Monsanto and a Mutant Christ: Priests Perform Black Magic

Terence Stone

The Independent (December 16, 2011), asks the question,

“Is the Vatican close to endorsing the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in order to feed the world's growing population? Could it be that the Catholic Church is about to take a moral position on GM food.

A leaked document from a group of scientists linked to Rome has set a hare running about the possible endorsement of GM technology by the Pope. The document, from scientists linked to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, suggested that there is a moral duty to adopt GM technology in order to combat hunger”.

I thought these interesting questions and reportage that set my mind pondering and researching some of the implications of it all. First of all, let’s just state some facts and probabilities.

Monsanto is responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, from their manufacture and supply of Agent Orange in the Vietnam war to the hundreds of thousands of suicides of Monsanto's debt-burdened farmers of India, many of whose suicide poison-of-choice is Monsanto’s Roundup; but I won’t turn the list into a litany—such is the prerogative of Catholicism, Anglicanism, and other Christian denominations.

Continuing with some probabilities related to the tremendously wealthy Catholic Church, which maintains a secret, "conservative" investment portfolio of billions of dollars: It’s quite likely the Church is invested directly in Monsanto, and highly probable that it has indirect investments in the company, such is the incestuous nature of “conservative” Corporations. We might just add that the titular head of the Anglican Church is Queen Elizabeth II, whose investment portfolio undoubtedly reaches insidiously into Monsanto’s boardroom, if not its bedroom.

Of course any open linkage between Monsanto and these churches raises profound moral questions; and it's useful to assert that the Vatican is itself a Corporation, a relationship that is much clearer since the banks and other private Corporations have also, like the Catholic Church, more recently resorted to begging bailouts as a main source of income. But my concern here is narrowly focused on ontological issues.

Of the seven sacraments performed by the Catholic priesthood, the Eucharist is arguably the most contentious and doctrinally central to the Church. It is in fact an act of magic that only the priesthood can perform. The priest takes the bread and wine an transforms it, literally, into the body and blood of Christ (it only symbolizes in Anglicanism until it becomes subject to the fast approaching hostile corporate take over by the Church of Rome).

Now here’s the problem: Once upon a time little bands of nuns scurried around hot kitchens baking the bread. They were very dedicated and paid a great deal of attention to quality control since there are very strict rules and conditions under which the bread is made. After all, purity is essential if the bread is to become the body of Christ. While the nuns dutifully went about this task, the priests lounged around smoking cigarettes, drinking scotch--and talking about little boys.

Slowly the job became too much, or they couldn’t recruit enough nuns who were gullible enough to do the job; so it was turned over to local bakers who continued the good work. Of course, you can count on the Americans to go Big. The Cavanagh Company of Greenville, R. I., produces the Eucharist wafers for 85% of the US and Canadian “markets” and 50% of the British “market”—over 80 million wafers per month. The F.C. Ziegler Company of Oklahoma produces most of the rest.

Now, they might be lovely people working around the clock in Rhode Island and Oklahoma, but at this level of production, quality control goes out the window. You see, they have to depend on the delivery of white wheat-flour only for the Eucharist and—Yes! You got it. Monsanto has free reign in the US to indiscriminately ship GM wheat to the mills. Ergo, the Eucharist is being manufactured with GM wheat!

This begs the horrifying question: Does this mutant grain, this defiled gift of Monsanto, result in a mutant Christ for Catholics to consume every week? Furthermore, does the once sacred magic of the priests who knowingly create a mutant Christ now perform a ritual act of Black Magic? And since (as far as I know) no GM wine has entered the food chain, does it, as a pure manifestation of Christ’s blood, not reject the body of Christ with its incompatible mutant DNA, even as it is digested after the sacrament? Do Catholics now suffer tummy ache?

Perhaps the Pope in order to remain infallible (we’ll forget the apology to Galileo 500 years after his death) will be forced to sanctify GM foods in order to retain the myth of the Eucharist and the integrity of Vatican Incorporated, a holy (sic) owned subsidiary of Monsanto Corporation.