+AMDG+
One of the few benefits of blogging is that friends occasionally send me clips or news items related to some peeve or crotchet of mine. The above-embedded promotional video for “Purity Solutions” is a classic example (click here to visit the website). I’ve long been suspicious of the steady encroachment of hand sanitizer and alcohol wipes into the sanctuary, but the suspicion has always lain at the murky level of instinct, below the daylight realm of rational explanation. Perhaps it is much like the horror religiosus most Americans feel at the sight of a woman’s unshorn underarm.
I’m not exactly sure why receiving the host from a sleek, metallic Pez-dispenser is any more comical than receiving it from a hand (or from a spoon, as in the Orthodox Church), or why wheels of wine-shots are in any way inferior to chalices. It could be the industrial manufacture (I can almost imagine a “Purity Solutions” salesperson rolling over it with a car to show that they use an alloy developed by NASA). But, if I had to take a stab, I would venture that I associate it with some narrowing of the spiritual horizon. Read the rest of this entry »