion with God and each other.”
Now I kinda want a flashback panel of Joyce getting baptized. Or at least a rehearsal, since I know my church did those to get the hijinks out of the way.
I’m Episcopalian – we take all comers. “All are welcome at this altar,” to be specific. In fact, I got pretty put off when I went to my grandma’s funeral at a Catholic church, went up to get communion, and the lady serving looked at me and asked if I was Catholic. I said no, and she smirked at me and stepped back.
That’s not about being unwelcoming (at least, it’s not supposed to be…). That’s about beliefs regarding the Eucharist specifically that you’re supposed to share to participate.
There are other denominations that share those beliefs that are also allowed to participate. I’ve been to Catholic churches that get a lot of visitors that actually list them (one written on card, some where the priest explains beforehand at all wedding and funeral masses), along with what to do if you’re not in those groups.
I think because Catholics believe in transubstantiation, only baptized Catholics are allowed the Eucharist. The Eucharistic minister probably could have handled that better at a funeral, though.
Every Catholic funeral I’ve been to, though, the priest gives instructions and he goes, knowing folks who aren’t Catholic are likely there, and the grief may make even Catholics forget what they’re doing. Weddings, on the other hand, offered no such instruction, which I found curious.
That was especially rude of her, and highlights how many “pious” people are actually complete jerks fueled by that sweet sweet high of self righteousness.
Catholics believe in transubstantiation and put way more weight into the Eucharist than most denominations do (depending on denomination – Lutheran and Episcopalian churches are closer in traditions to the Catholics than say, the Mormons) and so to the Catholic point of view, if you do not revere the communion in the way they do, there isn’t a point in you sharing in the Catholic communion. This is for better or for worse, I guess :/
Eucharist is a big deal for Catholics. Technically speaking, you should do some soul-searching, confess your sins and do penance before receiving Communion.
Yeah, there are people who don’t care that and don’t take the proper steps but there are many others who care a lot about that. When I was still religious I went often to mass, but I barely ever partaked in Communion.
Until recently, purposely taking part in Communion while in a state of sin was among the most abhorrent sins. You were directly insulting God.
And a non-Catholic is assumed to not know any of that, so they are, by default, unprepared for Eucharist.
Most Episcopalian and Lutheran churches I’ve attended (to be fair, very small pool of reference here) take the approach that you know the state of your own soul / relationship with God better than they do. So, if you feel like taking part in the Eucharist will strengthen your soul, and believe in what the symbols represent, you can partake.
Not sure if that’s the official position of those churches, but it did seem pretty lax (in that regard) at the services I’ve attended.
Protestants don’t usually take as strong an issue with that. (That usually includes Episcopalians. They are still Protestant even if they look pretty “Whore of Babylon” to Joyce’s fundie background)
In most of those older sects, Communion is the be all end all ceremony, to the point where there’s the idea that you literally can’t get into heaven unless you receive communion regularly. (That’s what excommunication means, being denied communion by the church, essentially a sentence of eternal damnation.) This usually also has to do with the idea of Transubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ when used as the Eucharist.
Protestants meanwhile tend to vary on how important that specific ceremony is. Many groups think of it more of a time meant to reflect on the last supper and Jesus’s sacrifice, rather than a belief that anything was specifically turning into anything. (As most Protestants would say, it’s called a metaphor guys.)
Additionally most Protestant sects don’t have a strong focus on the church as an organization like Catholics and Orthodox do. They also tend to be pretty evangelical (in the sense that they’re usually looking for new converts. Not necessarily in the fundie sense.) Thus many don’t care as much if a person who’s not formally with the church partakes in the sacrament, as that’s just an opportunity for them to join more formally later on (if they even believe that you can join in a sense that’s more formal than “show up for church every now and again and probably be baptized by somebody Christian at some point in your life.”)
It’s also worth noting that you’re probably not going to get very far booting another Protestant out of your church over communion. Many of them have such low requirements for entry that they can probably just start their own church. There’s an old joke about a Baptist who’s shipwrecked by himself on a desert island for years. After he’s rescued his rescuers are surprised to discover several shelters built all over the island. Inquiring the castaway he tells them they’re his churches, as he had to keep building new ones when he started disagreeing with him.
(Sorry this is what passes for a joke when your family comes from a long line of Methodist Ministers.)
There’s a similar joke amongst us Jews, in which a Jewish castaway tells his rescuers that the two big buildings, apart from his hut, are synagogues: one that he worships in, and one that he wouldn’t set foot in if you paid him!
From my point of view, it’s not so much whether they’d welcome you or not, but why someone would actually want to take communion in a church that doesn’t hold to the same beliefs. I guess it depends on how far apart the beliefs are?
Or is just that you’re supposed to take communion on Sundays and it doesn’t make any difference what heretical church you take it at?
I don’t get it.
That said, I suspect Joyce, for all her religiosity, hasn’t actually thought through much of this. We can see she’s very attached to the forms of church she’s used to, and she’s certainly picked up the basic “these things are bad” lessons, but maybe not so much the differences in actual theology?
That said, I’d be amused if this sequence led Becky to the Episcopal Church – they’ve got woman preachers, they’re okay with lesbians and I believe they’re good with evolution too. Sounds like a good place for Becky.
As for the ‘why’–for a lot of ‘charismatic’ churches, all the ceremony is meant to be about generating an uplifting mood. That would include communion, however it was performed. So an exclusion practice is going to come across as a denial of joy–a rather heinous act. Of course, from the Catholic perspective, it’s about the spiritual dangers of the Eucharist as taken by a non-believer.
But I’m not talking about why a Church would or would not deny communion to outsiders, but about why a believer would want to take it at a church whose beliefs they didn’t agree with.
lol basically ALL of them – I’ve been imagining Joyce whisper yelling questions at Jacob this whole time, and the time between the start of mass and sharing communion is not short D:
I thought chunks were an Orthodox thing? I know Catholics, at least when I still went, had a bowl of wafers, and maybe it’s different for Anglicans (especially since transubstantiation is the big shibboleth for them), but being descended from the Latin tradition, I assumed they still used flatbread…
As a former anglican, anglicans don’t do the whole transubstantiation thing. We partake in the communion to remember the last supper, the sacrifice of Jesus (and his father) and the redemption of our sins.
Anglicans usually use thin communion wafers. Either singles or a large wafer broken up into smaller pieces. They use fortified wine generally speaking; slightly different in taste to port or sherry.
A Presbyterian choir director of my acquaintance jokingly refers to the typical Protestant bread-and-grape-juice as the Heresy of Displaced Fermentation: the fermentation is taken out of the wine, where it belongs, and put into the bread, where it doesn’t.
Apparently, Jacob’s church takes a mix-n-match approach.
Footnote for those not in the know: Christian tradition generally* holds that the Last Supper was a Passover seder. Hence the “bread” he shared would have been unleavened — more like a cracker than what we think of as bread.
*There are those who are certain that the Last Supper occurred the day before Passover began. Others say we can’t really know for sure either way. It’s a Schroedinger’s Last Supper.
IIRC (and it’s been decades), Easter (which every Mass/service is a celebration of) has always fallen the week after Passover. So this makes sense to me.
“It’s Supposed to Be Knock-Off Matzos, People: A Comparison of Passover Seders and the Sacrament of Communion” – the title of an interfaith newsletter to which I would like to subscribe.
I never liked those wafers. It’s like, “Here have this thing that doesn’t taste like anything but don’t chew it. Just work up some saliva and let it dissolve the wafer.”
One of the reasons Catholics usually use wafers is that they keep.
Once the priest blessed them, they become Jesus’ body and if less of your congregation takes communion than you expected, you have to keep the rest until the next time.
For protestants, there is less problem with unused bread. It’s bread, you can use it as such.
In my admittedly limited experiences, the “sweet” bread was worse than the wafers (don’t ask me why, but our Episcopalian church had used both during the years I went there). At least the wafers could be disposed of quickly. The bread lasted forever and left a weird bittersweet aftertaste.
It varies from church to church. The Episcopal church I attended as a child also did wafers, but I did visit a few other ones where they used bread chunks.
the church i went to as a kid (some protestant-ish free church) had white bread and tiny individual cups of grape juice. when i was a young kid, after the service was over, i’d rush to the kitchen with my friends to drink out all the leftover cups and eat the bread. that was kinda the best about church. later, as a slightly older child, i was allowed to join the ceremony and would try with a bad conscience not to just think “yaaay i get to eat yummy bread in the middle of a service“ and instead imagine that weird “this is the body of Christ, given for us“ stuff and be a bit sad that Jesus had to die so i can eat bread at church.
I just want to say that the drawing of Ruth with a cat smile is sorta scaring me, and is what I imagine it would look like if Mary ever took over Ruth’s body
. . . . . .*tilts his raised Catholic head* I dare say that Joyce’s reactions are FASCINATING to me. I’ve always had it in the back of my head that everyone, even non practitioners, knew the general ceremonies of the Catholic, or Episcopalian, faith. So this arc, even if it is semi about getting Jacob to dumb Raidah, is looking to be one of my favorites thus far. . . . That and I’ve been loving the chat these past weeks. Good conversations all round.
My mom was raised in the Unitarian church, but her dad was Roman Catholic, so sometimes in holidays their family would go to a Catholic church. One time they were there and doing that mingling part of it, so a woman said to her, “Peace be with you.” And my mom said back, “Happy Easter!”
I don’t know, maybe it should have been, but apparently the woman just looked at her and said, “And. Also. With. You.” Before turning away.
Meanwhile, I had a professor in college who would often say, “May the Force be with you” when we finished talking, and my non-religous ass, having never said this within the walls of a church, would reflexively go, “And also with you.”
I mean, if it was a random week in October it wouldn’t have made much sense, but during the sign of peace, most people say “peace be with you,” but you can respond in any way you see fit. Wishing someone a happy Easter at an Easter mass would have been a perfectly reasonable expression of peace.
“And also with you” was the response in the course of the mass, but the sign of peace is not a response to the priest, so you can say what you want. Also, they changed it to “and with your spirit,” which John Mullaney hilariously highlighted in one of his standup routines.
One of my extended-family “uncles” from my grand parents’ time, freshly migrated from Hungary and not at all fluent in the local language (Spanish), once gave his condolences to a recently widowed neighbor by vigorously patting the guy’s shoulder, shaking his hand with a vise-like grip, and thunderously stating: “Vatcha gunna dooh… I kongratulite”.
I was told this story decades later by the widower himself. Dude was forever grateful to my relative for cracking him up so badly when he needed it most.
haha. yes, these liturgic patterns where you are supposed to know what’s the correct answer… i remember an easter sunday when my mother came into my room and said “The LORD has risen!“ to which you are supposed to reply “He truly has risen!” (it was in German, i don’t know if there is an equivalent in English, and if so, i probably translated it wrong!) – and a sleepy friend in my room that just woke up from that exclamation mumbled “yeah, the same to you!“, which stayed a kind of inside joke in my family for years.
i knew i’d get it wrong! 😀 thanks! (i decided not to google yesterday because it was bad enough that i then got a song with this as lyrics stuck in my head… as a recovering ex-christian, that’s kinda annoying when it happens)
Joyce of course has even more of a disadvantage than many people in that her exposure to pop culture has been limited. So she hasn’t picked up bits and pieces from all those shows and movies where anyone with an Irish background is Catholic and devout.
It can be fascinating the things we take for granted. I’ve encountered it when referencing 18 as a lucky number. It’s so ingrained in Jewish culture (chai, chet-yud, means life. Chet is 8 and yud is 10 in numerology. So bar mitzvah gifts will often be 18 dollars and so forth and so on.) that it never occurred to me that it wasn’t universal.
Joyce is a homeschooled kid from a fairly insular denomination who’s been told all her life that her church got it right and everyone else is on a scale from misguided to outright satanic.
She’s very sheltered, and her freak-out closely mirrors the author’s when he was exposed to the rest of the world.
Oh man, it’s certainly not an “everyone” thing. My family has some… religious roots, I guess? My Nana was Catholic (I think?) and I think all my aunts and uncles and parents went to church regularly when they were young, but even though my sister and I were baptised as babies, we never stepped foot in a church except for weddings/funerals after that. We’re not even sure what denomination we are, (well, were? I strongly believe that if I can’t even explain the difference between Christian and Catholic, I have no business calling myself anything of the sort.) let alone what the whole ritual is. I would be surprised if any of my aunts and uncles still went to church on the regular (or even the irregular).
My Nana’s funeral was a very strange affair to my sister and I. We left it mostly pissed because the pastor wouldn’t stop going on about what a good Christian my Nana was, and how they were certain all of her family was also great Christians who should totally come to his church more often.
Really, weddings are also a weird deal to me. Every time I end up in a church I get super anxious because I know there’s a huge ritual around it all and I have *no idea* what it is.
“the difference between Christian and Catholic” – Christians are believers in Jesus as the Messiah.
Early on, the church divided into Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic). Later, Henry VIII declared himself head of the church in England, breaking from Catholicism and creating the Church of England (Anglicanism and Episcopalianism). At around the same time, various movements in Europe also broke from Catholicism, creating the Reformed denominations (Protestantism). Churches in the Anglican communion follow a wide range of practices, some more like Catholicism (“High”) and some more like strict Protestantism (“Low”).
All these people are part of Christianity. Some Protestant churches (mostly in the US in my experience) who don’t believe Catholics are real Christians will contrast “Christian” with “Catholic”, but Catholics would say that on the contrary, they were Christians back before Protestantism ever got invented. 🙂
And then there are branches of Christianity that got separated from the main stream before the Great Schism (1054). I think the Coptic Church is Orthodox, but there is an Ethiopian Church that got cut off by the expansion of Islam in the 7th Century, and there are still some descendants of the Church of the East, which basically separated from the Orthodox/Catholic because it was in the Persian Empire when Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. (Doctrinally, the Church of the East schismed in the Nestorian Schism of 431.) There was a Christian realm in southern India when the Portugese arrived, claiming an apostolic succession to St Thomas.
The Copts are called Orthodox, but they long predate the Great Schism, so they’re not really related to the Greek or Russian Orthodox Church. It’s not really clear to me how the terms Orthodox & Catholic were used back before that Schism.
The Copts split off in 451, after the Council of Chalcedon.
And just to confuse things even more, “Coptic” is an adjective that can at times be applied to any Egyptian Christian. There is a Coptic Catholic Church, in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and there are Coptic Evangelicals.
And probably therefore Coptic Orthodox Christians (in the Russian/Greek sense) as well as the Coptic Orthodox Church. Just to be more confusing.:)
This story arc is being very educational.
I also learned earlier, by way of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, that Methodists are (or were) Episcopals.
Hey, the Coptic Orthodox Church has its own Pope. I wonder if there are others.
I’ve been to multiple wedding of friends of various Christian denominations.
The Catholic ones were great. The priest performing it knew the couple, their style, and the wedding felt like it fit them.
One of the others…I’m actually not sure what denomination it was…I was legit wondering if the priest was running for office and using the wedding as a soapbox (marriage is between a MAN and a WOMAN under GOD!), all of the wedding party was uncomfortable and glancing at the bride for the cue of “just keep smiling.” Side references to how the couple had been living together for years, etc.
I later learned the type of wedding was to make the grandparents happy. That evening I was in the hotel lobby when the bride and groom got back and the bride’s first words on entering the lobby were “did you hear that fucking sermon?!??”
The reception was great though, really felt like the couple actually had say in that (board games off to the side, the dance floor was off in a corner so there was a variety of space at varying distances from the speakers, very relaxed and fun).
Baptists do communion better, tbh. Annoying thing about going to church in other denominations is that I can’t partake in communion, since I abstain from alcohol.
For health reasons or on principle? Normally you get doled out a veeerrryy small portion, small enough that even kids get it. Not judging, just curious! ^.^
Here the Catholics are alcoholfree, too. They simply don’t offer any drink to go with the wafer, the priest drinks it in place of the congregation. But I generally assisted services with a majority of children in the pews, so that could be a factor
Ana Chronistic and Doctor_Who reliably and consistently post at 12:01 or 12:02. I know that Willis’s Patreon supporters have seen the strip ahead of time, and presumably have their first posts ready to cut, paste, and send…
But that still doesn’t explain how they get the page to load that early, while I’m hitting refresh at 12:06 and still not getting the new strip.
I think the final secret is deleting the browser cache, which prevents the cached version from loading in that span of time and instead retrieves the new strip.
GIVE HER THE JUICE AND NOBODY GETS HURT (I mean, if anyone would get hurt in the first place).
(also I need to get my mind checked because I looked at the tags and combined becky’s and jacob’s names to get bacob, and I accepted this for much longer than I should’ve).
I vaguely remember that when I got too old for sunday school, I would sneak out to the kitchen during boring sermons and get myself some apple juice. I have no idea why that church always had apple juice in the fridge, or why I thought it was ok for me to drink it.
My church always did the tiny glasses of grape juice and cubes of white bread. I remember being like 3 or 4 and feeling very annoyed that I was being left out of Snack Time.
I have been waiting for the return of the Joyce-meets-the-Episcopalians just so I could repost this XKCD strip I recently rediscovered. Couldn’t have picked a more appropriately titled DoA strip if I’d tried.
The question mark makes me just interested enough to read your headline and be mildly curious, but not interested enough to actually read your article/watch your segment.
My brain will now file this as “All Christians believe Jesus to be a supernatural flavor enhancer,” and a few months down the line, I’ll make a really angry rant about All These Religious Kooks honestly believing they can taste things better than I can.
I knew a fellow once whose bishop refused to ordain him because he had coeliac disease. He had to go to Rome and get a doctorate in Sacred Theology with a dissertation proving that the host doesn’t necessarily have to be unleavened wheat bread, then a letter from a cardinal asking his bishop to reconsider his ordination.
I like to joke that when it comes to alcohol, I have the palate of a British teenager.
Actually, just skip the booze and give me the straight sugar water juice or soda.
No Joyce, grape juice is gross. ;p And you know what else is, from one fundie-raised afab person to another? The way you’re acting about someone else’s practice of their faith. Seriously, I really really get how disconcerting it can be at first but…show some respect. >.>
I love Joyce because she’s so relateable to my lived experience, but those same reasons often make me uncomfortable because they remind me of things I’ve done or things that were done to me.
Cults suck. (Sorta non sequitur I know, but my particular church was a cult and I was thinking about that when I rewatched the film Spotlight last night. The similarities and differences and stuff. Made me cry a lot but in a cathartic way.)
I will admit, however, that if I were forced to pick between grape juice and apple juice, I would pick apple juice every time. I practically breathe it.
That’s because apple juice is super cheap, due to the scale apples are farmed on. Almost as cheap as water and sugar corn syrup, and they get to say it’s all juice.
I’m not really sure that this is true, but I have heard that the Australian government used to give a bounty or tax credit or something on fruit juice because people think it’s healthy, so the Coca-Cola® bottlers in Australia were making Coke® out of de-flavoured apple juice.
Yeah, strawberry. It’s hard to find – I’m guessing that there’s not much call for it, and/or it’s a bother to extract (all the seeds?). Usually turns up in mixes, restaurant supply, and so on. I love it, though.
Um, on Captain Awkward, when someone reveals something sad about their life in the comments, people say, “Jedi hugs, if you want them.” It’s like, I’m using the Force across great geographical distance to hug you. But only if you’re cool with hugs.
So, yeah. Jedi hugs if you want them. I’m sorry you had to grow up in a cult.
Additionally (not trying to step on toes!) I agree that Joyce’s attitude is gross (I had a friend in high school like that) but also I think that narrative wise this is probably overplayed for comedic effect.
I dunno, to me having the priest give out individual wafers seems more hygienic than a huge plate that everyone sticks their hand in :p
everyone complains that those wafers are the driest thing on the planet (they are), but the trick is to keep it in your tongue until you get the wine that soaks it.
(reminds me of the Simpsons when Otto was siphoning gas: don’t eat the mint first!)
All of the ones I’ve belonged to offer grape juice as an alternative. And I think she’d stop complaining about the lack of crackers once someone convinced her to try the challah.
Some denominations genuinely do. Never mind that that would be flat-out impossible before pasteurization, never mind that another guest explicitly mentions getting drunk…
(Others say wine today is sinful because it’s meant to be drunk straight, which was rare in those days.)
I’m not sure why water being turned into grape juice is anymore impossible than water being turned into wine or what pasteurization would have to do with.
Mind you, once the grape juice had been created, if it wasn’t pasteurized, it would start to ferment, but that’s a relatively slow process. It would still be grape juice when they drank it.
the churches i grew up in, we knew he turned it into wine, but we figured we wouldn’t mind us using grape juice instead ‘cuz it was just a memorial thingy anyway. symbolic and all. grape juice means older kids and alcoholics can drink it just fine, and the more poeple who can participate, the better! (assuming they were in a good place with God spiritually ofc, don’t want anybody getting sick because they symbolically connected with Jesus while actually being all rebellious and stuff!)
. . . the older i get, the weirder this all sounds
She’s still there…but she’s still got her deep beliefs to overcome (i.e. fear of change). On the plus side, she is trying VERY hard, so I will give her benefit of the doubt.
…I’m so glad I know nothing about all this religious nonsense. All these different cults to worship the same imaginary being, and none of them respect one another.
Most religions are not cults. As a cult survivor, I’d appreciate you not using the word in that way. It trivializes the harm survivors have gone through.
Feel free to Google “characteristics of cults.” There’s a specific definition for a group to be counted as one. And no I’m not going to spend any more time explaining what’s actually a pretty triggering subject for me. 🙂
With that said, it’s a term to be careful with googling, mostly because of a few conflicting definitions. There’s an academic anthropological one that actually does encompass most religions (it’s really broad), a convenient one used by some of the more cult like evangelical strains that likes to claim ridiculous things like unconventional theology as central indications of a cult, and then a few more reasonable ones that tend to focus on institutional mechanisms of control over members.
So, google it but make sure you’re dealing with definitions from that third category.
As someone who is not a cult survivor and has the ability to Google things, here is the definition that is most accepted by cult survivors groups and resources:
“Of course, the problem with the word ‘cult’ is that it means different
things to different folks. I’d like to put forward a behavioral definition:
An organization that uses intensive indoctrination techniques to recruit and
maintain members into a totalist ideology.
Intensive indoctrination techniques include:
1) Subjection to stress and fatigue
2) Social disruption, isolation and pressure
3) Self criticism and humiliation
4) Fear, anxiety and paranoia
5) Control of information
6) Escalating commitment
7) Use of auto-hypnosis to induce ‘peak’ experiences
(No, this is not ‘Singer’s list,’ but it is pretty close. This list is
my own, developed for a yearly lecture to Social Psych classes at the
U of Iowa.)
Totalism is defined by psychiatrist Robert Lifton as the tendency to view
the world in terms of ‘all or nothing’ alignments. Lifton details 8
‘psychological themes’ that can be found in totalist groups:
— A ‘sacred science’ — an ideology that is held to be true for all
people at all times. This ideology generally claims to be inspired
and scientific at the same time.
— ‘Milieu control,’ the control of human communication, not only over
our communications with others, but also with ourselves.
— ‘Mystical manipulation’ — including deception and ‘planned
spontaneity’ which seeks limit self-expression and independent action.
— The demand for purity, the notion that absolute purity exists, and
that anything done in the name of this purity is ultimately moral.
— ‘The cult of confession’ — “There is the demand that one confess to
crimes one has not committed, to sinfulness that artificially induced,
in the name of a cure that arbitrarily imposed.” (Lifton, _Thought_
Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism”)
— ‘Loading the language’ — redefinition of language, with an emphasis
on moral polarization, and thought terminating cliches.
— ‘Doctrine over person’ — the subordination of personal experiences
to the doctrines of the sacred science.
— ‘Dispensing of existance’ — the doctrine that the group can decide
who has the right to exist, and who does not.”
Basically, cults involve large-scale gaslighting and psychological abuse. Recovery from living in a cult requires therapy similar to abuse survivors who have been gaslit and no longer trust their own judgement or sense of reality.
Many cults may also hide sexual abuse, involve prostitution in order to convert people, or endorse physical abuse (for example, cult leaders in the “Quiverfull” movement wrote a book ‘To Train Up a Child,’ which endorses child abuse and recommends ways to hide that abuse from authorities who might call protective services).
If anyone here sees themselves or their religion in this list, know that this is not normal. This is abuse. Normal religions do not ask you to cut off your family and only befriend church members. Normal religions do not want to humiliate you, to believe that you are scum and cult leaders are gods. Normal religions do not want you to believe that it is inherently sinful to read non-religious books. They do not want you to sell your house and give them the money. They do not want unquestioning obedience. Normal religions do not justify sexual or physical abuse.
Religions vary widely on their expectations for adherants. Some semi-mainstream religions incorporate cult-like attributes (for example, Joyce’s parents prohibition of secular media). This is dangerous in itself. But all the elements combines create truly paralyzing situations.
I have definitely made the same, flippant “religion = cult” comparison without considering how that sounds to cult survivors, and I don’t think I’d say it again after reading this.
I would say, however, that religions use similar manipulations, just to lesser degrees of severity. Looking at that list, 3,4 and 5 are basic religious staples; 1,2 & 6 could be leveled at many major religious organizations. Most “normal religions” are more than happy to get unquestioning obedience, have more than happily accepted the sold off property of their believers, and have been sweeping child abuse under the rug since priests were given power and time alone with children.
The more I go over this list, the more the difference between a cult and a religion seems like one of severity, not in underlying structure.
Perhaps. Although, and perhaps I’m just optimistic, #3 and #4 has never been a part of my religious upbringing to any degree. I have experienced anxiety and I do criticise myself, but that has been just as much a facet of my natural personality (and other cultural values that aren’t necessarily religious, like emphases on competition and “winning” in school).
Whereas religious practice for me (barring one notable exception) was a place where I felt peaceful rather than anxious. And the church I’m now in provided ample opportunity to combat my own self-criticism by re-focusing my lens on my community and making it easy to serve in a way that uses my skills. I don’t have as much self-criticism because I can see how I’m helping my community, which I can feel good about. Additionally, I’m not comparing myself to others as much because I’m thinking less about myself in general.
Similarly, I would say that if a mainstream religion begins sweeping abuse under the rug, that religion (or those churches from that religion) have crossed the line from church to cult, regardless of size. I firmly believe that the Quiverfull movement is a cult, no matter how popular it gets (which is why I *hate* shows like “16 Kids and Counting”) because it is based at its root in child abuse and woman abuse practices, full-stop.
3 & 4 typically go together, with religion presented as the missing ingredient to correct ordinary human flaws & thoughts- sense of unfulfillment, reactionary anger, fear of death, normal human shit. The fear comes through implied future punishment for not following certain teachings, while the control of information (5) is the usual religious answer to “why not follow these other guys, they have religion too”
This whole list is so on the nose for Catholicism in particular, it’s not even funny. “Cult of confession”, accepting ridiculous donations from their members (putting basically none of it into charity), and covering up/excusing child abuse…that basically describes them to a T.
I’m rambling a bit because obviously there’s a huuuuuge range of religion in a million different flavors. The stricter the religion, the more it seems to hew to the definition of a cult. But if a religion is ultra lax…what about it is different than an ordinary Sunday brunch club?
Also, on a personal level, I attended a fairly liberal Episcopalian church, but I used to have nightmares about being punished by Jesus(es) coming off the crucifix and/or being sent to hell. Because these images and ideas are designed to frighten, to scare people into believing they have to do x y z or be punished. That is cultish to the core and yet a major feature of most religions.
For actual cults item 5 tends to manifest as either a very extensive list of explicitly banned information sources that people aren’t to read/listen to/watch, heavy restrictions on what conversations are allowed with those outside the cult (with extreme cults allowing none and less extreme cults cracking down on anything that looks even slightly like friendship), etc.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some mainstream religions which are frighteningly cult like – more than a few megachurches come to mind – but that most religions don’t actually try to command their members to only access certain sources of information. They may poison the well for all other sources, but that’s not the same thing.
Essentially there’s a spectrum with mainstream religions on one end (some cult like aspects, but not heavily emphasized) and the actual dangerous cults on the far other end (taking all those warning signs and exaggerating them).
A religion like Joyce’s is not all the way to cult, but it’s definitely leaning in that direction.
cults are to churches what totalitarian regimes are to governments: one CAN turn into the other, and it HAS happened more than once but it’s not a natural progression and usually the transition involves a charismatic leader willing to use people as objects
Too bad. If you’d taken a minute or two to read the other comments, you’d have found a whole bunch of people having fun learning about each other’s traditions.
In the previous strip in this storyline, someone mentioned that they predict that Joyce will become atheist or agnostic rather than convert to a more liberal / accepting form of Christianity, because too much of what she needed from her religion were rooted in the routines, symbols, rituals, and other elements of evangelical fundamentalism (which is inseparable from homophobia and sexism). And since she needs to be able to love and accept her LGBT friends now more than she needs her religion, she’s going to (eventually) let it go entirely, rather than eventually find meaning in rituals, routines, and symbols that are currently strange to her.
And that got me thinking on a track that excites me a bit. Because which character in the cast is an atheist, and can relate to needing a routine, rituals, and symbols to find meaning in, even if other people think her strange for it?
DINA!
It is high time for a Dina-and-Joyce adventure, imo.
Because remember why Joyce and Dina got off on the wrong foot? Joyce believes that evolution is wholly incompatible with Christianity, and that while it could made sense to be a Christian who supports LGBT people, it doesn’t make sense to believe in the Bible and evolution.
But by now, Joyce must realize how much Dina loves and cares for Becky. She fought for her! They are so similar. If Joyce’s character arc is going to end with her losing her religion–or at least facing that possibility–I predict Dina is going to be the final catalyst for that.
Sorry, poor phrasing. I meant that Joyce believes that evolution and Christianity are contradictory, so one must choose one or the other; both cannot be correct.
Honestly I’m just a little startled every time I come across that one.
“Evolution contradicts the Biblical creation story, if taken literally!”
Y’know what else contradicts the Biblical creation story if taken literally? The Biblical creation story, if taken literally.
@ Stella: yes to all that! Ever since their confrontation over dinosaur feathers, I’ve been thinking that if you look past the surface details, Joyce and Dina are so alike. I really want to see them interact more.
i’m used to the same type as you joyce *although haven’t been to church for a few years* but i wouldn’t be against the type mentioned here if i went to church and found that to be the case.
To elaborate a slight bit: I was raised by a witch (who was raised by a Catholic woman (whose family apparently had ties to the Nazis.)). My primary experience with Christianity was talking to people who were themselves Christian. The only blatantly-Christian media I ever recall watching was Veggie Tales, which I held in the same regard as Wishbone; fun stories and characters, but ultimately based on fiction.
My only experiences inside of an actual church, for the longest time, involved funerals and weddings. During middle school, I was invited to attend something called “Vacation Bible School”, which took place during summer break (hence the name). Technically, my brothers were invited by their friends, and I was sort of along for the ride. It was… Well, I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that all of these people actually believed the things they were talking about.
The part that sticks with me most is a segment involving a re-enactment of (what I assume to be) a section of the Bible. The people running it handed us little index cards with string on them, which were apparently supposed to be our name plaques, and had us write our names on them in crayon. Then, they turned out all the lights and had us hand the “plaques” to someone who I think was meant to be playing a prophet, and she dipped them in water and wiped the names off of them. Then, people I assume were meant to be “guards” came in, saw the blank “plaques”, and said we were free to go, or something to that effect.
The entire thing blew my wee autistic mind, to the point I actually sprinted out of the room during one of the segments, and curled up behind a potted plant in the hallway until it was time to go home. There were more events like these over the years, but I never went to any of them, and actually wound up distancing myself from the kids we’d gone with.
Man, all I remember from vacation bible school is making candles and cat’s-eye dreamcatchers. Oh and one time a kid accidentally sneezed a glob of snot on me. That was….not great.
Like, doing bread and wine I get. Preferring not to do communion I get too. But the halfwayness of doing crackers and grape juice is just weird to me. Grape juice sounds like what he offered Judas while everyone else got wine.
All this makes me wonder how Joyce would react to a non-Christian ceremony – better because she’d be prepared for weird/exotic rituals, or worse because she’d be prepared for weird/exotic rituals? Anyway, good on Becky for knowing things outside her field of experience and being on standby mode for Joyce meltdowns.
Possibly better – assuming you could get her to go at all, not just because she’d be prepared, but because she’d be more in observation mode than in “this is my church for the week” mode.
All this talk of who and when is okay to take what communion, and it occurs to me that I’ve definitely taken communion a couple of times because that’s just what was happening. And that I am not baptized. Also that I am not even religious, annnd that at a Catholic funeral, I had to leave the church because the swinging of the incense thurible gave me an asthma attack. So, probably some sort of evil resides in me and I am a body of sin, but, when I was younger I did think the wine was neat.
Anyway, in my adulthood I choose to remain away from churches because I feel my presence would be an insult to the devout, though I do arbitrarily agree with and live by many of the goodwill and kindness tenets of many religions. I just don’t want the effort of religion… used up? On me.
I’m not religious either, but I don’t have a problem with going to church, should the occasion arise – friends going/wedding/funerals etc. I wouldn’t take communion though. That seems more disrespectful to me. That’s more like pretending to be part of the religion than just going to the service is.
At least it seems that way to me.
also, my cousins kid is going to church and the advice id have given her is “when you want to leave, just say youre going to the restroom, its what i did”
Bwahaha 🙂
My parents go to a co-operating parish where the church had Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist ministers who each took a week to administer communion.
I remember being really glad when the methodist communion rolled around because there was ribena instead of nasty wine…
I attended Episcopal church as a child. The kids get the wine as well. I believe they get around the whole “giving alcohol to minors” thing because it’s for a legitimate religious practice. Some churches also use mustum (basically wine with little or no alcohol), but I don’t think my church did. Keep in mind, we’re talking a VERY small amount of wine here. At the church that I attended most often, where they’d use communion wafers (basically a small piece of thin white bread, about an inch in diameter, with a cross on it) for the bread, the priest would dip the wafer halfway into the wine goblet, and you’d eat that. My mother did take me to a different church a couple of times (also episcopalian) where they’d use an actual loaf of bread, and instead of dipping it, you’d have to take a sip directly from the goblet, but even then, the priest would be the one holding it, and they were pretty good about making sure you only got a sip of it. There was also the option of only taking the bread or the wine if you wanted, instead of both. I personally only ever took the bread, because I hated the taste of the wine. (I still do, honestly. Only grape wine I actually enjoy is Lambrusco.)
I’m not sure how you’d handle that, since I’ve never had much of a grip on the whole “communion” thing. My guess is, you either shaft them out of going to Heaven by giving them a more “appropriate” substitute, or you play it to the hilt and trust them not to go wild with the minuscule amount of alcohol they’re drinking. I wouldn’t put too much stock into this non-religious individual’s half-formed notions, though.
I’ve been to Catholic and Calvinist masses. The previous resolved it by only the priest drinking wine, and all the other members of the congregation receiving only the wafer. At the latter, you could only take part after your confirmation at 13, and even after that you were supposed to only take a sip from the cup. Fun fact, our congregation was very proud when we could finally afford having individual cups instead of a big common cups (mind, they were all silver).
I typed all this partially because I wanted to finally comment on your name, which I like very much, I think for reasons unknown to you. In hungarian “volt” is the past tense of to be, so your name looks like to me: new llend (used to be henry). Idk why I find it funny
I heard tales that you Protestant heathens* used grape juice and crackers instead of flat wafers and watered-down wine, but never had it confirmed until today …
* my use of heathens is sarcastic, please understand and treat it as such, i mean no offense to anyone
Teetotaler denominations are weird. Though my home church offers grape juice for people with conditions (and I guess for people who REALLY don’t want to drink wine).
The drinking age really only applies to buying and consuming alcohol in public. And really, the actual law itself allows underage drinking for religious purposes, medical purposes, and in private establishments i.e. private clubs or at your house.
I wonder how Joyce would feel about my friend and my snack cracker idea, “Jeez-Its,” that you can pair with our special jelly which is the plasma of Christ.
Honestly, bless Jacob for trying his best to be a good host and not letting any of this get to him. I can understand Joyce is struggling right now, but she keeps dipping into rude territory and I’m not sure she’s even noticed.
I feel bad that Jacob’s already apologized for “pushing” Joyce just by inviting her here while she’s done nothing but loudly complain about how everything’s wrong in his church.
It’s always a risk that you become so used to the details of a regular service that it becomes possible to cruise through it on autopilot and thus maybe, just maybe, miss the point. Joyce: The brand doesn’t matter and you should probably be thinking of other things at that point.
Joyce has somehow never grasped that churches of a different denomination may actually do (or believe!) things in a different way. Did her parents fail to discuss this with her or did she just refuse to listen? I mean, the whole point of different denominations is that other people are doing church “wrong”, right?
Discussing this made me suddenly see Joyce’s dilemma. Joyce is afraid to do church “wrong”, so she pretends that differences between churches are not big enough to make a moral difference. But the differences she experiences in Jacob’s church are actually big enough to make her afraid she might be doing the wrong thing by joining their service.
She has fundie parents and was raised in a fundie environment. The only time other denominations’ rituals would be discussed would probably be in the vein of how they’re wrong and only their own rituals are right.
In all honesty, her parents might not have expanded much more than “they’re worshiping Christ wrong”. Maaaybe they would have gone into depth about some things, like the crucifix discussion from the other day, but actually going into depth about the rituals and the difference in beliefs probably would not have been on the table.
In Fundie denominations, other faiths are “not Christian” and “do it wrong” as demonstrated by their failure to have all the small aspects that they say are required.
So when Joyce is seeing all this, she’s got a voice in the back of her head that says that every difference is proof that this is actually a church to Satan and that she isn’t actually worshipping God at all.
And yet she seems to have a default assumption that any church will be acceptable and not too different, which isn’t what I’d expect. Might be a side-effect of the whole non-denominational thing – church is church (except for the Catholics). Whereas, if she was for example a Fundie Southern Baptist, she’d know to avoid non-Baptist churches and expect there to be big differences if she did go into an Episcopal one.
Pretty much the only complaint I have about the UCC church I grew up in (apparently.. one of, uh, the largest UCC churches in the country?) was that we used grape juice and not wine.
(Then again, I suppose one of the reasons it was so good/liberal/welcoming was that Rick and Jill were fantastic pastors..)
In my experience, no. The Episcopal church I attended as a child would always make it a point to mention that any guests of non-Episcopalian Christian denominations were free to partake or not partake in the Holy Eucharist.
Oh no. This past holiday season, my uncle wanted as many of us to attend a church service together as could be arranged (my brother had to work, so he got out of it) as a kind of reaction to my grandmother’s death that August. My parents still go to the same Episcopal church we all went to when my brother and I were kids. I sat there, thumbing through the Naval Research Laboratory’s Plasma Formulary the entire service, and nobody gave a toss.
Can’t speak about Espicopalian, but my home church (LMS) had a little warning about the small, but important differences in beliefs about the Eucharist between denominations and how you SHOULDN’T partake if you weren’t sure. And to feel free to ask a pastor too.
The point being yes. As a non member of the denomination, much less the church, Joycec would not be expected to take part in communion or the offerings.
Becky trying to whisper support and advice non-disruptively is just adorable. As is Jacob’s concern as he worries he’s pushed her too quickly into this knowing what he does now about how she handles changes (especially around what she considers religious).
And it really hammers home how this is exactly the two best equipped to try and be there for her as she attempts to do this.
But it also makes me more suspicious that Joyce is not going to be able to hold onto her faith like Becky has. She’s a lot more set in her ways about church than Becky and a lot more teetering on the edge of “if how I was raised was wrong, then my faith is wrong” than Becky’s “my God answers lesbian prayers”.
Like, I think she’ll continue trying things like this, but I have a feeling that if it’s going to involve a certain amount of change, she’ll find it easier and more meaningful to lose her faith completely.
I wonder if Joyce doesn’t have a less blatant case pf autism than Dina. Not all autistic people fit the quiet savant mold – especially women with autism tend to be good at masking it until they change their environment and their old mask no longer works. Plus a lot of autistic people are extroverted and have Joyce’s brand of boundary-oblivious hail-fellow-well-met over-friendly enthusiasm. It would explain her picky eating, social trouble, and black and white thinking, as well as her tendency to rigidity in her routines and thinking. I see a lot of one of my autistic cousins in Joyce the more we see how hard adjusting has been for her.
I am more of a Dina – but not all autistics are like me.
Unlikely. Joyce and many of her behaviors and much of her character are based on Willis’s own upbringing. She’s almost certainly not intentionally written to autistic.
If we interpret his second-hand character tics as autism, we’re uncomfortably close to diagnosing him over the Internet.
“Based on” =/= “is literally the exact same way”. I’m not diagnosing Willis with autism, I’m headcanonning Joyce as autistic.
Also, that’s kind of the exact thing Willis said about Dina: she’s based on his own quirks, and if people think she’s 100% autistic, well, that sure is a thing isn’t it. He doesn’t know though.
So if we can say ‘yep Dina is autistic’ we can almost definitely also say ‘yep Joyce is autistic’
that’s an interesting theory. I’ve been assuming Joyce is NT, but you’ve listed a bunch of things that she has in common with me, and yeah, sometimes I’m a lot like Dina but other times I’m way more outgoing (kinda manic-pixie-oblivious-girl).
otoh, maybe autistic traits are more common than generally believed. or maybe they can also be caused by weird upbringing (r/raisedbynarcissists seems to have an unusually high number of both people with autism, and people whose parents told them they had autism when they didn’t)
Awwww, Becky trying so hard to help. In fact, it looks like she expect an epic freakout. No jokes, no cute side comments, no sudden moves. Only helpful whispers, friendly passiveness and full attention
The Eucharist was originally a full on meal shared by the congregation including the wine and the bread as the actual substance of Christ’s body and blood (wine, of course, has special properties that are easily associated with the spiritual). This made the Church a center of hospitality and welcome. As the Church became more powerful and wealthy, communion was paradoxically reduced to a token which became representative of exclusivity; in the RC at least one was not supposed to partake of it without first making use of the confessional to provide sufficient purity to be worthy of this sacrament. As far as how much wine you drink, it all has to be consumed so if the congregation as a whole is niggardly the ministering priest may have to consume fairly impressive quantities.
Huh, I haven’t been to an Episcopal church that used bread instead of wafers for the Eucharist. I wonder if Jacob’s church also does the “some people dip, some people sip” thing; you’d think bread would pick up a lot more wine than the wafer does. (I could not say for certain; the one church I visited that used bread also gave tiny, tiny cups of grape juice.) It’s always neat to see how things vary even in the same denomination.
Lutheran here. For any protestant, communion is symbolic, and the bread/wafer and juice/wine issues should not have religious significance. Our Pastors generally twist the cup slightly as they let everyone have a sip (or people dunk their bread/wafer), and after a full rotation they’d switch to a new cup while a helper wipes the rim.
Oh deary me. Joyce, Episcopals use actual wine (generally watered down, depending on the specific church and service) and bland-ass little wafers (although I’m sure there are some that do real bread). It’s been a long time (huzzah atheism), but I still remember those bloody wafers and how they would occasionally velcro themselves to the roof of my mouth (worse than bloody peanut butter).
See I know there are other issues here, but as an Anglican the fact that they’re talking during the Eucharist prayers really annoys me :p it’s like people who talk at the cinema during the climax :p.
Anyway, I can only echo what people above have said; all the Anglican churches I’ve ever been in use wafers instead of bread. Things may be different across the pond, though.
I have never been to an Episcopal service, so that’d be a new one on me. Then again, I gave up my faith ages ago, so unlike Joyce I’m not worried about “doing church wrong”.
Her panel 4 and panel 6 are so composed I hate to tell he she’s in for another shock.
after many churches that did Tray Of Crackers And Plastic Cups i went to one that had us go up to the front, take a hunk of bread, and dip it in grape juice
and the bread was SO FUCKING GOOD
it was undoubtedly the BEST bread-related experience i have ever had in my life, and i have eaten a lot of bread
and every time i think about it i’m sO MAD that i didn’t ask the lady who made it for her recipe. even if i was like 15 and the idea of making my own bread was 4 years distant on the horizon i’m so disappointed in myself
“Oh, holy SHIT! Pardon my French. But that is some very fine Jesus, best Jesus I ever had. Gee whiz. You’ve got to give me the recipe!” *wipes mouth with sleeve*
I had to do communion once. We visited my religious grandmother and my mother said ‘if you all tell her you’re some form of atheist/agnostic she might actually die’ so we had to pretend we’d done it before. I had awful social anxiety and queues were terrifying, strangers were terrifying, church was terrifying. All I have is a vague recollection of shaking terribly and nearly choking on a wafer in a large building with candles.
I’m having a reverse-Joyce moment here. Was raised Catholic, and reading the description of communion as “grape juice and crackers” makes me cringe a lot.
Fellow recovering Catholic. Also, having them passed around and picking one out at random, instead of being issued to you by a man of the cloth who guarantees you that your very host is the body? That sounds awfully chancy!
Wafers? Who gets wafers? My family was split non-denom and Catholic, and both churches gave broken pieces of white unsalted crackers (though the pass-around tray versus trip to the front and wine versus grape juice still applied).
I don’t want to go all “well, REAL Catholics!” on you, but that does sound weird for an a
ctual Catholic Church, Obi, because the official Catholic doctrine (i.e. the Vatican) does not recognize anything other than communion wafers as being allowed. The reason being that crackers crumble, so you could get crumbles of the actual body of Christ spread through the floor, stepped on, thrown in the trash etc, which would be disrespectful.
So I’m going to guess that protestant churches that partake in communion with crackers don’t actually believe it is The Actual Literal Body of Christ, but more of a symbolic act. I did not know that this type of communion still existed nowadays until this comic, which was interesting.
Also agreed, wafers are dry and unsavory. When I was a kid I was convinced that they were made out of paper and just CALLED it a bread product.
Your crackers may be our wafers. I don’t call it a cracker because it’s thinner and flatter than most crackers and doesn’t really “crunch” so much as snap when you break it. Like Ditrysia said, gotta avoid those crumbs.
I’ve got to say that I’m finding this strip physically painful. Joyce doesn’t just come across as naive here but as wilfully ignorant and maybe even a little condescending! I know that she doesn’t mean it but I find it hard to believe that she doesn’t realise that other denominations may do things in a very, very different way!
Right with you. Honestly, doing a tiny bit of research or even just asking someone wouldn’t have killed her.
Though, I admit, this reaction comes from having (more than once) taking someone along to an activity I wanted to do and spending the whole time tending to their Feelings Break.
It change, something Joyce is not very good with. While she has come a very long way from her first strip (atheist best friend, lesbian best friend, etc) one does not simply change who they are or what they believe in/what they are use to. This whole thing is being played for laughs but its hard on her to come to grips when so many things in her life, even something as simple as the concept that not everyone does everything exactly like you, keep changing. It’s like standing on ice without skates. Every time you get your balance back after falling, something else changes and causes you to fall again.
I’m an atheist, though the least militant kind you are likely to meet. But even I must shake my head about how disagreements over the form and meaning of the Eucharist led to real people to really kill each other.
I remember preparing for my first Communion (Catholic, early ’70s) and reading this in a pamphlet: “Please don’t tell children they will hurt the Baby Jesus by chewing the Eucharist.”
This was a thing they found necessary to point out.
To adults.
I stopped going to church in 1985. The few times I’ve been to Mass since then (weddings, funerals, christenings), I’ve passed on Communion out of respect for those who are still active in the Church.
Yes but there is something disturbing in the adult human psyche that for some reason impels us to believe that telling children mentally and/or emotionally-scarring lies is somehow a positive educational method.
My great-great-aunt took particular delight in telling four-year-old me of the imp with garden shears that cut off the thumbs of little boys who sucked their thumbs. This was considered to be positive reinforcement.
The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legg’d scissor-man…
Snip! snap! snip! the Scissors go;
And Conrad cries out: ‘Oh! oh! oh!’
Snip! snap! snip! They go so fast,
That both his thumbs are off at last.
‘Struwwelpeter, or Pretty Stories & Funny Pictures.’
Good old childhood memories.
More thoroughly brainwashed, incapable of independent thought and a good example of their community to throw at those Godless people to show them how much better her Church’s people are.
First time I went to a Catholic mass after years of going to a church where we got the tiny cups of grape juice and stale crackers, my mom and I were absolutely STUNNED that not only were they serving little kids wine but also that everyone was sharing the same cup! My mom refused to stand up to receive the eucharist and I stood up but turned back last minute. Fortunately after years of going to Catholic school I found out that you can pass on having to do all that by just crossing your arms over your chest like a mummy–the father will just bless you verbally or something, something in latin.
The wine was always kind of optional at my church. Adults could just skip it (we queued for communion and the wine was kind of off to the side), and kids weren’t expected to do more than the wafer.
The few times I’ve been to a church service, I’ve tended to tune out at least somewhat. But I just remembered the time my high school (a few years after I graduated) put on a production of Godspell. It was kind of surreal. I like musicals and all, but it was weird to be sitting in my public high school listening to that. Apparently the theatre kids had to go around insisting to people that it wasn’t really a religious show. Despite being about Jesus.
I agree about Jesus Christ Superstar, but Godspell is very different. (Side note, sometimes when I’m busy taking the Lord’s name in vain, my brain decides to tack a word on, so I go, “Jesus Christ Superstar!”
Well, Judas gets a very sympathetic rap in it. And Mary Magdalene, as well as Judas, says Jesus is “just a man”. So not really, no. 🙂 Great musical, though.
Interesting trivium! “Jesus Christ Superstar” was banned in some places for promoting Christianity and in others for deriding Christianity. The authorities weren’t sure what it was, but they knew they didn’t like it.
Funny thing, I read somewhere that Romans were crept out by early Christians because they kept talking about eating bits of their Lord (cannibalism) and called each other brother/sister (incest).
it’s funny how she had an easier time adjusting to people with totally opposing viewpoints than she does adjusting to a group with similar viewpoints that just have a few aesthetic differences.
I grew up in the years following Vatican II, and my (Roman Catholic) church used real wine, but even after many of the changes to the liturgy (use of the vernacular rather than Latin, priest facing the congregation, elimination of the Tridentine Mass) had been implemented it was still only on rare and special occasions that the congregation was permitted to partake of communion in both forms. Later on (like in the late ’80s and after) it became more common.
I’ve also seen some parishes moving away from the dark red vin ordinaire and using lighter-colored wines like a rosé, white zins, and (in one instance) a chardonnay.
soo… anyone else watching The Orville? Apparently I’m not caught up yet, but, I watched episode 3 last night and holy fuck I wasn’t expecting them to dive straight into issues like that… I was expecting light dysfunctional entertainment and got serious ethical debate 🙂
I was pretty skeptical when I heard the connection to Family Guy (ugh I find that show’s humour so irritating!) but I’d actually completely forgotten about that, and when I was trying to find the name of the show today I thought it was connected to Rick and Morty instead. 🙂
Most of the humour is about the crew being incredibly dysfunctional and gossipy, or poking fun at stereotypes. It’s fairly cringey at times, but not dragged out like in Family Guy. The most annoying thing I remember is that in episode 3, even when they’re arguing for equality they’re doing it based on awful american assumptions about gender. I’m not sure if that was intentional or if the writers just haven’t noticed how immersed in that culture they are.
…so basically, it’s too soon to tell, but I’m hoping it might turn into a more TNG-like show with interesting dilemmas, but still with lots of crass humour and “how did they get that past the censor” moments.
…at least here, where those who would use it against me aren’t likely to get past moderation. most parts of the internet I value the protection of ambiguity.
So here’s a thought related to the story and not religion: what are the chances the pastor is Ryan’s dad? I’m half expecting Joyce to go up for communion and then see some sort of familial resemblance. She’s already pretty shaken, so I imagine it would be the last straw for her and she might legitimately freak out
If Ryan said his dad was a ‘pastor’, the likelihood is small. There’s a range of words used to describe clergy in the Anglican communion (priest, minister, vicar, and others), but ‘pastor’ isn’t one I’ve ever heard there.
Unlikely. Episcopalian clergy can marry, unlike Catholics, but AFAIK they still use the same terminology, and I had never heard the word pastor until I was forced into an Evangelical church. “Pastor” is for Protestants and their ilk, in my knowledge.
You also had to have finished some right or be a certain age or something? I never paid attention, and if you just acted like everyone ells you could do the wine thing anyway.
Your preaching to the quire my friend. When you live your life with dyslexia you just kind of except that your gonna have a lot of mistakes when typing on the internet,.
Yeah. In a lot of Churches you don’t take Communion until you have reached “the age of discretion”, learned the catechism and the basic doctrines of Church, and been through the ritual of “first communion” a.k.a. “confirmation”, which in some Churches must be conducted by a bishop.
Slight addendum, first communion and confirmation are different sacraments (at least in Catholicism).
Communion is a sacrament in its own right that you do weekly, so first communion is just when you’re old enough to start participating, usually around age 7 or so. Confirmation (the one that requires the bishop) is when you become a full “adult” member of the church, and comes a little later. That varies more from parish to parish, my church did it in 6th grade but some of my cousins didn’t do it until they were juniors in high school (the rationale being that you need to be old enough to commit). In that sense it’s kind of like a christian bar mitzvah, but with a saint instead of a torah portion and minus the sweet party/language requirements.
Addendum to my addendum, the above is just for Roman Catholics. I know people from other churches have their first communion later (maybe with baptism), or don’t really do confirmation at all, etc., so it’s likely someone has in fact just rolled them together.
I mean, as a kid raised Catholic, they usually watered down the wine with cranberry juice, but we got the wafer-made-of-paper, not real bread. I’d of loved real wine and bread.
Hello everyone! I have been obsessively following Dumbing Of Age since Dec 3 2015, but all this time have been to shy to comment on anything. I have finally decided that it’s silly to be nervous about anonymously commenting on a web series. so I say again Saluton, Guten Tag, Bonan Tagon, Beunos Dias, Ni Hao, Hajimemashite, and Salutations! those are the only languages i know how to say hello in…….
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“and you have individual tiny glasses? not everyone drinking out of the same cup or anything??”
“um”
I was raised Orthodox. We got spoon-fed our wine. Like, a little baby spoon. And the bread would be IN the wine. We got little pieces of wine-soaked bread.
In hindsight, it was a little weird.
Yeah, that does seem a little…
…unorthodox 😎
*claps* Very good.
You deserve more recognition for that!
Pablo – Like! Upvote! etc…
Sambo – I couldn’t agree more!
eeeYEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH DUM-DADUMMM!
Greek or Russian Orthodox. I think Russian did it that way, but it’s been a looooooooooooooong time.
Russian. My dad’s family is actually sort of mixed Eastern European (and my mom’s is mixed Western European), so we figured “close enough”.
The consensus seems to be we are Czech/Ukranian, but when I visited Ellis Island I looked up our name and it’s Hungarian, so I guess that’s in there too.
Huh? the last name “Who” is Hungarian? Never would have guessed that.
As I recall, bread soaked in the wine rather than separate is mostly a Russian Orthodox and it’s close relatives thing. A sacrament spoon is a reasonably common, but by no means universal, Orthodox thing in general.
Wine soaked bread is one of my best memories of church. I honestly don’t really like wine, but man, it is good with bread.
Yeah, that is basically what we of the Serbian Orthodox Church do too.
I guess it’s being poor thing/custom. Probably back in the days you couldn’t always have enough wine for everyone, so you took one cup worth of it, put bread int it and then shared.
But eh that’s just custom. The weird idea fro me is NOT using bread and wine.
We have the bread in the wine (grape juice) at Metropolitan Community Church Brisbane, so it’s not just an Orthodox thing, as we’re as Protestant and Liberal as you can get in a Christian Church.
Huh. Now that I think of it, churches that keep the bread and wine separate, but believe in transubstantiation, are going against literature… they’ve got their pound of flesh without a drop of blood in it!
I was raised Methodist. When we got to the Eucharist – once a month as I recall – we got a small cube of bread and a tiny glass of “wine” (real wine for the adults, Ribena for the children). We had to get up and kneel around the edge of the dais, and were given the sacrament.
…afai remember, it was like 24 years since I last went to church. (I stopped when I was 10, and am now an Atheist). xD
You may be atheist, but I am a theist.
Doctor_Who – No weirder than everything in EVERY religion.
Some Episcopal Churches, I should note, use wafers rather than bread.
Also, I’m a little disappointed–Willis missed an element that I’m sure Joyce would’ve commented on by now–“Episcopal Calisthenics”. Here, take a look on the right-hand page: http://stjohnsfortworth.com/wp-content/uploads/24-Sept-2017-Bulletin-for-Web.pdf
Look in the parentheses: Stand. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand. Stand. Kneel. Kneel. Stand. Sit. [Communion, effectively a Kneel]. Kneel. Kneel. Kneel. And technically, during the Recessional, you Stand again.
This is fairly typical during Mass, and I’ve never seen a non-Catholic visitor NOT comment on it at the time.
Canadian Anglicans (at least, at my old church), and I assume British Anglicans do the same thing, although if your knees aren’t up to it it’s okay to stay seated. They have a little padded bar to kneel on and everything.
So far as Communion went, you had to be Confirmed first (a sort of graduation ceremony following extracurricular studying with the priest), which you could do when you were seventeen. After that, you could take the Eucharist (before that you’d go up and kneel, but not put out your hands, and the priest would just bless you). Once you had been Confirmed, you could put out your hands for the half-piece of holy wafer (which had like zero taste and would basically dissolve on your tongue–may have been rice-based, thinking about it now), and then the secondary priest would come around with the goblet and give you a sip of the wine (which was really, really tasty; Wild Vines’ Blackberry Merlot is pretty close to my memory of it; very sweet and fruity).
We learned in Confirmation classes that, between the goblets always being either actual gold or silver (which germs can’t live on), and the alcohol, plus the goblet being wiped and turned slightly between each sip, there wasn’t much of a risk of germs being shared, as by the time that portion of the goblet came round again, the alcohol in the wine plus the precious metal would have killed off the few germs still left behind after wiping.
Fun fact: Confirmation, which is a Sacrament among Catholics, used to be the one and the same that Ordination of Priests (the Sacrament that makes you into a priest), and it was based on the Imposition of Hands the Apostles did to transfer the power to do miracles to their advanced disciples, which in turn was based on the transference of power by Christ when he gave his Apostles and Disciples the power to heal the sick and exorcist demons, and by the Holy Spirit, when he descended on them during Pentecost …
It’s funny because, if you think about it, priests are supposed to receive Divine Power, D&D RPG style…
It was later made into three levels: Confirmation (you were a full Christian, required a priest), Ordination of Priests (you were a priest, required a bishop) and Ordination of Bishops (you were a bishop, required three bishops). Each time you received more Divine Mojo…
Christianism originally was a very “magical” religion…
I remember a story in Reader’s Digest where someone’s husband went to their first Catholic mass. Stand, kneel, stand, sit, kneel, the husband wiped his face with a handkerchief and dropped it in his lap.
His wife, noticing this, said; “Is your fly open?”
The husband responded; “No, should it be?”
That is because Catholicism is not just a religion, it’s an excersise regim.
Only time I had the wine was for my First Communion, where the priest dipped the host in the wine before placing it on my tongue. Not the best wine I’ve ever had by a long shot, but still not the worst.
Some catholics used to do the bread soaked in wine too…
still do, but rare. A little messy and the wine is optional anyway. If you are into Real Presence, don’t want to drip Him.
I can’t help but feel that Joyce isn’t truly embracing the spirit of this whole “try new things” bit…
Hopefully she won’t have sour grapes afterwards
*rimshot*
You earned it. 🙂
So long as she doesn’t wine about it.
In fairness, “trying new things” is itself a new thing for her, so she isn’t particularly good at it.
Not true! Just the other day she bought a Coke Zero…
I envy her, living back when those still existed…
They still do; our CEO drinks it so I order it for the work fridge.
Where do you live? In Canada, Coke Zero is available everywhere normal Coke is.
In the UK they’ve renamed it Coke Zero Sugar, but I haven’t noticed it tasting any different.
The tabloids apparently said people were up in arms, but they say that every time anyone does anything.
That’s what they did here in ‘murica, too. Same stuff, new label. It’s basically the diet version of Coca-Cola Classic, as opposed to Diet Coke (which is more like New Coke). It’s good, but I still keep some regular Diet Coke on hand. Sometimes you just need the kind of nostalgia rush that only the metallic aftertaste of aspartame can conjure.
Having tried it, I think it tastes more like Diet Coke than it used to. It used to taste a bit more like just regular Coke than Diet Coke.
I’m not happy about it.
She knew she was trying a new branch of Christianity, but new food? That’s a bridge too far – this is a woman who can’t even eat most kid’s food because too many ingredients are brushing up against each other.
One way or another, there’s going to be a lot of wining.
Don’t most churches have a non-alcoholic alternative, even if they generally use wine?
My parents Presbeterian church had wine on the inside cups on the tray and grape juice on the outside, and the tray of cups were passed up and down the pews. Every Episcopal church I have been to was full on wine in a chalice and you want up front to get it. “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.”
Episcopal churches mix water and wine during the prep. Though from having been the assisting acolyte for at least three different priests (back before I was a godless atheist) the amount of water used to dilute the wine can vary significantly.
Yup. It’s fun when the priest overestimates the number of people coming up for Communion. You’re not allowed to just throw that stuff out after the blessing–it’s officially “the Blood of Christ” at that point. Acolytes (not assisting with the Eucharist proper) are the last ones to receive Communion for this very reason–you learn quickly to judge how much to drink by how much the priest tips the goblet.
At every Anglican church (the English Episcopal church) I was at it was: the blood of Christ, shed for you.
Not sure about the alcohol content, but I started taking communion around my confirmation (11 years old). So I’m guessing it’s not that alcoholic.
In churches I attended the ‘non-alcoholic alternative’ is simply skipping the wine and just having the host.
(It should also be noted that the wine was watered down and wasn’t exactly potent to begin with. Unless you’re a child or an alcoholic, there’s no reason to skip it.)
You don’t have to take it. Also, one cup is for quite a few people to share; you’re not exactly supposed to drink a lot of it.
That seems a bit unsanitary.
The priest told us that germs had a hard time living on silver and gold (the metals are toxic to bacteria, apparently), so between that and the alcohol in the wine, they were pretty much all killed by the time the used spot on the cup, which is rotated slightly between each person as well as being wiped, came around to be used again.
So apparently not as bad as one might think; even if someone in the line before you had a cold or what, it was supposed to be okay.
Your priest is half right at best. Silver is toxic to bacteria (technically it’s silver oxide particles at low concentration, but unless the wine is being poured in a vacuum you’re good), gold doesn’t do much at all – gold nanoparticles do, but that’s not the same thing. However rotating the wine swishes it enough to let some bacteria move around, antimicrobials are far from instantaneous, and thus the actual sanitation effects are pretty minimal.
With that said, most peoples immune systems can handle eating and drinking communal food just fine, particularly as a lot of the really nasty diseases that can spread via mouth can only live in fairly tight temperature ranges around the human norm. Plus, it’s not like a priest is expected to be an expert here anyways; an epidemiologist saying the same thing would deserve much heavier criticism.
My experience is that most churches of the “high church” movements (along with Catholic and Orthodox) only offer wine, but that partaking of both parts of the sacrament aren’t mandatory for being in full communion. Meanwhile near universally the “low church” movements seem to have strong objections to alcohol even in the sacramental form and only offer grape juice. Some of those churches (largely Methodist and Presbyterian ones in my experience) who fit the “high church” format, offer a choice between wine and grape juice or just grape juice while still ceremonially and ritually hewing closer to the older Catholic and Orthodox sacrament.
That’s very informational, thank you.
As far as I remember, we never got wine (as a Catholic), just the ‘bread’, a consecrated wafer. Never wine, we just watched the priest and his altar servers take a small nip from the wine (and never grape juice). But that might be a country-specific thing (I’m from the middle of Europe).
I of course meant “informative” not “informational” – sorry, thought too much in my first language
Yeah, it’s regional by traditions dating to the medieval period to my understanding. Where wine was not readily produced locally and thereby an exceptionally difficult to procure part of the service, such as in northern and central Europe, the standard developed to only offer the wine on specific occasions (typically Easter) to the laity or else to only to allow it to the clergy as part of the rite (specifically the priest partakes as the spiritual representative of his flock) so as to ensure there was always some wine for the chalice. In some areas as wine has become more readily available during the last century or so that has fallen by the wayside in others it has stood as part of deep rooted tradition. In my own area of the US, for example, having heavy central and eastern European roots within the local congregation, it’s only offered as part of the Easter Eucharist in other areas I’ve visited in the US, with more Mediterranean roots, it’s weekly.
growing up catholic, only the biggest services even offered wine during communion, and it was always sort of a secondary thing?
In the Episcopal church, your non-alcoholic alternative is to cross your hands over your chest and drink nothing.
And in my church it wasn’t watered, it was fortified. Port, like the Anglicans. Kills more germs when you have everyone sip from the same cup.
My (UK, Anglican, evangelical, but both of those words have quite different connotations here from in the US) church has actual wine by default but there’s usually a non-alcoholic option. Either a separate station or a separate cup available on request, depending on the size of the service.
Catholic and most Anglican/Espiscopalian are Biblical on this. Unleavened bread and wine. The Bible-based churches use substitutes.
Bad wine too. High alcohol since it cuts down on germs being shared. Low quality so no one drinks it outside of services.
Will we finally get to see drunk Joyce?
As unlikely as that seems, I’m now picturing Joyce taking a sip of wine, panic herself into thinking she’s drunk, and acting accordingly.
I really, really, really hope this is exactly what happens.
I have some weird alcohol intolerance thing. A sip of alcohol I don’t even know about is enough to make me dizzy.
Friend, same. My tolerance limit is any, and I don’t even get to be a fun drunk. I turn into blubbering mess and have to go home.
That sounds like an allergy. I have a friend with an alcohol allergy.
For context: I do drink occasionally. (The other day I had an almost-full sampler glass of beer with dinner! And I even finished most of it during the meal!) But I am convinced that I can feel even the tiny sip of communion wine. I know that it’s a higher alcohol percentage, but it’s not supposed to be *that* high.
Maybe it’s the holy spirit.
This definitely suggests a really low tolerance – wine caps out at about 20% alcohol, and even reaching that requires some specialized strains of yeast that can handle a higher alcohol environment. Past that you need to straight up distill alcohol to make it stronger, and that would be brandy anyways (or cognac).
A tiny sip is maybe 10 mL, and 2mL of straight ethanol (which again, high estimate) isn’t a lot. For reference, one shot is usually in the vicinity of 20 mL of straight alcohol, with larger shot glasses and stronger drinks pushing it up towards 40. A full sized glass of beer is theoretically roughly comparable.
There are a few strains in commercial use that can reach about 30% (specifically the one bred by Sam Adams for their Utopias line, but there are a few others in use for whiskey mash). None are useful for wine, but they exist ;D.
Also, cognac is a type of brandy.
If you actually practice the typical prescribed fasting before partaking in the sacrament the alcohol present will hit your system harder than normal drinking with meals. It’ll metabolize comparatively quick since since the total volume is so low, but if you don’t typically drink on an empty stomach just enough alcohol will hit your brain before it metabolizes to seem more significant.
I think you severely overestimate the volume of wine used in typical eucharistic ceremonies.
True, but I got a story…
Used to be an Episcopal acolyte (it meant doing more than just sitting in a pew during services), and we’d sometimes get asked to serve at funerals and weddings (typically, the family would give the priest a gratuity for the service, and we’d be given a bit off the top as a tip).
So, one time, a woman who’d been in the church for decades had died, and I was tapped to serve at the funeral. She’d been a major presence in the community, and so the church was PACKED. Standing room only, which rarely even happened on the big services.
So, Father B. set up two cups of wine–the big ones. And then… virtually no one came up to the altar railing. I think we had ten communicants; the rest were local Baptists and Gospel church-goers, who didn’t do wine at Communion.
Father B. took it in stride. He made sure I got a HUGE mouthful of wine, and then he did the finishing duties himself (no discarding the Blood of Christ, after all). It was the only time I’ve ever seen him have to pause in the process of finishing the last of the wine off–he was definitely feeling it for the rest of the Mass.
Nice
Off half a sip of watered-down communion wine? What is she, a lost Walkerton twin?
Probably not. You could put the amount of wine typically involved on your thumbnail.
Reminds me of accidentally going to mass with relatives on vacation and not knowing what to do as the athiest son of the only Muslim in the family…
. . . . How do you accidentally go to mass?
“Want to join us? We’re going out to breakfast.”
“Okay, sounds good!”
*car pulls up to church*
“Um?”
“Okay, time for mass and then breakfast!”
(Alternatively:
“Um?”
“We are Nourished by the Lord.”)
“Oh hey, we’re all getting in the car. Coming with?” It happens.
Gravity. Duh.
holy shit
Technically it would be the Higgs field. Gravity is how you accidentally wait.
I had a real answer but you win
I can’t speak for Achallenger, but I accidentally went to mass after my uncle’s funeral because I thought the group of older cousins I was tagging along with were going straight to the wake. Little did I know that I would have to endure two MORE hours of church before getting to hang out at my grandparents’ house. I was about 8 when this happened, and not only did I have an excess of church services that day, I wasn’t even allowed to participate in Communion because I hadn’t been baptised Catholic, just Episcopalian. It was actually a little traumatizing, because I had been raised to believe that all churches were the same in the eyes of God or whatever.
To cap off the fun, once we finally got to the “party”, people laughed at my misunderstanding. Thanks, family.
I myself once ended up at mass with a Catholic friend in college.(I forget why) And when the priest started He made a point of saying that he was sorry, but any non-Catholics were barred from partaking of the Eucharist.Being the stubborn Protestant I was at the time, I simply got in line and bluffed my way through it. No one, not even my friend who knew I wasn’t Catholic, said anything. I apologized once we were outside.
🙁 I’m sorry that stuff happened to you.
you can be catholic and not participate in communion if you haven’t had your first comunion or you haven’t confesed in a while even. Is not like people are checking if you had but I guess it can really get awkward. Sorry about that.
No offense, but I’ve never understood the attitude non-Catholics have toward the requirement that you be a practicing Catholic who’s had first communion to take communion at a Catholic mass. The Catholic belief is that the bread and wine is the literal body and blood of Christ, and that it is spiritually harmful for anyone who does not firmly believe this and hasn’t committed to it knowingly (first communion) to take it. If you say “Amen” when the priest says “Body of Christ,” you’re saying “Yes, I believe that.” Doesn’t every religion think, “Please don’t say that you believe what we believe if you don’t.” ?
Also, it has nothing whatsoever to do with how you were baptized, and anyone who told you that was in error. Protestant converts to Catholicism don’t get “re-baptized” because they’re already baptized, same as those born into Catholic families.
I mean, would you like to understand the attitude? Or is your ignorance of why protestants are hurt to be excluded from Catholic communion something you value?
Because if you genuinely want to know why non-Catholics have “the attitude” (that is, an attitude of hurt, feeling misunderstood, angry, frustrated, and lonely) towards Catholic communion, all you have to do is ask in good faith. I’m sure people here would answer in kind, then.
Most Protestant Germans wouldn’t know that Catholics think of transubtination and they they actually think they are taking in blood and body of Christ. Since I learned, I didn’t have the slightest impulse to participate in catholic communion. I suppose, if someone deigned to explain, most other Protestants would rather not participate, too.
And, yes, it’s an exclusive ritual, meant to be exclusive to people who do not subscribe to the tenets of catholicism. As are most other churches. Either embrace them or be other. That’s a large part of what churches are about.
Bear in mind this was like 26 years ago, so ymmv on my brain filling in details. There was definitely a brief conversation about whether I’d been baptised. Of course I’d been baptised, there were pictures taken and everything! But apparently it didn’t count because it wasn’t–you know what, not important. I’m sorry you got defensive about my personal anecdote. If it makes you feel any better I’m an atheist now and don’t need the fingers of one hand to count how many times I’ve Been To Church in the last fifteen years.
In the actual decades of personal growth and development that I have experienced since being an 8 year old, I’ve come to feel that church stuff is largely made up of tradition and it’s up to the individual how much weight the traditions carry. Some traditions are more, you know, traditional, and some aren’t, and that’s how Christianity became the Heinz 57 of modern religions.
Oh and before anyone jumps down my throat I don’t consider myself superior for the conclusions I’ve come to on the topic of religion. Gotta find your own way, and as long as that doesn’t include infringing on others’ personal attempts at happiness, idgaf.
As a Catholic I think I get why others would be offended. We think that our priests alone have the power to change ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ which usually taste just like bread and wine. Actually there was at least one protestant groups which we believe to have the ability as well because many of there priests were granted it by the leaders of our church. Anyways instead of claiming that anyone can change bread and wine into flesh and blood most Protestants decided that nobody can and its just a ritual.
For the record access to the body and blood of Christ was once upon a time a legitimate tool used to keep people in line, you know one of those things preventing people from saying I don’t need the Catholic church to worship God. So the Protestant groups would likely make a point of how much its just a freaking ritual. But as time goes on protestants are taught what they believe not what Catholics believe so why would they know we believe its actually the body and blood of Christ.
Just curious, but do people try to test that belief at all? Take communion, then puke it up. Is it blood and flesh, or still wine and bread?
Well, there was that one scene in “V for Vendetta”….
“And when it got to his stomach…?”
“It was still cyanide.”
When I used to go to a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation, they also practiced “closed communion” and it was church members only. IIRC, the reason given was a verse from one of Paul’s epistles about how severe the consequences were for not taking communion sincerely or something. I’ve always thought of Paul as the Apostle who ruined Christianity.
I’m a Jew, and I also think of Paul that way.
Paul is the Lancelot of Jesus’ Round Circle: More famous, but written in after the canon storyline was completed.
And yeah, he def. ruined Christianity. Unlike Lancelot, who simply made King Arthur’s kingdom more French/mainstream.
You mean Lancelot was a double-agent all this time? That he himself in fact called the cops on Arthur, and that he only pretended to be “arrested” to have an excuse for why he suddenly disappeared?
As I understand it, Paul was the one who made it his mission to evangelize to the gentiles. It’s entirely possible that, were it not for Paul, Christianity might have remained a local minor sect in Judea, and might even have disappeared during the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
That said, Paul is also responsible for some of the most ultraconservative, intolerant, and misogynistic beliefs expressed in the New Testament. So one might argue he both saved Christianity and ruined it.
Dang it. I guess I don’t like Paul anymore. 🙁
I once wrote a paper about Caravaggio’s painting, Conversion of St. Paul. I did research about the context and everything, and I really liked the story of Paul’s conversion, although I didn’t read much further than that. I’m disappointed he was actually very unlike Jesus Christ.
I had some clues into some of the weird things with his writings, from David Willis’s tumblr posts. But I didn’t bother to look deeply into it since I’m not Christian and I didn’t care THAT much about Paul.
So I guess Paul sucks ass. Although that conversion story is really cool.
my computer keeps reverting the email back to the default, goddammit, computer, please stop that. I want to be Jocelyne!!
shit ass, that really backfired
Oh….that was wrong again…I keep failing at this 🙁
last try, and i better get jocelyne this time like on my phone, or i might cry
Last time I accidentally went to mass was when some friends invited me to their wedding, and it turned out to involve a nuptial mass.
I hung back at the sides while everyone else was filing up to the communion rail, and some sort of assistant clergyman sidled up to reassure me that any baptised Christian was welcome to take communion. He looked shocked when I explained that I am neither baptised nor Christian and don’t want to take communion.
I like to imagine it happening with a Gilligan Cut.
“There’s no way I’m going to Mass. You can’t make me.”
Cut to a scene about to receive communion.
“How did this happen???
I don’t know what accidentally means in this context, but I’m imagine either an “excited doggie doesn’t know he’s going to the vet” scenario, or a “I thought this was something else entirely” one, like you showed up in fishing gear, or wearing a fursuit.
Wait, are those nonstandard church outfits?
I spent a lot of time as an altar boy and I usually worked on early Sunday Mass, so there were a lot of times when guys on their way to the lake for fishing would catch the service. So some fishing gear did happen.
Though I’ll never regret leaving this particular church and running like hell, there’s one service I always feel bad about missing: half-way through were a couple of baptisms, and when the platform covering the baptismal pool under the stage was pulled back it turned out a frogman had secreted himself in there earlier and stayed quietly down there the whole time, and he calmly splooshed out splosh splosh splosh down the aisle, flippers and all, and out the door.
I hope he’s found himself somewhere better, too. Some senses of humour just deserve to be where they’ll be celebrated.
… what on Earth is a frogman?
Another name for a guy in a scuba suit and flippers.
Ok that’s awesome, both in nickname and in the context of the anecdote.
For future reference: the answer is either stay in your seat or if you don’t want to be the only one sitting there, go up but cross your arms grabbing onto the opposite shoulders when you get to the servers.
As a habitual mass-skipper, and a devout confession-avoider, I usually do the arms crossed thing when I go to mass. It turns out, in Catholicism, skipping mass is a mortal sin, and it’s also a mortal sin to receive communion with an unconfessed mortal sin, and it’s also a mortal sin to go to fail to go to confession for more than a year. So, as someone who 1) misses church often, and 2) hasn’t gone to confession in years, I’m just trying not to triple up on the mortal sins.
Technically you only need to go to Mass once a year as a Catholic. It’s just highly encouraged to attend more often.
You only need to receive communion once a year. You have to go to mass every week.
I grew up in the anglican church, but have since left it. Since I have got to know my husband, I occasionally go to a church services with him.
I was taught that if you don’t want to recieve communion, to lower your hands behind the rails where you’re kneeling instead of putting your hands up and cupped to recieve the bread. Usually the priest will then touch your head and give you a blessing. So you know, you’d have to be cool with that. Or you can stay seated.
I don’t recieve communion anymore, because I don’t believe in what it stands for. I do however occasionally get a blessing if the mood is right. In the church where I grew up, there was no-one looking to see if you partake or not. I’ve never felt pressured by anyone to do something I don’t want to.
I have also been to roman catholic services with my husband where the priest has said that everyone is welcome to recieve communion. So I’m frankly a little taken back that there are catholics who are so strict. I am however talking about the dutch roman catholic church who tend to be less strict and also less “let’s do everything the pope says”.
I was glad at some friends’ wedding the Priest was a) College priest who was well used to interacting with non-Catholics, and b) well aware that, as it was a wedding, there were plenty of folks in the audience who wouldn’t know traditions and assumptions.
Basically walked people through the communion, mentioned we could remain seated if we wished, or if anyone wanted to not remain seated, but not receive communion for any reason, they could cross their arms to let the priest know.
Only issue was that my row had a string of sitters on the inside of the row (including me), and noooot a lot of room for the few on the outside to squeeze by (college chapel packed to capacity).
Stay put? You’re not required to do anything, so don’t do anything.
Jacob in panel 4: “Remind me again why I thought it would be a good idea to be friends with Joyce.”
Oops, panel 6.
get ready to experience the miracle of transubstantiation
in your mouf
“Wait, you mean LITERALLY Jesus’s flesh and blood? You people are sick! SICK!”
What do you have against ritual cannibalism?
RITUAL is fine, but transubstantiation makes it LITERAL.
It depends on how you define literal. The Catholic position is that it’s a literal process, just about everyone else doesn’t think that the Catholic priests* are actually doing what they claim to be doing and thus it’s still metaphorical cannibalism.
*Although this is one of those cases where I like the term “mage-priests”.
It’s an Episcopalian church: Real Presence, but no Transubstantiation.
I believe the term is consubstantiation, but I may be wrong.
It’s Istanbul, not Consubstantiation.
Every gal doing Consubstantiation,
does Istanbul, not Consubstantiation?
Hmm.
So, if you’ve a communion with Consubstantiation,
she’ll be wafering with Istanbul?
Why they changed it I can’t say
People just liked it better that way!
Why did consubstantiation get the works?
I guess they just like it better that way.
I guess it falls to me to invoke The Vatican Rag:
Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original
If it is, try playin’ it safer
Drink the wine and chew the wafer
Two, four, six, eight
Time to transubstantiate
Joyce is amazing with change. The best. None better.
One could say…she has change to spare?
But she still goes through with it. I’m impressed!
It’s been, what, two months she’s been at college and dealing with huge changes? She’s made incredible strides in so short a time; I only wish I could match her.
It makes her even more heroic knowing just how difficult even the smallest change is for her.
She’s changed… And then again, she has not.
See, the heart, the soul, the core of Joyce is that she wants to do right. Actually, she Needs to do Right. She’s always wanted to ensure that her actions make things better for other people. As such, there probably isn’t a more loyal friend in the world than her.
What has changed is that the things she thought was doing Right… turned out not to be Right at all. It was lies fed to her by her family, by her church.
But whenever Joyce’s core is clashing with beliefs that basically comes from external sources… Joyce’s core wins. Every time. The internal need to do Right by other people triumphs over the beliefs of what other people tell is is right to do.
Would she even be welcome to take communion there, as she’s a different sect and doesn’t follow the same specific beliefs? I know this is an issue with Catholic and with Eastern Orthodox sects.
Also I’m most used to the wafers and one time when it was actual bread I got nervous and didn’t chew enough and almost choked and spent five minutes coughing and it ranks up in the 15 most embarrassing times of my life. I have an anxiety disorder so I have a lot of embarrassing times.
I’ve never actually taken communion–or been offered it, I think– but I similarly hold the expectation of it coming in wafer form. Likely because we used to get these thin rosemary and olive oil crackers and my mom would call them “seasoned communion snacks.”
You got Triscuits???
I mean, this was just at the grocery store, not at church
And they weren’t Triscuits, they were seasoned wafers and they went damn good with cheese.
like triscuits? i am now imagining a church serving up triscuits for communion/eucharist and for some reason this image is hilarious.
I explained poorly, but this wasn’t at church. This was just something my family would buy, and then my mom would be like, “So we’ve BASICALLY gone to church.” And I’d say some shit like, “I like the way his body crunches.”
But anyway, adding on to what you’re imagining, swap the Triscuits for Goldfish crackers and it gets even better.
“Well, Jesus was a fisher of men, and crackers are like communion wafers…”
Why settle for loaves and fishes when you can have loaves that ARE fishes?
I mean, there’s no reason for them to stop her, and tbh the only thing that should stop her as far as I know is her own denomination specifically stating that it wasn’t okay (but also what do I know lol, my own experience is as a roman catholic being told by a boyfriend that he was “allowed to partake” in my communion but wasn’t allowed to “pray to or worship the saints”. I’m still offended at his biased religious education, and we stopped dating 3ish years ago)
Also, yoooooo how was that? all the places I’ve gone to use the wafers, I’d probably choke on it too, and then consider if drowning myself in the holy water would make it not holy anymore. Heck, I’ve considered it before over less embarrassing things, like being forced to sit in the front few pews by fam (and like, this is after mass started a few times. I’ve threatened to renounce my faith over it but alas, it falls on deaf ears) or stumbling in the line for communion lol are you okay
I didn’t know the answer, so I googled.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/holy-communion says “As such, all persons who have been baptized, and are therefore part of the extended family that is the Church, are welcome to receive the bread and wine, and be in communion with God and each other.”
Now I kinda want a flashback panel of Joyce getting baptized. Or at least a rehearsal, since I know my church did those to get the hijinks out of the way.
I’m Episcopalian – we take all comers. “All are welcome at this altar,” to be specific. In fact, I got pretty put off when I went to my grandma’s funeral at a Catholic church, went up to get communion, and the lady serving looked at me and asked if I was Catholic. I said no, and she smirked at me and stepped back.
Wow that was really rude of her especially at a funeral. I’m sorry that happened to you.
That’s not about being unwelcoming (at least, it’s not supposed to be…). That’s about beliefs regarding the Eucharist specifically that you’re supposed to share to participate.
There are other denominations that share those beliefs that are also allowed to participate. I’ve been to Catholic churches that get a lot of visitors that actually list them (one written on card, some where the priest explains beforehand at all wedding and funeral masses), along with what to do if you’re not in those groups.
I think because Catholics believe in transubstantiation, only baptized Catholics are allowed the Eucharist. The Eucharistic minister probably could have handled that better at a funeral, though.
Every Catholic funeral I’ve been to, though, the priest gives instructions and he goes, knowing folks who aren’t Catholic are likely there, and the grief may make even Catholics forget what they’re doing. Weddings, on the other hand, offered no such instruction, which I found curious.
That was especially rude of her, and highlights how many “pious” people are actually complete jerks fueled by that sweet sweet high of self righteousness.
Catholics believe in transubstantiation and put way more weight into the Eucharist than most denominations do (depending on denomination – Lutheran and Episcopalian churches are closer in traditions to the Catholics than say, the Mormons) and so to the Catholic point of view, if you do not revere the communion in the way they do, there isn’t a point in you sharing in the Catholic communion. This is for better or for worse, I guess :/
How rude!
At my father-in-law’s funeral (at a roman catholic church); everyone was welcome to partake in the communion from any faith (or none).
Eucharist is a big deal for Catholics. Technically speaking, you should do some soul-searching, confess your sins and do penance before receiving Communion.
Yeah, there are people who don’t care that and don’t take the proper steps but there are many others who care a lot about that. When I was still religious I went often to mass, but I barely ever partaked in Communion.
Until recently, purposely taking part in Communion while in a state of sin was among the most abhorrent sins. You were directly insulting God.
And a non-Catholic is assumed to not know any of that, so they are, by default, unprepared for Eucharist.
Most Episcopalian and Lutheran churches I’ve attended (to be fair, very small pool of reference here) take the approach that you know the state of your own soul / relationship with God better than they do. So, if you feel like taking part in the Eucharist will strengthen your soul, and believe in what the symbols represent, you can partake.
Not sure if that’s the official position of those churches, but it did seem pretty lax (in that regard) at the services I’ve attended.
The Episcopal Church welcomes any baptized Christian person to take Communion with them. I assume Joyce falls into that category.
Protestants don’t usually take as strong an issue with that. (That usually includes Episcopalians. They are still Protestant even if they look pretty “Whore of Babylon” to Joyce’s fundie background)
In most of those older sects, Communion is the be all end all ceremony, to the point where there’s the idea that you literally can’t get into heaven unless you receive communion regularly. (That’s what excommunication means, being denied communion by the church, essentially a sentence of eternal damnation.) This usually also has to do with the idea of Transubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ when used as the Eucharist.
Protestants meanwhile tend to vary on how important that specific ceremony is. Many groups think of it more of a time meant to reflect on the last supper and Jesus’s sacrifice, rather than a belief that anything was specifically turning into anything. (As most Protestants would say, it’s called a metaphor guys.)
Additionally most Protestant sects don’t have a strong focus on the church as an organization like Catholics and Orthodox do. They also tend to be pretty evangelical (in the sense that they’re usually looking for new converts. Not necessarily in the fundie sense.) Thus many don’t care as much if a person who’s not formally with the church partakes in the sacrament, as that’s just an opportunity for them to join more formally later on (if they even believe that you can join in a sense that’s more formal than “show up for church every now and again and probably be baptized by somebody Christian at some point in your life.”)
It’s also worth noting that you’re probably not going to get very far booting another Protestant out of your church over communion. Many of them have such low requirements for entry that they can probably just start their own church. There’s an old joke about a Baptist who’s shipwrecked by himself on a desert island for years. After he’s rescued his rescuers are surprised to discover several shelters built all over the island. Inquiring the castaway he tells them they’re his churches, as he had to keep building new ones when he started disagreeing with him.
(Sorry this is what passes for a joke when your family comes from a long line of Methodist Ministers.)
Hey I laughed and I have Baptist roots. 🙂 Also that’s really interesting, thank you for sharing.
There’s a similar joke amongst us Jews, in which a Jewish castaway tells his rescuers that the two big buildings, apart from his hut, are synagogues: one that he worships in, and one that he wouldn’t set foot in if you paid him!
From my point of view, it’s not so much whether they’d welcome you or not, but why someone would actually want to take communion in a church that doesn’t hold to the same beliefs. I guess it depends on how far apart the beliefs are?
Or is just that you’re supposed to take communion on Sundays and it doesn’t make any difference what heretical church you take it at?
I don’t get it.
That said, I suspect Joyce, for all her religiosity, hasn’t actually thought through much of this. We can see she’s very attached to the forms of church she’s used to, and she’s certainly picked up the basic “these things are bad” lessons, but maybe not so much the differences in actual theology?
That said, I’d be amused if this sequence led Becky to the Episcopal Church – they’ve got woman preachers, they’re okay with lesbians and I believe they’re good with evolution too. Sounds like a good place for Becky.
As for the ‘why’–for a lot of ‘charismatic’ churches, all the ceremony is meant to be about generating an uplifting mood. That would include communion, however it was performed. So an exclusion practice is going to come across as a denial of joy–a rather heinous act. Of course, from the Catholic perspective, it’s about the spiritual dangers of the Eucharist as taken by a non-believer.
But I’m not talking about why a Church would or would not deny communion to outsiders, but about why a believer would want to take it at a church whose beliefs they didn’t agree with.
Jacob is wondering how long it will take for him to go to the nearest walmart and get crackers and grape juice
Jacob is mentally paging through the typical church program and trying to figure out which OTHER entries are land mines.
lol basically ALL of them – I’ve been imagining Joyce whisper yelling questions at Jacob this whole time, and the time between the start of mass and sharing communion is not short D:
Well, if they’re at the Eucharist, they’re pretty near the end anyway.
Also, he probably missed the sermon/homily/whatever completely.
Aw sweet, actual bread? In the Catholic church you just get wafers.
Some churches do bread chunks AND WOW IS IT A BIG AND UNEXPECTED CHANGE IF U ARE JUST VISITING THAT PARISH AND NOT USED TO IT.
I thought chunks were an Orthodox thing? I know Catholics, at least when I still went, had a bowl of wafers, and maybe it’s different for Anglicans (especially since transubstantiation is the big shibboleth for them), but being descended from the Latin tradition, I assumed they still used flatbread…
As a former anglican, anglicans don’t do the whole transubstantiation thing. We partake in the communion to remember the last supper, the sacrifice of Jesus (and his father) and the redemption of our sins.
Anglicans usually use thin communion wafers. Either singles or a large wafer broken up into smaller pieces. They use fortified wine generally speaking; slightly different in taste to port or sherry.
A Presbyterian choir director of my acquaintance jokingly refers to the typical Protestant bread-and-grape-juice as the Heresy of Displaced Fermentation: the fermentation is taken out of the wine, where it belongs, and put into the bread, where it doesn’t.
Apparently, Jacob’s church takes a mix-n-match approach.
Footnote for those not in the know: Christian tradition generally* holds that the Last Supper was a Passover seder. Hence the “bread” he shared would have been unleavened — more like a cracker than what we think of as bread.
*There are those who are certain that the Last Supper occurred the day before Passover began. Others say we can’t really know for sure either way. It’s a Schroedinger’s Last Supper.
IIRC (and it’s been decades), Easter (which every Mass/service is a celebration of) has always fallen the week after Passover. So this makes sense to me.
They’re generally not that like crackers though – more like pita bread or homemade tortillas.
“It’s Supposed to Be Knock-Off Matzos, People: A Comparison of Passover Seders and the Sacrament of Communion” – the title of an interfaith newsletter to which I would like to subscribe.
Oh, that’s good. Remembering THAT one, ta.
I never liked those wafers. It’s like, “Here have this thing that doesn’t taste like anything but don’t chew it. Just work up some saliva and let it dissolve the wafer.”
More or less my thoughts on communion wafers.
I still can’t get used to calling them “wafers” – they’re not sweet or crunchy or filled with cream.
You can actually buy those wafers at the store in the Mexican food aisle. They’re the color of the rainbow.
The trick is to leave it on your tongue. When you get the wine, that helps to dissolve the wafer 😉
One of the reasons Catholics usually use wafers is that they keep.
Once the priest blessed them, they become Jesus’ body and if less of your congregation takes communion than you expected, you have to keep the rest until the next time.
For protestants, there is less problem with unused bread. It’s bread, you can use it as such.
As a kid helping tidy up after the (Baptist) service, I could take leftover bread cubes and grape juice home.
Haha, I always chewed unless I was trying to see how quickly it’d dissolve.
In my admittedly limited experiences, the “sweet” bread was worse than the wafers (don’t ask me why, but our Episcopalian church had used both during the years I went there). At least the wafers could be disposed of quickly. The bread lasted forever and left a weird bittersweet aftertaste.
It varies from church to church. The Episcopal church I attended as a child also did wafers, but I did visit a few other ones where they used bread chunks.
I was gonna ask about that. All the Episcopalian churches I’ve been to have used wafers — I’ve never been to one that hands out actual bread.
Yeah, my old Episcopal Church used wafers, too.
the church i went to as a kid (some protestant-ish free church) had white bread and tiny individual cups of grape juice. when i was a young kid, after the service was over, i’d rush to the kitchen with my friends to drink out all the leftover cups and eat the bread. that was kinda the best about church. later, as a slightly older child, i was allowed to join the ceremony and would try with a bad conscience not to just think “yaaay i get to eat yummy bread in the middle of a service“ and instead imagine that weird “this is the body of Christ, given for us“ stuff and be a bit sad that Jesus had to die so i can eat bread at church.
Extrapolating from current trends, Malaya will overtake Joyce in popularity in two weeks. :p
Noooooooooooooooo!
She’s so polarizing, she’s poll-arising.
That’s awful. Emphasis on the “awe.”
I just want to say that the drawing of Ruth with a cat smile is sorta scaring me, and is what I imagine it would look like if Mary ever took over Ruth’s body
I am personally enjoying it, and I deny the resemblance to Mary because when Mary does that kind of face, I feel the anger rising up in me.
*doesn’t want to play the America song*
. . . . . .*tilts his raised Catholic head* I dare say that Joyce’s reactions are FASCINATING to me. I’ve always had it in the back of my head that everyone, even non practitioners, knew the general ceremonies of the Catholic, or Episcopalian, faith. So this arc, even if it is semi about getting Jacob to dumb Raidah, is looking to be one of my favorites thus far. . . . That and I’ve been loving the chat these past weeks. Good conversations all round.
My mom was raised in the Unitarian church, but her dad was Roman Catholic, so sometimes in holidays their family would go to a Catholic church. One time they were there and doing that mingling part of it, so a woman said to her, “Peace be with you.” And my mom said back, “Happy Easter!”
I’m pretty sure that was a perfectly acceptable response, honestly.
I don’t know, maybe it should have been, but apparently the woman just looked at her and said, “And. Also. With. You.” Before turning away.
Meanwhile, I had a professor in college who would often say, “May the Force be with you” when we finished talking, and my non-religous ass, having never said this within the walls of a church, would reflexively go, “And also with you.”
*chuckles* If it helps at all I reflexively do the exact same thing.
I mean, if it was a random week in October it wouldn’t have made much sense, but during the sign of peace, most people say “peace be with you,” but you can respond in any way you see fit. Wishing someone a happy Easter at an Easter mass would have been a perfectly reasonable expression of peace.
“And also with you” was the response in the course of the mass, but the sign of peace is not a response to the priest, so you can say what you want. Also, they changed it to “and with your spirit,” which John Mullaney hilariously highlighted in one of his standup routines.
One of my extended-family “uncles” from my grand parents’ time, freshly migrated from Hungary and not at all fluent in the local language (Spanish), once gave his condolences to a recently widowed neighbor by vigorously patting the guy’s shoulder, shaking his hand with a vise-like grip, and thunderously stating: “Vatcha gunna dooh… I kongratulite”.
I was told this story decades later by the widower himself. Dude was forever grateful to my relative for cracking him up so badly when he needed it most.
haha. yes, these liturgic patterns where you are supposed to know what’s the correct answer… i remember an easter sunday when my mother came into my room and said “The LORD has risen!“ to which you are supposed to reply “He truly has risen!” (it was in German, i don’t know if there is an equivalent in English, and if so, i probably translated it wrong!) – and a sleepy friend in my room that just woke up from that exclamation mumbled “yeah, the same to you!“, which stayed a kind of inside joke in my family for years.
He is risen indeed!
i knew i’d get it wrong! 😀 thanks! (i decided not to google yesterday because it was bad enough that i then got a song with this as lyrics stuck in my head… as a recovering ex-christian, that’s kinda annoying when it happens)
Joyce of course has even more of a disadvantage than many people in that her exposure to pop culture has been limited. So she hasn’t picked up bits and pieces from all those shows and movies where anyone with an Irish background is Catholic and devout.
Now I’m imagining Joyce watching The Real O’Neals. It’s not the gay thing that bothers her, it’s the Catholic thing.
It can be fascinating the things we take for granted. I’ve encountered it when referencing 18 as a lucky number. It’s so ingrained in Jewish culture (chai, chet-yud, means life. Chet is 8 and yud is 10 in numerology. So bar mitzvah gifts will often be 18 dollars and so forth and so on.) that it never occurred to me that it wasn’t universal.
Joyce is a homeschooled kid from a fairly insular denomination who’s been told all her life that her church got it right and everyone else is on a scale from misguided to outright satanic.
She’s very sheltered, and her freak-out closely mirrors the author’s when he was exposed to the rest of the world.
Oh man, it’s certainly not an “everyone” thing. My family has some… religious roots, I guess? My Nana was Catholic (I think?) and I think all my aunts and uncles and parents went to church regularly when they were young, but even though my sister and I were baptised as babies, we never stepped foot in a church except for weddings/funerals after that. We’re not even sure what denomination we are, (well, were? I strongly believe that if I can’t even explain the difference between Christian and Catholic, I have no business calling myself anything of the sort.) let alone what the whole ritual is. I would be surprised if any of my aunts and uncles still went to church on the regular (or even the irregular).
My Nana’s funeral was a very strange affair to my sister and I. We left it mostly pissed because the pastor wouldn’t stop going on about what a good Christian my Nana was, and how they were certain all of her family was also great Christians who should totally come to his church more often.
Really, weddings are also a weird deal to me. Every time I end up in a church I get super anxious because I know there’s a huge ritual around it all and I have *no idea* what it is.
“the difference between Christian and Catholic” – Christians are believers in Jesus as the Messiah.
Early on, the church divided into Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic). Later, Henry VIII declared himself head of the church in England, breaking from Catholicism and creating the Church of England (Anglicanism and Episcopalianism). At around the same time, various movements in Europe also broke from Catholicism, creating the Reformed denominations (Protestantism). Churches in the Anglican communion follow a wide range of practices, some more like Catholicism (“High”) and some more like strict Protestantism (“Low”).
All these people are part of Christianity. Some Protestant churches (mostly in the US in my experience) who don’t believe Catholics are real Christians will contrast “Christian” with “Catholic”, but Catholics would say that on the contrary, they were Christians back before Protestantism ever got invented. 🙂
And then there are branches of Christianity that got separated from the main stream before the Great Schism (1054). I think the Coptic Church is Orthodox, but there is an Ethiopian Church that got cut off by the expansion of Islam in the 7th Century, and there are still some descendants of the Church of the East, which basically separated from the Orthodox/Catholic because it was in the Persian Empire when Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. (Doctrinally, the Church of the East schismed in the Nestorian Schism of 431.) There was a Christian realm in southern India when the Portugese arrived, claiming an apostolic succession to St Thomas.
The Copts are called Orthodox, but they long predate the Great Schism, so they’re not really related to the Greek or Russian Orthodox Church. It’s not really clear to me how the terms Orthodox & Catholic were used back before that Schism.
The Copts split off in 451, after the Council of Chalcedon.
And just to confuse things even more, “Coptic” is an adjective that can at times be applied to any Egyptian Christian. There is a Coptic Catholic Church, in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and there are Coptic Evangelicals.
And probably therefore Coptic Orthodox Christians (in the Russian/Greek sense) as well as the Coptic Orthodox Church. Just to be more confusing.:)
This story arc is being very educational.
I also learned earlier, by way of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, that Methodists are (or were) Episcopals.
Hey, the Coptic Orthodox Church has its own Pope. I wonder if there are others.
And now I’ve learned that “Coptic” can be applied in ways other than “Coptic Catholic”.
I’ve been to multiple wedding of friends of various Christian denominations.
The Catholic ones were great. The priest performing it knew the couple, their style, and the wedding felt like it fit them.
One of the others…I’m actually not sure what denomination it was…I was legit wondering if the priest was running for office and using the wedding as a soapbox (marriage is between a MAN and a WOMAN under GOD!), all of the wedding party was uncomfortable and glancing at the bride for the cue of “just keep smiling.” Side references to how the couple had been living together for years, etc.
I later learned the type of wedding was to make the grandparents happy. That evening I was in the hotel lobby when the bride and groom got back and the bride’s first words on entering the lobby were “did you hear that fucking sermon?!??”
The reception was great though, really felt like the couple actually had say in that (board games off to the side, the dance floor was off in a corner so there was a variety of space at varying distances from the speakers, very relaxed and fun).
Oh this is gonna be good.
Baptists do communion better, tbh. Annoying thing about going to church in other denominations is that I can’t partake in communion, since I abstain from alcohol.
For health reasons or on principle? Normally you get doled out a veeerrryy small portion, small enough that even kids get it. Not judging, just curious! ^.^
Here the Catholics are alcoholfree, too. They simply don’t offer any drink to go with the wafer, the priest drinks it in place of the congregation. But I generally assisted services with a majority of children in the pews, so that could be a factor
That’t the way it was where I grew up. But our parish priest was kind of old school (as in, kinda bristled at Vatican II).
Methodist church might also be an idea then 🙂
Welch’s grape juice is love, Welch’s grape juice is life.
Seriously though I live on that stuff.
While its good to be grapeful, I divine you juice might be overdoing that …
Oh, stop wining, this comment was berry good
OK, Joyce is so sheltered that I am actually legitimately impressed.
Honestly how do y’all manage to comment so dang early, I can’t get the page to load up 10 minutes after midnight
Thanks to the wonders of daylight savings its currently 1724hrs so I’m guessing theres a lot of people in different time zones
That doesn’t affect the page loading, though.
I usually start refreshing around midnight, if I’m up and not distracted, and it loads the new strip within a few minutes.
I have the same strategy…but…
Ana Chronistic and Doctor_Who reliably and consistently post at 12:01 or 12:02. I know that Willis’s Patreon supporters have seen the strip ahead of time, and presumably have their first posts ready to cut, paste, and send…
But that still doesn’t explain how they get the page to load that early, while I’m hitting refresh at 12:06 and still not getting the new strip.
I’d assume that they get to comment on those pages early and the comments just show up automatically when the page goes up.
No. Patreon comments are different.
I think the final secret is deleting the browser cache, which prevents the cached version from loading in that span of time and instead retrieves the new strip.
…I think
GIVE HER THE JUICE AND NOBODY GETS HURT (I mean, if anyone would get hurt in the first place).
(also I need to get my mind checked because I looked at the tags and combined becky’s and jacob’s names to get bacob, and I accepted this for much longer than I should’ve).
Now I’m almost sad they’re unshippable.
NO SHIP LIKE FRIENDSHIP THO AMIRIGHT
Bacob…the corn-based pork-alternative!
I’d buy it. Especially from a cute cat-Ted.
You say that like there’s non-cute Kitty-Tedds.
When somebody actually creates that and names it bacob, I can legitimately sue them for copyright infringement (unless I make it first, of course). 😛
haha 🙂
I vaguely remember that when I got too old for sunday school, I would sneak out to the kitchen during boring sermons and get myself some apple juice. I have no idea why that church always had apple juice in the fridge, or why I thought it was ok for me to drink it.
…darnit, I go on vacation for a week and now I’ve forgotten which gravatar was the good one…
They’re all good gravatars, Brent.
Yeah, I suppose people who were raised in the kind of churches that Joyce went to would be the ones who’d actually *want* to drink Welch’s.. :X
My church always did the tiny glasses of grape juice and cubes of white bread. I remember being like 3 or 4 and feeling very annoyed that I was being left out of Snack Time.
I have been waiting for the return of the Joyce-meets-the-Episcopalians just so I could repost this XKCD strip I recently rediscovered. Couldn’t have picked a more appropriately titled DoA strip if I’d tried.
Communion
Okay, that cracked me up. Dunno how I missed that one before!
Don’t you mean that it crackered you up?
*flees for dear punning life*
That was a wafer of a joke.
I’m immensely enjoying watching evangelical churchmouse Joyce freak-out at a high church service.
Me too, Joyce’s reactions during the service at Jacob’s church are great.
wow, she’s been sheltered. I’ve done that maybe twice in my life (the first not knowing what was going on) Since I went atheist, it’s been fun!
Grape juice always tastes better at church for some reason.
Jesus: untapped source of flavor enhancement? More at 11.
The question mark makes me just interested enough to read your headline and be mildly curious, but not interested enough to actually read your article/watch your segment.
My brain will now file this as “All Christians believe Jesus to be a supernatural flavor enhancer,” and a few months down the line, I’ll make a really angry rant about All These Religious Kooks honestly believing they can taste things better than I can.
Oh, Joyce. HONEY.
No, only mead.
Wait til they ask if she wants regular body of Christ, or gluten-free.
I knew a fellow once whose bishop refused to ordain him because he had coeliac disease. He had to go to Rome and get a doctorate in Sacred Theology with a dissertation proving that the host doesn’t necessarily have to be unleavened wheat bread, then a letter from a cardinal asking his bishop to reconsider his ordination.
Oh, quit complaining, Joyce. At least the wine won’t be Manischewitz. (Probably.)
She’d probably like that better, since it’s pretty much sweetened grape juice.
(Which I also tend to prefer to “real” wine…)
Glad it works for someone. My tastebuds always register it as sour cough syrup.
I like to joke that when it comes to alcohol, I have the palate of a British teenager.
Actually, just skip the booze and give me the straight
sugar waterjuice or soda.Well, it is made from Concord grapes. So, Welch’s with a kick!
Manichewitz is (one of) the reason I don’t drink. Because I expect wine to taste icky.
Rum would never let you down like that.
And if the first glass tastes icky, the second one will taste fine.
No Joyce, grape juice is gross. ;p And you know what else is, from one fundie-raised afab person to another? The way you’re acting about someone else’s practice of their faith. Seriously, I really really get how disconcerting it can be at first but…show some respect. >.>
I love Joyce because she’s so relateable to my lived experience, but those same reasons often make me uncomfortable because they remind me of things I’ve done or things that were done to me.
Cults suck. (Sorta non sequitur I know, but my particular church was a cult and I was thinking about that when I rewatched the film Spotlight last night. The similarities and differences and stuff. Made me cry a lot but in a cathartic way.)
Grape juice = the wooooorst.
How dare you, grape juice is great.
I may respect other religious practices, but respecting other juice practices is stretching it. /jk
I will admit, however, that if I were forced to pick between grape juice and apple juice, I would pick apple juice every time. I practically breathe it.
*Rips off shit, showing a huge pineapple tattoo covering whole torso* PINEAPPLE JUIIIIICEEEEE!
Okay but why was your torso covered in.. ?
….Google “Happy Birthday Shadow” to understand why I’m cackling like a loon, right now.
That’s a hard decision right there. Which of the two worst juices is truly the worst? If I had to subject myself to one, which would it be?
The only acceptable juice is apple.
Also lemon when in lemonade form.
Grape. Apple. Pineapple. Lemon. Lime. Peach. Pear. Strawberry. Blackberry. and, of course, Orange.
(Not necessarily in that order.)
Only two of those are acceptable and the rest are gross. 😛
Hell, mix them together and make fruit punch.
I miss rhubarb juice. And banana juice. Almost everything you can buy around here is cut with apple (or if they think they’re fancy, pear). 😛
That’s because apple juice is super cheap, due to the scale apples are farmed on. Almost as cheap as water and
sugarcorn syrup, and they get to say it’s all juice.I’m not really sure that this is true, but I have heard that the Australian government used to give a bounty or tax credit or something on fruit juice because people think it’s healthy, so the Coca-Cola® bottlers in Australia were making Coke® out of de-flavoured apple juice.
Strawberry juice?! I’m having a hard time imagining this and I’ve drank blueberry juice in the past, which was way underwhelming.
Yeah, strawberry. It’s hard to find – I’m guessing that there’s not much call for it, and/or it’s a bother to extract (all the seeds?). Usually turns up in mixes, restaurant supply, and so on. I love it, though.
It’s also better fresh. You see it a lot in Latin American countries, cut with water.
The juice of the barley for me.
I’m glad we’re in agreement.
Um, on Captain Awkward, when someone reveals something sad about their life in the comments, people say, “Jedi hugs, if you want them.” It’s like, I’m using the Force across great geographical distance to hug you. But only if you’re cool with hugs.
So, yeah. Jedi hugs if you want them. I’m sorry you had to grow up in a cult.
I accept them, and thanks! 🙂
here it’s sometimes “*appropriate gesture of support*”, which I usually shorten to *AGOS* because reasons.
Sympathy through light Internet contact.
Have you never had Kedem kosher grape juice? That stuff is amazing.
Ok I admit I may have painted grape juice with an unnecessarily broad brush.
Hahaha most kinds of grape juice are pretty meh, I’ll admit.
Oooh, I’m sorry about the cults. That’s not fun.
Additionally (not trying to step on toes!) I agree that Joyce’s attitude is gross (I had a friend in high school like that) but also I think that narrative wise this is probably overplayed for comedic effect.
Don’t worry Joyce it’s that non-alcoholic wine like Jesus turned the water into that one time.
I dunno, to me having the priest give out individual wafers seems more hygienic than a huge plate that everyone sticks their hand in :p
everyone complains that those wafers are the driest thing on the planet (they are), but the trick is to keep it in your tongue until you get the wine that soaks it.
(reminds me of the Simpsons when Otto was siphoning gas: don’t eat the mint first!)
Really? That’s interesting. My church’s wafers kind of just dissolve in 10 seconds and then it’s all over.
Actual bread huh? When we’d go to church, we’d get those unleavened wafers that taste like nothing.
Anyways, I wonder how Joyce’d feel when she learns that everyone shares a cup for the communion?
What would she do in a Synagogue? hahaha
All of the ones I’ve belonged to offer grape juice as an alternative. And I think she’d stop complaining about the lack of crackers once someone convinced her to try the challah.
Don’t be a MAry, Joyce.
Joyce isn’t being a Mary. Mary would have been far more forceful.
Joyce is just Joyceing.
…wait, gotta ask: Does Joyce believe that Jesus turned water into unfermented grape juice?
Some denominations genuinely do. Never mind that that would be flat-out impossible before pasteurization, never mind that another guest explicitly mentions getting drunk…
(Others say wine today is sinful because it’s meant to be drunk straight, which was rare in those days.)
Well, the point of a miracle is that it does the impossible.
I’m not sure why water being turned into grape juice is anymore impossible than water being turned into wine or what pasteurization would have to do with.
Mind you, once the grape juice had been created, if it wasn’t pasteurized, it would start to ferment, but that’s a relatively slow process. It would still be grape juice when they drank it.
the churches i grew up in, we knew he turned it into wine, but we figured we wouldn’t mind us using grape juice instead ‘cuz it was just a memorial thingy anyway. symbolic and all. grape juice means older kids and alcoholics can drink it just fine, and the more poeple who can participate, the better! (assuming they were in a good place with God spiritually ofc, don’t want anybody getting sick because they symbolically connected with Jesus while actually being all rebellious and stuff!)
. . . the older i get, the weirder this all sounds
Ok so the Joyce that taught Joe…can we have that one back because this one is being completely disrespectful, almost deliberately so
She’s still there…but she’s still got her deep beliefs to overcome (i.e. fear of change). On the plus side, she is trying VERY hard, so I will give her benefit of the doubt.
She is being very trying at the moment
That joke was already used yesterday.
Damn, guess that joke can never be used again. :/ *crosses it off list*
Oh phew, it’s not just me thinking her attitude is fairly callous in those last panels.
Yeah I mean its new and confusing for her sure but it doesn’t mean Joyce should be forgetting basic politeness
No, she really doesn’t get it. Obviously it’s crackers and grape juice because that’s what Communion is. Jacob must just be messing with her.
We will have another Joyce-face, won’t we?
Real bread and real wine? This church is awesome!
All of the churches I’ve been to have used the real wine, albeit the actually decent tasting communion wine.
My parents bought a bottle like it and the three of us had it New Year’s Eve after he died. It actually wasn’t that bad.
Me too, I never got to drink any though, was always too young. Wish I could go back as an adult.
…I’m so glad I know nothing about all this religious nonsense. All these different cults to worship the same imaginary being, and none of them respect one another.
Most religions are not cults. As a cult survivor, I’d appreciate you not using the word in that way. It trivializes the harm survivors have gone through.
Just so we can all see the difference, please explain how religions are not cults.
I don’t know if you’re asking in good faith or not, but either way that’s a lot to put on someone who just disclosed being a cult survivor.
Thank you. I appreciate this.
Feel free to Google “characteristics of cults.” There’s a specific definition for a group to be counted as one. And no I’m not going to spend any more time explaining what’s actually a pretty triggering subject for me. 🙂
With that said, it’s a term to be careful with googling, mostly because of a few conflicting definitions. There’s an academic anthropological one that actually does encompass most religions (it’s really broad), a convenient one used by some of the more cult like evangelical strains that likes to claim ridiculous things like unconventional theology as central indications of a cult, and then a few more reasonable ones that tend to focus on institutional mechanisms of control over members.
So, google it but make sure you’re dealing with definitions from that third category.
As someone who is not a cult survivor and has the ability to Google things, here is the definition that is most accepted by cult survivors groups and resources:
“Of course, the problem with the word ‘cult’ is that it means different
things to different folks. I’d like to put forward a behavioral definition:
An organization that uses intensive indoctrination techniques to recruit and
maintain members into a totalist ideology.
Intensive indoctrination techniques include:
1) Subjection to stress and fatigue
2) Social disruption, isolation and pressure
3) Self criticism and humiliation
4) Fear, anxiety and paranoia
5) Control of information
6) Escalating commitment
7) Use of auto-hypnosis to induce ‘peak’ experiences
(No, this is not ‘Singer’s list,’ but it is pretty close. This list is
my own, developed for a yearly lecture to Social Psych classes at the
U of Iowa.)
Totalism is defined by psychiatrist Robert Lifton as the tendency to view
the world in terms of ‘all or nothing’ alignments. Lifton details 8
‘psychological themes’ that can be found in totalist groups:
— A ‘sacred science’ — an ideology that is held to be true for all
people at all times. This ideology generally claims to be inspired
and scientific at the same time.
— ‘Milieu control,’ the control of human communication, not only over
our communications with others, but also with ourselves.
— ‘Mystical manipulation’ — including deception and ‘planned
spontaneity’ which seeks limit self-expression and independent action.
— The demand for purity, the notion that absolute purity exists, and
that anything done in the name of this purity is ultimately moral.
— ‘The cult of confession’ — “There is the demand that one confess to
crimes one has not committed, to sinfulness that artificially induced,
in the name of a cure that arbitrarily imposed.” (Lifton, _Thought_
Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism”)
— ‘Loading the language’ — redefinition of language, with an emphasis
on moral polarization, and thought terminating cliches.
— ‘Doctrine over person’ — the subordination of personal experiences
to the doctrines of the sacred science.
— ‘Dispensing of existance’ — the doctrine that the group can decide
who has the right to exist, and who does not.”
Source: http://www.ex-cult.org/
Basically, cults involve large-scale gaslighting and psychological abuse. Recovery from living in a cult requires therapy similar to abuse survivors who have been gaslit and no longer trust their own judgement or sense of reality.
Many cults may also hide sexual abuse, involve prostitution in order to convert people, or endorse physical abuse (for example, cult leaders in the “Quiverfull” movement wrote a book ‘To Train Up a Child,’ which endorses child abuse and recommends ways to hide that abuse from authorities who might call protective services).
If anyone here sees themselves or their religion in this list, know that this is not normal. This is abuse. Normal religions do not ask you to cut off your family and only befriend church members. Normal religions do not want to humiliate you, to believe that you are scum and cult leaders are gods. Normal religions do not want you to believe that it is inherently sinful to read non-religious books. They do not want you to sell your house and give them the money. They do not want unquestioning obedience. Normal religions do not justify sexual or physical abuse.
The idea that “well, this happens to everyone,” is part of what keeps people in cults. It is not true. If you need help escaping from a cult, here is a good resource: https://www.culteducation.com/directory-of-cult-recovery-resources.html
Religions vary widely on their expectations for adherants. Some semi-mainstream religions incorporate cult-like attributes (for example, Joyce’s parents prohibition of secular media). This is dangerous in itself. But all the elements combines create truly paralyzing situations.
I have definitely made the same, flippant “religion = cult” comparison without considering how that sounds to cult survivors, and I don’t think I’d say it again after reading this.
I would say, however, that religions use similar manipulations, just to lesser degrees of severity. Looking at that list, 3,4 and 5 are basic religious staples; 1,2 & 6 could be leveled at many major religious organizations. Most “normal religions” are more than happy to get unquestioning obedience, have more than happily accepted the sold off property of their believers, and have been sweeping child abuse under the rug since priests were given power and time alone with children.
The more I go over this list, the more the difference between a cult and a religion seems like one of severity, not in underlying structure.
Perhaps. Although, and perhaps I’m just optimistic, #3 and #4 has never been a part of my religious upbringing to any degree. I have experienced anxiety and I do criticise myself, but that has been just as much a facet of my natural personality (and other cultural values that aren’t necessarily religious, like emphases on competition and “winning” in school).
Whereas religious practice for me (barring one notable exception) was a place where I felt peaceful rather than anxious. And the church I’m now in provided ample opportunity to combat my own self-criticism by re-focusing my lens on my community and making it easy to serve in a way that uses my skills. I don’t have as much self-criticism because I can see how I’m helping my community, which I can feel good about. Additionally, I’m not comparing myself to others as much because I’m thinking less about myself in general.
Similarly, I would say that if a mainstream religion begins sweeping abuse under the rug, that religion (or those churches from that religion) have crossed the line from church to cult, regardless of size. I firmly believe that the Quiverfull movement is a cult, no matter how popular it gets (which is why I *hate* shows like “16 Kids and Counting”) because it is based at its root in child abuse and woman abuse practices, full-stop.
3 & 4 typically go together, with religion presented as the missing ingredient to correct ordinary human flaws & thoughts- sense of unfulfillment, reactionary anger, fear of death, normal human shit. The fear comes through implied future punishment for not following certain teachings, while the control of information (5) is the usual religious answer to “why not follow these other guys, they have religion too”
This whole list is so on the nose for Catholicism in particular, it’s not even funny. “Cult of confession”, accepting ridiculous donations from their members (putting basically none of it into charity), and covering up/excusing child abuse…that basically describes them to a T.
I’m rambling a bit because obviously there’s a huuuuuge range of religion in a million different flavors. The stricter the religion, the more it seems to hew to the definition of a cult. But if a religion is ultra lax…what about it is different than an ordinary Sunday brunch club?
Also, on a personal level, I attended a fairly liberal Episcopalian church, but I used to have nightmares about being punished by Jesus(es) coming off the crucifix and/or being sent to hell. Because these images and ideas are designed to frighten, to scare people into believing they have to do x y z or be punished. That is cultish to the core and yet a major feature of most religions.
For actual cults item 5 tends to manifest as either a very extensive list of explicitly banned information sources that people aren’t to read/listen to/watch, heavy restrictions on what conversations are allowed with those outside the cult (with extreme cults allowing none and less extreme cults cracking down on anything that looks even slightly like friendship), etc.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some mainstream religions which are frighteningly cult like – more than a few megachurches come to mind – but that most religions don’t actually try to command their members to only access certain sources of information. They may poison the well for all other sources, but that’s not the same thing.
Essentially there’s a spectrum with mainstream religions on one end (some cult like aspects, but not heavily emphasized) and the actual dangerous cults on the far other end (taking all those warning signs and exaggerating them).
A religion like Joyce’s is not all the way to cult, but it’s definitely leaning in that direction.
cults are to churches what totalitarian regimes are to governments: one CAN turn into the other, and it HAS happened more than once but it’s not a natural progression and usually the transition involves a charismatic leader willing to use people as objects
Too bad. If you’d taken a minute or two to read the other comments, you’d have found a whole bunch of people having fun learning about each other’s traditions.
There’s no harm in understanding religious rite. And Episcopalian church is hardly a cult.
Seconding what Dusk said. Also, you paint with a very broad brush.
That’s an odd critique from someone putting actual effort into disrespecting other people.
In the previous strip in this storyline, someone mentioned that they predict that Joyce will become atheist or agnostic rather than convert to a more liberal / accepting form of Christianity, because too much of what she needed from her religion were rooted in the routines, symbols, rituals, and other elements of evangelical fundamentalism (which is inseparable from homophobia and sexism). And since she needs to be able to love and accept her LGBT friends now more than she needs her religion, she’s going to (eventually) let it go entirely, rather than eventually find meaning in rituals, routines, and symbols that are currently strange to her.
And that got me thinking on a track that excites me a bit. Because which character in the cast is an atheist, and can relate to needing a routine, rituals, and symbols to find meaning in, even if other people think her strange for it?
DINA!
It is high time for a Dina-and-Joyce adventure, imo.
Because remember why Joyce and Dina got off on the wrong foot? Joyce believes that evolution is wholly incompatible with Christianity, and that while it could made sense to be a Christian who supports LGBT people, it doesn’t make sense to believe in the Bible and evolution.
But by now, Joyce must realize how much Dina loves and cares for Becky. She fought for her! They are so similar. If Joyce’s character arc is going to end with her losing her religion–or at least facing that possibility–I predict Dina is going to be the final catalyst for that.
I’m optimistic.
I wouldn’t count on Joyce losing her religion. It’s more likely she’ll keep the faith and just decide the people have focussed on the wrong messages.
I don’t know about where Joyce will end up long-term, but I agree that I don’t see her losing her faith within the span of the comic.
We do know where Joyce ends up long term.
Future pornlord.
“…it doesn’t make sense to believe in the Bible and evolution.”
um
what
What’s your question? Because you may have misread the comment, as Stella was just talking about what Joyce’s beliefs are.
Sorry, poor phrasing. I meant that Joyce believes that evolution and Christianity are contradictory, so one must choose one or the other; both cannot be correct.
Incidentally, I don’t share this belief.
Honestly I’m just a little startled every time I come across that one.
“Evolution contradicts the Biblical creation story, if taken literally!”
Y’know what else contradicts the Biblical creation story if taken literally? The Biblical creation story, if taken literally.
@ Stella: yes to all that! Ever since their confrontation over dinosaur feathers, I’ve been thinking that if you look past the surface details, Joyce and Dina are so alike. I really want to see them interact more.
i’m used to the same type as you joyce *although haven’t been to church for a few years* but i wouldn’t be against the type mentioned here if i went to church and found that to be the case.
Reminds me of Vacation Bible School. The shock on Joyce is nostalgic.
To elaborate a slight bit: I was raised by a witch (who was raised by a Catholic woman (whose family apparently had ties to the Nazis.)). My primary experience with Christianity was talking to people who were themselves Christian. The only blatantly-Christian media I ever recall watching was Veggie Tales, which I held in the same regard as Wishbone; fun stories and characters, but ultimately based on fiction.
My only experiences inside of an actual church, for the longest time, involved funerals and weddings. During middle school, I was invited to attend something called “Vacation Bible School”, which took place during summer break (hence the name). Technically, my brothers were invited by their friends, and I was sort of along for the ride. It was… Well, I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that all of these people actually believed the things they were talking about.
The part that sticks with me most is a segment involving a re-enactment of (what I assume to be) a section of the Bible. The people running it handed us little index cards with string on them, which were apparently supposed to be our name plaques, and had us write our names on them in crayon. Then, they turned out all the lights and had us hand the “plaques” to someone who I think was meant to be playing a prophet, and she dipped them in water and wiped the names off of them. Then, people I assume were meant to be “guards” came in, saw the blank “plaques”, and said we were free to go, or something to that effect.
The entire thing blew my wee autistic mind, to the point I actually sprinted out of the room during one of the segments, and curled up behind a potted plant in the hallway until it was time to go home. There were more events like these over the years, but I never went to any of them, and actually wound up distancing myself from the kids we’d gone with.
So, that’s the very-abridged version of that.
Man, all I remember from vacation bible school is making candles and cat’s-eye dreamcatchers. Oh and one time a kid accidentally sneezed a glob of snot on me. That was….not great.
Like, doing bread and wine I get. Preferring not to do communion I get too. But the halfwayness of doing crackers and grape juice is just weird to me. Grape juice sounds like what he offered Judas while everyone else got wine.
I feel like a better strategy would have been to get Judas drunk so that he went around kissing everyone and just really cause a lot of confusion.
I’d love to see how that one would wind up being interpreted, in these delicate modern times.
Jesus would have given Judas wine too because he’s Jesus.
All this makes me wonder how Joyce would react to a non-Christian ceremony – better because she’d be prepared for weird/exotic rituals, or worse because she’d be prepared for weird/exotic rituals? Anyway, good on Becky for knowing things outside her field of experience and being on standby mode for Joyce meltdowns.
Possibly better – assuming you could get her to go at all, not just because she’d be prepared, but because she’d be more in observation mode than in “this is my church for the week” mode.
There’s non-Welch branded grape juice?!
This comic sometimes deviates from reality. This seems to be one such deviation.
All this talk of who and when is okay to take what communion, and it occurs to me that I’ve definitely taken communion a couple of times because that’s just what was happening. And that I am not baptized. Also that I am not even religious, annnd that at a Catholic funeral, I had to leave the church because the swinging of the incense thurible gave me an asthma attack. So, probably some sort of evil resides in me and I am a body of sin, but, when I was younger I did think the wine was neat.
Anyway, in my adulthood I choose to remain away from churches because I feel my presence would be an insult to the devout, though I do arbitrarily agree with and live by many of the goodwill and kindness tenets of many religions. I just don’t want the effort of religion… used up? On me.
“I never burden God on your account
Don’t waste your prayers on me.”
–Robbie Fulks, “I’ll Trade You Money for Wine”
I’m not religious either, but I don’t have a problem with going to church, should the occasion arise – friends going/wedding/funerals etc. I wouldn’t take communion though. That seems more disrespectful to me. That’s more like pretending to be part of the religion than just going to the service is.
At least it seems that way to me.
You think the likes of you can cause a compassion famine? God’s love is infinite, if anything is.
(My God answers Buddhist prayers.)
remembering the first time i tasted wine. it was meh.
also, my cousins kid is going to church and the advice id have given her is “when you want to leave, just say youre going to the restroom, its what i did”
Wine AND crackers?
So churches basically have an open bar with live music?
I am missing out.
Bwahaha 🙂
My parents go to a co-operating parish where the church had Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist ministers who each took a week to administer communion.
I remember being really glad when the methodist communion rolled around because there was ribena instead of nasty wine…
So what do you do when you haft to offer wine to the kids ?
I attended Episcopal church as a child. The kids get the wine as well. I believe they get around the whole “giving alcohol to minors” thing because it’s for a legitimate religious practice. Some churches also use mustum (basically wine with little or no alcohol), but I don’t think my church did. Keep in mind, we’re talking a VERY small amount of wine here. At the church that I attended most often, where they’d use communion wafers (basically a small piece of thin white bread, about an inch in diameter, with a cross on it) for the bread, the priest would dip the wafer halfway into the wine goblet, and you’d eat that. My mother did take me to a different church a couple of times (also episcopalian) where they’d use an actual loaf of bread, and instead of dipping it, you’d have to take a sip directly from the goblet, but even then, the priest would be the one holding it, and they were pretty good about making sure you only got a sip of it. There was also the option of only taking the bread or the wine if you wanted, instead of both. I personally only ever took the bread, because I hated the taste of the wine. (I still do, honestly. Only grape wine I actually enjoy is Lambrusco.)
I’m not sure how you’d handle that, since I’ve never had much of a grip on the whole “communion” thing. My guess is, you either shaft them out of going to Heaven by giving them a more “appropriate” substitute, or you play it to the hilt and trust them not to go wild with the minuscule amount of alcohol they’re drinking. I wouldn’t put too much stock into this non-religious individual’s half-formed notions, though.
I’ve been to Catholic and Calvinist masses. The previous resolved it by only the priest drinking wine, and all the other members of the congregation receiving only the wafer. At the latter, you could only take part after your confirmation at 13, and even after that you were supposed to only take a sip from the cup. Fun fact, our congregation was very proud when we could finally afford having individual cups instead of a big common cups (mind, they were all silver).
I typed all this partially because I wanted to finally comment on your name, which I like very much, I think for reasons unknown to you. In hungarian “volt” is the past tense of to be, so your name looks like to me: new llend (used to be henry). Idk why I find it funny
A somewhat accidental play on words can always be funny.
I heard tales that you Protestant heathens* used grape juice and crackers instead of flat wafers and watered-down wine, but never had it confirmed until today …
* my use of heathens is sarcastic, please understand and treat it as such, i mean no offense to anyone
Teetotaler denominations are weird. Though my home church offers grape juice for people with conditions (and I guess for people who REALLY don’t want to drink wine).
I don’t think any church can serve wine to people under the age of 21.
Well, that’s just false. It’s a very small amount of wine that’s served to each person. Half a sip.
The drinking age really only applies to buying and consuming alcohol in public. And really, the actual law itself allows underage drinking for religious purposes, medical purposes, and in private establishments i.e. private clubs or at your house.
It’s really weak wine, and as Yumi said, not very much.
I wonder how Joyce would feel about my friend and my snack cracker idea, “Jeez-Its,” that you can pair with our special jelly which is the plasma of Christ.
Do you have a Kickstarter for that?
Honestly, bless Jacob for trying his best to be a good host and not letting any of this get to him. I can understand Joyce is struggling right now, but she keeps dipping into rude territory and I’m not sure she’s even noticed.
I feel bad that Jacob’s already apologized for “pushing” Joyce just by inviting her here while she’s done nothing but loudly complain about how everything’s wrong in his church.
It’s always a risk that you become so used to the details of a regular service that it becomes possible to cruise through it on autopilot and thus maybe, just maybe, miss the point. Joyce: The brand doesn’t matter and you should probably be thinking of other things at that point.
Joyce has somehow never grasped that churches of a different denomination may actually do (or believe!) things in a different way. Did her parents fail to discuss this with her or did she just refuse to listen? I mean, the whole point of different denominations is that other people are doing church “wrong”, right?
Discussing this made me suddenly see Joyce’s dilemma. Joyce is afraid to do church “wrong”, so she pretends that differences between churches are not big enough to make a moral difference. But the differences she experiences in Jacob’s church are actually big enough to make her afraid she might be doing the wrong thing by joining their service.
She has fundie parents and was raised in a fundie environment. The only time other denominations’ rituals would be discussed would probably be in the vein of how they’re wrong and only their own rituals are right.
In all honesty, her parents might not have expanded much more than “they’re worshiping Christ wrong”. Maaaybe they would have gone into depth about some things, like the crucifix discussion from the other day, but actually going into depth about the rituals and the difference in beliefs probably would not have been on the table.
In Fundie denominations, other faiths are “not Christian” and “do it wrong” as demonstrated by their failure to have all the small aspects that they say are required.
So when Joyce is seeing all this, she’s got a voice in the back of her head that says that every difference is proof that this is actually a church to Satan and that she isn’t actually worshipping God at all.
…followed by the same voice telling her defiance means that she belongs here and will go to hell together with the rest of the non-believers.
Barrels of fun on planet Joyce..
And yet she seems to have a default assumption that any church will be acceptable and not too different, which isn’t what I’d expect. Might be a side-effect of the whole non-denominational thing – church is church (except for the Catholics). Whereas, if she was for example a Fundie Southern Baptist, she’d know to avoid non-Baptist churches and expect there to be big differences if she did go into an Episcopal one.
Pretty much the only complaint I have about the UCC church I grew up in (apparently.. one of, uh, the largest UCC churches in the country?) was that we used grape juice and not wine.
(Then again, I suppose one of the reasons it was so good/liberal/welcoming was that Rick and Jill were fantastic pastors..)
If she’s a guest, and not Episcopalian, they probably wouldn’t think it very odd if she didn’t participate in their rituals, would they?
In my experience, no. The Episcopal church I attended as a child would always make it a point to mention that any guests of non-Episcopalian Christian denominations were free to partake or not partake in the Holy Eucharist.
Oh no. This past holiday season, my uncle wanted as many of us to attend a church service together as could be arranged (my brother had to work, so he got out of it) as a kind of reaction to my grandmother’s death that August. My parents still go to the same Episcopal church we all went to when my brother and I were kids. I sat there, thumbing through the Naval Research Laboratory’s Plasma Formulary the entire service, and nobody gave a toss.
Can’t speak about Espicopalian, but my home church (LMS) had a little warning about the small, but important differences in beliefs about the Eucharist between denominations and how you SHOULDN’T partake if you weren’t sure. And to feel free to ask a pastor too.
The point being yes. As a non member of the denomination, much less the church, Joycec would not be expected to take part in communion or the offerings.
Oh my god.
Actual bread.
What kind of fancy ass church
Eat these crackers, they are my body.
Drink this grape juice, it is my blood.
Becky trying to whisper support and advice non-disruptively is just adorable. As is Jacob’s concern as he worries he’s pushed her too quickly into this knowing what he does now about how she handles changes (especially around what she considers religious).
And it really hammers home how this is exactly the two best equipped to try and be there for her as she attempts to do this.
But it also makes me more suspicious that Joyce is not going to be able to hold onto her faith like Becky has. She’s a lot more set in her ways about church than Becky and a lot more teetering on the edge of “if how I was raised was wrong, then my faith is wrong” than Becky’s “my God answers lesbian prayers”.
Like, I think she’ll continue trying things like this, but I have a feeling that if it’s going to involve a certain amount of change, she’ll find it easier and more meaningful to lose her faith completely.
Given her raging rant about Original Sin, she’s likely to lose her religion in both meanings of the phrase.
Side note this comic lacks Fuckface.
Dagnabbit, now I got “Losing my religion” on the brain.
Hey she’s just worried she’s said too much. Or maybe that she hasn’t said enough.
That’s horrible! XD
You know, that would make a good song title.
Not Every Long Sentence Is A Song Title By Fall Out Boy.
Wow, that is really a song. Funny.
In an upcoming strip:
“Reverend, why is there a lizard on your head?”
“Isn’t he cool? Carla let me borrow him.”
I wonder if Joyce doesn’t have a less blatant case pf autism than Dina. Not all autistic people fit the quiet savant mold – especially women with autism tend to be good at masking it until they change their environment and their old mask no longer works. Plus a lot of autistic people are extroverted and have Joyce’s brand of boundary-oblivious hail-fellow-well-met over-friendly enthusiasm. It would explain her picky eating, social trouble, and black and white thinking, as well as her tendency to rigidity in her routines and thinking. I see a lot of one of my autistic cousins in Joyce the more we see how hard adjusting has been for her.
I am more of a Dina – but not all autistics are like me.
Unlikely. Joyce and many of her behaviors and much of her character are based on Willis’s own upbringing. She’s almost certainly not intentionally written to autistic.
If we interpret his second-hand character tics as autism, we’re uncomfortably close to diagnosing him over the Internet.
Fair. Just noticed the similarities is all.
“Based on” =/= “is literally the exact same way”. I’m not diagnosing Willis with autism, I’m headcanonning Joyce as autistic.
Also, that’s kind of the exact thing Willis said about Dina: she’s based on his own quirks, and if people think she’s 100% autistic, well, that sure is a thing isn’t it. He doesn’t know though.
So if we can say ‘yep Dina is autistic’ we can almost definitely also say ‘yep Joyce is autistic’
huh.
that’s an interesting theory. I’ve been assuming Joyce is NT, but you’ve listed a bunch of things that she has in common with me, and yeah, sometimes I’m a lot like Dina but other times I’m way more outgoing (kinda manic-pixie-oblivious-girl).
otoh, maybe autistic traits are more common than generally believed. or maybe they can also be caused by weird upbringing (r/raisedbynarcissists seems to have an unusually high number of both people with autism, and people whose parents told them they had autism when they didn’t)
Awwww, Becky trying so hard to help. In fact, it looks like she expect an epic freakout. No jokes, no cute side comments, no sudden moves. Only helpful whispers, friendly passiveness and full attention
The Eucharist was originally a full on meal shared by the congregation including the wine and the bread as the actual substance of Christ’s body and blood (wine, of course, has special properties that are easily associated with the spiritual). This made the Church a center of hospitality and welcome. As the Church became more powerful and wealthy, communion was paradoxically reduced to a token which became representative of exclusivity; in the RC at least one was not supposed to partake of it without first making use of the confessional to provide sufficient purity to be worthy of this sacrament. As far as how much wine you drink, it all has to be consumed so if the congregation as a whole is niggardly the ministering priest may have to consume fairly impressive quantities.
Huh, I haven’t been to an Episcopal church that used bread instead of wafers for the Eucharist. I wonder if Jacob’s church also does the “some people dip, some people sip” thing; you’d think bread would pick up a lot more wine than the wafer does. (I could not say for certain; the one church I visited that used bread also gave tiny, tiny cups of grape juice.) It’s always neat to see how things vary even in the same denomination.
Lutheran here. For any protestant, communion is symbolic, and the bread/wafer and juice/wine issues should not have religious significance. Our Pastors generally twist the cup slightly as they let everyone have a sip (or people dunk their bread/wafer), and after a full rotation they’d switch to a new cup while a helper wipes the rim.
Oh this is interesting, you actually get the wine? And actual bread? In Poland we just get this… small thin cracker put into our mouth by the priest.
Communion wafers. Some denominations in the US have them too.
We also get large square ones for Christmas to share among the family. And some to tear up and give to farm/home animals along with their feed.
Oh deary me. Joyce, Episcopals use actual wine (generally watered down, depending on the specific church and service) and bland-ass little wafers (although I’m sure there are some that do real bread). It’s been a long time (huzzah atheism), but I still remember those bloody wafers and how they would occasionally velcro themselves to the roof of my mouth (worse than bloody peanut butter).
See I know there are other issues here, but as an Anglican the fact that they’re talking during the Eucharist prayers really annoys me :p it’s like people who talk at the cinema during the climax :p.
Anyway, I can only echo what people above have said; all the Anglican churches I’ve ever been in use wafers instead of bread. Things may be different across the pond, though.
I have never been to an Episcopal service, so that’d be a new one on me. Then again, I gave up my faith ages ago, so unlike Joyce I’m not worried about “doing church wrong”.
Her panel 4 and panel 6 are so composed I hate to tell he she’s in for another shock.
Jew here and I’d like to say that alt-text is right
Best church I ever went to had challah
Was that a joke or is there really a challah-usimg Christian church that’s not Jews for Jesus ?
Wait. Joyce’s congregation are a teetotalers?!?
The more I learn about their home church, the more alienated from her faith I feel.
We don’t know. Not using wine during a service isn’t evidence they believe booze in general is bad.
Communion is the best part of church? What about the electric guitars? The worship leader? The SHIMMYING? Come on, Joyce.
Well, there is always the crushing on cute boys, I suppose. Like
Jac…Tristan.Sometimes communion is the best part. Ask Becky how finger-licking it can be.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/remembrance/
You are right, ValdVin. You are perfectly right. Communion IS the best part.
after many churches that did Tray Of Crackers And Plastic Cups i went to one that had us go up to the front, take a hunk of bread, and dip it in grape juice
and the bread was SO FUCKING GOOD
it was undoubtedly the BEST bread-related experience i have ever had in my life, and i have eaten a lot of bread
and every time i think about it i’m sO MAD that i didn’t ask the lady who made it for her recipe. even if i was like 15 and the idea of making my own bread was 4 years distant on the horizon i’m so disappointed in myself
“Oh, holy SHIT! Pardon my French. But that is some very fine Jesus, best Jesus I ever had. Gee whiz. You’ve got to give me the recipe!” *wipes mouth with sleeve*
If Becky never says this I’ll be upset
I had to do communion once. We visited my religious grandmother and my mother said ‘if you all tell her you’re some form of atheist/agnostic she might actually die’ so we had to pretend we’d done it before. I had awful social anxiety and queues were terrifying, strangers were terrifying, church was terrifying. All I have is a vague recollection of shaking terribly and nearly choking on a wafer in a large building with candles.
What a surreal experience.
Also, sympathies from a fellow social anxiety haver.
I’m having a reverse-Joyce moment here. Was raised Catholic, and reading the description of communion as “grape juice and crackers” makes me cringe a lot.
Fellow recovering Catholic. Also, having them passed around and picking one out at random, instead of being issued to you by a man of the cloth who guarantees you that your very host is the body? That sounds awfully chancy!
I have never been in a church like Joyce’s home church, as seen here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/remembrance/
Ahaha same. “Bread instead of tasteless wafers? You heathens!”
Wafers? Who gets wafers? My family was split non-denom and Catholic, and both churches gave broken pieces of white unsalted crackers (though the pass-around tray versus trip to the front and wine versus grape juice still applied).
Communion wafers are the driest most unsavoury bread product know to man
I don’t want to go all “well, REAL Catholics!” on you, but that does sound weird for an a
ctual Catholic Church, Obi, because the official Catholic doctrine (i.e. the Vatican) does not recognize anything other than communion wafers as being allowed. The reason being that crackers crumble, so you could get crumbles of the actual body of Christ spread through the floor, stepped on, thrown in the trash etc, which would be disrespectful.
So I’m going to guess that protestant churches that partake in communion with crackers don’t actually believe it is The Actual Literal Body of Christ, but more of a symbolic act. I did not know that this type of communion still existed nowadays until this comic, which was interesting.
Also agreed, wafers are dry and unsavory. When I was a kid I was convinced that they were made out of paper and just CALLED it a bread product.
Your crackers may be our wafers. I don’t call it a cracker because it’s thinner and flatter than most crackers and doesn’t really “crunch” so much as snap when you break it. Like Ditrysia said, gotta avoid those crumbs.
I’ve got to say that I’m finding this strip physically painful. Joyce doesn’t just come across as naive here but as wilfully ignorant and maybe even a little condescending! I know that she doesn’t mean it but I find it hard to believe that she doesn’t realise that other denominations may do things in a very, very different way!
Right with you. Honestly, doing a tiny bit of research or even just asking someone wouldn’t have killed her.
Though, I admit, this reaction comes from having (more than once) taking someone along to an activity I wanted to do and spending the whole time tending to their Feelings Break.
It change, something Joyce is not very good with. While she has come a very long way from her first strip (atheist best friend, lesbian best friend, etc) one does not simply change who they are or what they believe in/what they are use to. This whole thing is being played for laughs but its hard on her to come to grips when so many things in her life, even something as simple as the concept that not everyone does everything exactly like you, keep changing. It’s like standing on ice without skates. Every time you get your balance back after falling, something else changes and causes you to fall again.
Making initial judgements from a place of ignorance has been one of Joyce’s staples throughout this comic.
Which is why I’m optimistic about how this will will eventually end.
I’m an atheist, though the least militant kind you are likely to meet. But even I must shake my head about how disagreements over the form and meaning of the Eucharist led to real people to really kill each other.
Is Joyce using the word “respectively” correctly here?
I’m Lutheran, and at my church, the communion wafers are ALWAYS STALE.
ALWAYS.
I mean, I know that’s not what I’m supposed to be focusing on but my goodness. It always feels like I’m biting into one of those foam packing peanuts.
There are crackers that come out of the oven like foam packing peanuts, and they are a marvel of the modern age.
Liking Jacob more, right now, liking Joyce less. (Becky’s points are staying roughly where they were.)
I’m liking where this will eventually end up taking Joyce. It will be another journey of hers to fulfill the goodness that’s in her.
And I assume Becky’s points are roughly at the “all of them” level, right?
I remember preparing for my first Communion (Catholic, early ’70s) and reading this in a pamphlet: “Please don’t tell children they will hurt the Baby Jesus by chewing the Eucharist.”
This was a thing they found necessary to point out.
To adults.
I stopped going to church in 1985. The few times I’ve been to Mass since then (weddings, funerals, christenings), I’ve passed on Communion out of respect for those who are still active in the Church.
Yes but there is something disturbing in the adult human psyche that for some reason impels us to believe that telling children mentally and/or emotionally-scarring lies is somehow a positive educational method.
My great-great-aunt took particular delight in telling four-year-old me of the imp with garden shears that cut off the thumbs of little boys who sucked their thumbs. This was considered to be positive reinforcement.
The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legg’d scissor-man…
Snip! snap! snip! the Scissors go;
And Conrad cries out: ‘Oh! oh! oh!’
Snip! snap! snip! They go so fast,
That both his thumbs are off at last.
‘Struwwelpeter, or Pretty Stories & Funny Pictures.’
Good old childhood memories.
……..
Okay, I have to ask now, how the hell is Joyce better-socialized than Becky? (I see a few possibilities but I don’t like any of them.)
It’s pretty clear by now that “better socialized” in the eyes of the parents & priests of her community meant “less likely to rebel”.
So yeah, they were completely wrong about Joyce.
More thoroughly brainwashed, incapable of independent thought and a good example of their community to throw at those Godless people to show them how much better her Church’s people are.
First time I went to a Catholic mass after years of going to a church where we got the tiny cups of grape juice and stale crackers, my mom and I were absolutely STUNNED that not only were they serving little kids wine but also that everyone was sharing the same cup! My mom refused to stand up to receive the eucharist and I stood up but turned back last minute. Fortunately after years of going to Catholic school I found out that you can pass on having to do all that by just crossing your arms over your chest like a mummy–the father will just bless you verbally or something, something in latin.
Yeah, you can just cross your arms if you’re uncomfortable with alcohol.
The wine was always kind of optional at my church. Adults could just skip it (we queued for communion and the wine was kind of off to the side), and kids weren’t expected to do more than the wafer.
Yes it’s all rather silly isn’t it.
The few times I’ve been to a church service, I’ve tended to tune out at least somewhat. But I just remembered the time my high school (a few years after I graduated) put on a production of Godspell. It was kind of surreal. I like musicals and all, but it was weird to be sitting in my public high school listening to that. Apparently the theatre kids had to go around insisting to people that it wasn’t really a religious show. Despite being about Jesus.
Well, I’m not sure about Godspell, but I’m fond of Jesus Christ Superstar and I’m pretty sure it’s not really a religious show.
I agree about Jesus Christ Superstar, but Godspell is very different. (Side note, sometimes when I’m busy taking the Lord’s name in vain, my brain decides to tack a word on, so I go, “Jesus Christ Superstar!”
darnit, I’m going to be humming that for the rest of the day. (but I don’t think I’ve seen the movie, so I’m not sure why I even know the song)
Well, Judas gets a very sympathetic rap in it. And Mary Magdalene, as well as Judas, says Jesus is “just a man”. So not really, no. 🙂 Great musical, though.
It is a great show with wonderful music. I saw the 1973 Australian production when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Wow, it was good!
Interesting trivium! “Jesus Christ Superstar” was banned in some places for promoting Christianity and in others for deriding Christianity. The authorities weren’t sure what it was, but they knew they didn’t like it.
Hhhhmmmm, Blood of Jesus…
Funny thing, I read somewhere that Romans were crept out by early Christians because they kept talking about eating bits of their Lord (cannibalism) and called each other brother/sister (incest).
But doesn’t Roman mythology involve incestuous relationships among their deities?
(Waves hand) Atheist here. It’s all weirdness to me. At least you’re not sacrificing people or animals, so you can have your wine however you want.
it’s funny how she had an easier time adjusting to people with totally opposing viewpoints than she does adjusting to a group with similar viewpoints that just have a few aesthetic differences.
I’ve never done communion, but I got to taste a communion wafer once.
It was solid flour.
I don’t think they even bake them. I think they just put 100% flour under such high pressure that the molecules bind together and form a solid.
Well, they’re probably trying to make sure nobody develops a taste for human flesh
I grew up in the years following Vatican II, and my (Roman Catholic) church used real wine, but even after many of the changes to the liturgy (use of the vernacular rather than Latin, priest facing the congregation, elimination of the Tridentine Mass) had been implemented it was still only on rare and special occasions that the congregation was permitted to partake of communion in both forms. Later on (like in the late ’80s and after) it became more common.
I’ve also seen some parishes moving away from the dark red vin ordinaire and using lighter-colored wines like a rosé, white zins, and (in one instance) a chardonnay.
“I prefer Welch’s but if your denomination uses a different brand, I suppose I can adjust.”
“Here you go, Joyce.”
“Sun Glory? I’m outta here.”
A really fun church would serve Hawaiian Punch and Necco Wafers for communion.
Listen not to the heathen lizard! /s
I love your avatar. A++
soo… anyone else watching The Orville? Apparently I’m not caught up yet, but, I watched episode 3 last night and holy fuck I wasn’t expecting them to dive straight into issues like that… I was expecting light dysfunctional entertainment and got serious ethical debate 🙂
and one of the earliest Assigned Male comics explains the real-world issue that the episode is about: http://assignedmale.tumblr.com/post/101757815287/assigned-male-a-webcomic-about-a-transgender
S’a shame the author of that webcomic is straight up kookiedooks
I’ve been super ready for that show to bomb, just based on who’s attached to it. Does it have anything worth watching it for?
I was pretty skeptical when I heard the connection to Family Guy (ugh I find that show’s humour so irritating!) but I’d actually completely forgotten about that, and when I was trying to find the name of the show today I thought it was connected to Rick and Morty instead. 🙂
Most of the humour is about the crew being incredibly dysfunctional and gossipy, or poking fun at stereotypes. It’s fairly cringey at times, but not dragged out like in Family Guy. The most annoying thing I remember is that in episode 3, even when they’re arguing for equality they’re doing it based on awful american assumptions about gender. I’m not sure if that was intentional or if the writers just haven’t noticed how immersed in that culture they are.
…so basically, it’s too soon to tell, but I’m hoping it might turn into a more TNG-like show with interesting dilemmas, but still with lots of crass humour and “how did they get that past the censor” moments.
darnit, I’m still getting gravatar characters I don’t recognise – but at least they’re the gender I want now.
If you don’t recognise the character, do you even know their gender?
DoA is definitely not the kind of comic where it’s safe to assume.
ha, true 🙂 their *apparent* gender would be a more accurate way of saying it. I want people’s assumptions to skew towards “she”.
…at least here, where those who would use it against me aren’t likely to get past moderation. most parts of the internet I value the protection of ambiguity.
How do you not know Mandy? She and Grace are the Greek Chorus of the strip.
I probably don’t know the names of any background characters.
except fuckface, of course. 🙂
So here’s a thought related to the story and not religion: what are the chances the pastor is Ryan’s dad? I’m half expecting Joyce to go up for communion and then see some sort of familial resemblance. She’s already pretty shaken, so I imagine it would be the last straw for her and she might legitimately freak out
If Ryan said his dad was a ‘pastor’, the likelihood is small. There’s a range of words used to describe clergy in the Anglican communion (priest, minister, vicar, and others), but ‘pastor’ isn’t one I’ve ever heard there.
Unlikely. Episcopalian clergy can marry, unlike Catholics, but AFAIK they still use the same terminology, and I had never heard the word pastor until I was forced into an Evangelical church. “Pastor” is for Protestants and their ilk, in my knowledge.
This is Joyce’s first exposure to alcohol, isn’t it?
We just got little pieces of round bread disks, and then dipped it in wine.
You also had to have finished some right or be a certain age or something? I never paid attention, and if you just acted like everyone ells you could do the wine thing anyway.
In this case it’s “rite” not “right”. English is the worst when it comes to words.
Your preaching to the quire my friend. When you live your life with dyslexia you just kind of except that your gonna have a lot of mistakes when typing on the internet,.
Yeah. In a lot of Churches you don’t take Communion until you have reached “the age of discretion”, learned the catechism and the basic doctrines of Church, and been through the ritual of “first communion” a.k.a. “confirmation”, which in some Churches must be conducted by a bishop.
Slight addendum, first communion and confirmation are different sacraments (at least in Catholicism).
Communion is a sacrament in its own right that you do weekly, so first communion is just when you’re old enough to start participating, usually around age 7 or so. Confirmation (the one that requires the bishop) is when you become a full “adult” member of the church, and comes a little later. That varies more from parish to parish, my church did it in 6th grade but some of my cousins didn’t do it until they were juniors in high school (the rationale being that you need to be old enough to commit). In that sense it’s kind of like a christian bar mitzvah, but with a saint instead of a torah portion and minus the sweet party/language requirements.
Addendum to my addendum, the above is just for Roman Catholics. I know people from other churches have their first communion later (maybe with baptism), or don’t really do confirmation at all, etc., so it’s likely someone has in fact just rolled them together.
I was a unchurched Unitarian Universalist as a kid, so I have sympathy for Joyce’s culture shock because Christianity varies by both sect and church.
I mean, as a kid raised Catholic, they usually watered down the wine with cranberry juice, but we got the wafer-made-of-paper, not real bread. I’d of loved real wine and bread.
ii never thought the Eucharist was cool at all…aside the first time I got to do it…but her communion makes it sound way cooler than it should be.
Hello everyone! I have been obsessively following Dumbing Of Age since Dec 3 2015, but all this time have been to shy to comment on anything. I have finally decided that it’s silly to be nervous about anonymously commenting on a web series. so I say again Saluton, Guten Tag, Bonan Tagon, Beunos Dias, Ni Hao, Hajimemashite, and Salutations! those are the only languages i know how to say hello in…….