VANCOUVER, British Columbia (RNS) Roman Catholics in North America and Britain are calling for a series of YouTube videos showing a Canadian teenager destroying Communion hosts to be removed from the Internet.
The Quebec teenager named Dominique, who tags himself “fsmdude,” has posted more than 40 videos featuring him desecrating the host, the small circular wafer that Catholics ingest during Eucharist service.
Dominique’s videos, many seen by more than 20,000 viewers, show the wafers being burned, hammered, placed in a blender, fed to animals and flushed down a toilet.
“If they want blasphemy, we’ll give them blasphemy,” Dominique says in one video.
The Toronto-based Catholic Civil Rights League claims the videos are “hate speech.” The organization and thousands of its supporters have petitioned YouTube officials to remove what they claim are sacrilegious videos.
The short clips were shut down for a few hours in early October, but soon returned.
Now YouTube, which is owned by Google, has “age-gated” Dominique’s videos. The videos have been marked as not appropriate for everyone, and restricted, ostensibly, to viewers over age 18.
To convict someone of hate speech, Canadian prosecutors not only have to prove someone is expressing contempt or hatred for an identifiable group based on their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion, but that he or she is also inciting others to discriminate against members of that group.
Bill Donohue, president of the New York-based Catholic League, insists the Quebec teenager’s videos violate YouTube’s “community standards,” which do not permit hate speech.
“In August, YouTube took down a video of a teenager who urinated on the Holocaust memorial in Rhodes, Greece. That was not only the right moral choice, it was consistent with its own strictures. Catholics deserve the same sensitivity,” Donohue said in a public statement.
Dominique, in response to a series of videos that Catholics have put on YouTube to counter his videos, said he’s not attacking the religion, but satirizing the concept of transubstantiation — the Catholic belief that the wafer and wine at Communion become the literal body and blood of Christ.
“I’m attacking the belief that this thing, this cracker, is someone that can feel pain,” he said, calling the host “just an object you can eat.”
By Douglas Todd
Religion News Service
Copyright 2008 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted October 22, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Here’s what I want to know. Where did he get these Communion wafers? I mean, I assume they’d be consecrated . . . otherwise even the Pope would agree it’s just a cracker. So who gave him a bunch of consecrated hosts?
posted October 22, 2008 at 7:40 pm
It may be blasphemy, but it’s not a hate crime. Besides, IT’S JUST A CRACKER. These people need to calm down and stop whining about “persecution” — it’s free speech. If you don’t like it, LEAVE.
posted October 22, 2008 at 7:53 pm
WMDKitty, that may be YOUR belief, but it still very much meets the definition of a hate crime, which in this case is NOT protected by free speech:
“Hate crimes (also known as bias motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation.”
“fsmdude” is doing this purely to offend Roman Catholics (and for that matter Eastern Orthodox) based on their membership in a certain social group, in this case, Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
posted October 22, 2008 at 8:44 pm
I’m not Christian (I’m Jewish), but I do know this is extraordinarily offensive.
Yes, take it down.
posted October 22, 2008 at 9:14 pm
First, how does anyone know if the wafers are indeed “communion” wafers or look alikes? Where does the average guy get “holy wafers” as was asked above? If they are just look alike wafers he is simply playing with food. And there are probably more offensive things on the internet than a guy playing with food. If no one was actually looking at this on YouTube, and there were no more hits, he’d probably stop. It’s no fun if no one reacts or watches. He apparently has a problem with Catholics(maybe he hated what the nuns did to him in Catholic school)…and the playing with the wafers on TV for folks to watch gives him some perverted pleasure.
Ultimately it will be up to Google to decide what to do, besides restricting viewing to 18 and over (for all the good that does..everyone is honest about their age?). Personally, I think he must have absolutely nothing else to do in his life!!
posted October 22, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I as a Catholic am appalled at the esecration of what to us Catholics hold dear and sacred to us. Let us pray for that dude that he may see the gravity of what he has done and is doing. Pray for him.
posted October 22, 2008 at 11:09 pm
If he were attacking Catholics they should come off. But it sounds like he’s attacking crackers and thereby making Catholics uncomfortable. In the US that would surely be protected speech; certainly it should be.
To take something down because it makes others uncomfortable is a slippery slope off which we should stay.
posted October 22, 2008 at 11:20 pm
What proof is there the the host were consecrated? Are we to believe this guy collected eucharists by attending a host of masses (pun intended)? I’ve seen bags of wafers (regular and whole wheat) offered for sale in Catholic tchotchke stores. Without the words, ritual, priest, and intention, they do not become the “body and blood of Christ.” Calm down, God does not need humans to defend Her.
posted October 23, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Seems like freedom of speech against freedom of religion. Both are an individual’s rights to practice, but when you bother something that does not belong to you; it becomes something else all together.
posted October 23, 2008 at 3:51 pm
This has nothing to do with freedom of religion. Nothing about this would stop anyone from practicing their religion. Or even slow them down unless it gave them food for thought somehow.
posted October 23, 2008 at 7:06 pm
This is a guy who has caused a fuss because he “says” the crackers he has been playing with are “special, holy crackers, or wafers”. He has probably gotten exactly the reaction he wants…upsetting some Catholics. Why would anyone Catholic bother to even watch? So they can say they find it offensive?