Aug. 19, 2004 | BRIELLE, N.J. (AP) — An 8-year-old girl who suffers from a rare digestive disorder and cannot eat wheat has had her first Holy Communion declared invalid because the wafer contained no wheat, violating Roman Catholic doctrine.

God does not make mistakes. She can refuse the wheat-based wafer of ritualitic cannibalism and spend her eternity in Hell, or she can ingest the wheat-based wafer of ritualistic cannibalism, be wracked with debilitating intestinal pain, suffer an agonizing death, and spend her eternity with the all-powerful God who loved her enough to create her with a gluten-metabolization deficiency. God must have wanted her to suffer for the sacrament or else he wouldn’t have let her be borne to a gluten-metabolization deficient Catholic mother.

I saw this story on “Countdown” last night and I laughed. Look, Ma, if you’re going to believe the invisible-man-in-the-sky story, then you don’t get to change the rules because your daughter has an illness. Papal infallibility ring a bell?

Now, a rational person might just begin to question the ridiculous assertion that a rice cake does not the body of Christ make, but then they might question whether any sort of cracker confers an edge in piety, and then they might question the whole notion of piety and religion altogether. Nope, sorry, ancient tradition requires that only wheat crackers are holy, tough luck sister.

“Radical” Russ — don’t think I’m just picking on the Catholics… Mormons have to wear sacred underwear… Hindus won’t eat tasty cows and let them walk the streets… Muslims have to face a certain direction when they pray… I’ve wondered how Muslims of the future living on Titan will figure out how to face Mecca… I bet they’ll have a little electronic locator to find the proper azimuth and declination toward Earth from Saturn’s orbit…

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