I had problems with Catholicism right from the start. Communion troubled my seven year old mind. I just couldn’t grasp why it was a sacrament. I understood Confession even though I hated going. It made sense to me. Confirmation seemed redundant to me. Why do you need both Baptism and Confirmation is beyond me. Still I understand what Confirmation is about. Communion, on the other hand, was nothing short of cannibalism. I am eating the flesh of God. For what purpose. Does taking Communion make you a better person? Not as far as I can tell, so why am I required to eat the flesh and blood of Christ?

Worse still, at least as far as religious faith goes, even as a child, I never believed, for one moment, that the host was the body of Christ. And, I am telling you I was a fairly gullible kid, ask my older brother and sister who delighted into tricking me into going to the basement, which I was terrified of, because they also told me about the horrible things that could happen there, and then locking the door so I couldn’t get out and them laughing at me from beyond the door. Bastards. I spent many hours terrified in the basement based on their trickery but I never was much bothered by all the rules and regulations regarding the proper taking of the Communion wafer. It was a piece of terrible tasting bread.

I bet that a lot of Catholics who take communion would agree. It is just too damn difficult to make any sense of transubstantiation which goes something like this — the priest arrives with some unleavened bread during the Mass he turns it into the body of Christ which, while now being the body of Christ, still looks and tastes like unleavened bread and not the actual body of Christ. Tell me this isn’t difficult to believe.

More importantly, why am I eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. Why would we ever consume the body and blood of anyone much less Jesus? It isn’t in the bible, at least not as an instruction to turn bread into the body of Christ and then partake in the bread.

Communion is based on the Last Supper where Jesus said something about eating bread and remembering him when they did this in the future. It is pretty obvious, at least to me, that Jesus was speaking metaphorically. Firstly, he was very much alive at the Last Supper and, still being human, needed his body. Secondly, it sounds like this bread is my body is the 1st Century idiomatic equivalent of remember me when I’m gone. The body and blood has a less transcendent meaning here and more of a way to say I will be with you, any time you are eating this bread keep this in mind. Somehow this got incorporated into the Catholic Mass as Communion where congregants feast on the body and blood of Christ.

It makes more sense to me as a symbolic reenactment of the Last Supper. That would have meaning to me, that I would understand. But why do priests go to all this trouble of changing bread and wine into Christ and then asking the congregants to eat and drink the body and blood once it has been changed? It doesn’t make me holier. It doesn’t stop me from sinning. What exactly is the purpose?

So, I would say, that I started down the road to perdition on the day I made my first Communion.