Issue number: 11
Posted on: November
30th, 1998
Next one on about:
December 15th
If I get it to:
gether
But you know: me
I love those:
vertically-aligned dots
And I'm always late putting this thing: up
This issue: a look back at
the week's
Health News
in L.A. Communion Wafers
Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Diocese of the Holy Roman Catholic Church
confirmed on Monday reports that an independent research laboratory found exceptionally
high levels of the deadly chemical dioxin in several shipments of sanctified
communion wafers. The wafers, which were all from the same supplier and
were used only in the Los Angeles area, were evaluated as containing 37 ppm
(parts per million) of dioxin, widely considered to be the most carcinogenic
substance known to medical science. The standard FDA threshold for food
products is 2 ppm. In laboratory experiments on rats, the wafers caused
fatal cancerous tumors in 100% of the cases.
However, church leaders have
downplayed the importance of the findings, pointing out that no one ever
consumes communion wafers in quantity, whereas the laboratory had force-fed the
rats massive amounts of the tainted hosts. "It's ridiculous,"
protested Father F. X. LeCorps of the parish of Saint Bartholomew's, "Yes,
it's true that our wafers have a high dioxin content, but to ingest as much of
the carcinogen as those rats did in the lab you'd have to take holy communion
10,000 times a week."
Religion News
L.A. Man Sets World Record by
Taking
Holy Communion 10,000 Times in
One Week
Los Angeles: A local Catholic man, Eugene Ulrich Flechting, worshipped
his way into the Guinness Book of World Records last Tuesday by completing
10,000 rites of holy communion in the space of just one week. Kneeling
non-stop at his local church, Saint Bartholomew's, with five priests
officiating in shifts, he took communion at the rate of nearly once per minute
for an entire week, completing his 10,000th ritual at five minutes to midnight
exactly seven days after beginning the exploit.
Flechting , a 34-year-old computer
technician who describes himself as "very, very devout", reported
that he was "happy and refreshed, not tired at all" after a solid
week of 24-hour piety, adding that he undertook the feat to generate publicity
for his faith as well as for personal reasons. As he explained, "Now
my mind is at ease. After this, there's no way in hell I'm not going to
heaven when I die. And with all the juice I've built up with the Big Guy
this week, that shouldn't be for quite some time now."
Health News
Medical Community Stunned by
Zero Cancer Rate Among LA
Catholics
Los Angeles: A study at LA County General Hospital revealed some
shocking results on Wednesday: its statistics seem to show that the area's
devout Catholics never get cancer. The hospital had been compiling a
statistical database of cancer patients, hoping to discern behavioral patterns
that might be of use in preventing the disease. All Los Angeles cancer
patients for the past 15 years have answered a battery of questions about their
medical history, family background, diet, lifestyle, and -- incidentally --
religion. The study showed that not one single practicing Roman Catholic
had developed a malignant tumor in Los Angeles County for the past 15 years,
irrespective of all other factors, such as smoking or exposure to pollution,
radiation, toxins, etc.
Researcher Vernon L. Frebber
explained, "It's only the really pious Catholics who seem to be immune --
the ones who go to confession regularly, never skip mass and take communion at
least once per week." Doctors and church leaders were surprised by
the findings and at a loss to explain them except for what Frebber called "the
psychosomatic factor". He went on to explain that "some people
seem to be inexplicably impervious to certain diseases, even very contagious
ones, simply because of their positive, hopeful attitude. We think that
maybe these Catholics are protected somehow by their faith."
The "Los Angeles miracle",
as it is already being called in the Catholic press, is the only such case on
record. Catholics in other areas of the country exhibit the same cancer
rate as the general population.
Religion News
Pope Announces New
Guidelines for Access to
Heaven
Rome: Pope John Paul II announced on Thursday that God had
handed down to him new guidelines for admission to eternal empyrean
paradise. An official communique from the Vatican stated, in part, that
"so many righteous souls have entered the kingdom of heaven over the
centuries that there is hardly any room left at either hand of God. Keep
in mind that the world's population increases geometrically each year and that,
due to church dogma, an increasing percentage of that population are
Catholics."
"Over the years," the
Pope's statement continued, "God has at various times instituted afterlife
population control by redefining what constitutes an acceptable level of mortal
sin or exactly how contrite an act of contrition has to be in order to qualify
as 'perfect'. More recently, He set speed limits on how fast you could
perform certain rituals, like reciting a Hail Mary or receiving holy communion,
and still have it count. Suicides are still rejected, of course, and
we've kept non-believers out from the very beginning, but now those criteria,
which all focus on how true believers live, are not enough to keep the
celestial headcount down to a manageable level. So God decided to take a
look at how true believers die as well, and He has asked me to make known His
decision that from now on only members of the clergy and cancer victims will be
admitted to heaven. It was a tough decision, and I know it seems
arbitrary, but He had to draw the line somewhere."
Last-minute flash:
Los Angeles: A man giving his name as Imar Aghe Adnow and claiming to
be a recent convert to Islam commandeered a plane at Los Angeles International
Airport on Friday morning. He boarded KLM flight 1115 to Amsterdam at
10:00 am, unshaven and wearing a burnoose. Fellow passengers reported
that the suspect seemed to be "sleep-starved, malnourished and possibly a
bit tipsy" and that he had bandages on both knees. Once in the air,
the hijacker pulled a hand grenade from the folds of his flimsy garment and
diverted the aircraft to Teheran, demanding that he be allowed to "meet
with my new brothers, people who can really understand me".
Immediately upon arrival in Iran,
Adnow collapsed and was rushed to a local hospital where he was diagnosed with
terminal stomach cancer. Apparently in a state of delirium, he repeatedly
pleaded with the hospital staff to "take him back to Saint
Bartholomew's". The US Justice Department has begun extradition proceedings
to bring him back to the US to face trial. Passengers and crew of the
ill-fated flight were unharmed and were allowed to continue on to the
Netherlands after refueling.
Inside:
Kevorkian Flies to
Teheran on Saturday
©1998 by David Jaggard. All rights reserved worldwide.