catholic tastes.

THE BLOOD OF CHRIST AND GERMS The practice of dipping the host into the common cup to avoid infection from bacteria during Communion--used in some Catholic and many Episcopal and Lutheran parishes in the U.S.--actually increases rather than reduces the threat of infection, according to a recent report by Canadian cardiologist David Gould. The report, titled "Eucharistic Practice and the Risk of Infection," reinforces the findings of previous Catholic and Lutheran studies that concluded that drinking directly from the common cup does not put communicants at any significant risk for catching colds, the flu, or even worse infections.

"In some 2,000 years of the practice.... no episode of disease attributable to the common cup has ever been reported," Gould told the Anglican Journal (October 2000). "For the average communicant it would seem that the risk of drinking from the common cup is probably less than the risk of airborne infection in using a common building." And experiments have shown that wiping the chalice with a white linen cloth reduces the bacterial count by 90 percent.

According to Gould, dipping bread into the wine is more likely to spread contagion because "medically, ... hands are much worse transmitters of infection than lips. Our mothers always told us to wash our hands before eating, because our hands pick up germs. And they had a good reason for saying that."

THE AMERICAN BIBLE "In a recent Barna survey, 60 percent of adults said they believe the Bible to be completely accurate in everything it says. However, 75 percent believe the Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves." (Current Thoughts & Trends, November 2000)

GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL! In its continuing global expansion, Pokemon fever was caught last year by several European church officials. Desperate to find in the cartoon and trading-card craze some kind of "Christian message" that might help reach the preteen crowd, the Church of England's Anne Richards was quoted in the Guardian Unlimited (June 9, 2000): "At first I found [discerning a Christian message] difficult, since so much of Pokemon is concerned with fighting battles and outwitting opponents, but I have changed my mind after having seen the movie." Richards, theology secretary of the church's Board of Mission, has come to see the--by most accounts painfully forgettable--movie as a tale of Christian sacrifice and redemption.

In the tale of the wicked Mewtwo, who seeks to capture all human beings and to clone Pokemons and set them to fight each other, Richards detects a "parable about the pointlessness of force and the importance of the love relationship."

When Ash is killed trying to stop a fight involving Mewtwo, "Mewtwo is completely changed by Ash's sacrifice," Richards says. "He is redeemed.... My own children found obvious Christian parallels with all this. They were impressed by the death and resurrection sequence and the fact that at the heart of it all was love."

Previously, in what the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera called a "true papal blessing," the Vatican's satellite TV station SAT2000 had declared that Pokemon had no "harmful moral side effects," was "full of inventive imagination," and had the virtue of pushing children "in the direction of imagination and inventiveness." (The Times, April 20, 2000)

PIERCED BY SCRIPTURE "Mary's story tells us that if the scriptures don't sometimes pierce us like a sword, we're not paying close enough attention."

--Kathleen Norris (quoted in Christianity Today, Dec 4, 2000)

"THE AMERICAN DREAM is saving the world despite a bad hair day."

--Glenda Bailey, editor-in-chief of Marie Claire magazine (quoted in Magazines, a special advertising supplement to the New York Times, Oct. 16, 2000)

Always put more hope in eternal glory than fear in hell.

-- Geert Groote (1340-84) Dutch founder of the "Modern Devotion"