Spanish Bishop Decries Tempting Teens (And Jesus Loves Him Some Wheat)

Those poor priests. The ones who sexually abuse children. According to a bishop named Bernardo Álvarez it's all the fault of the victims because they're just a bunch of tempters and temptresses.

His comments were that there are youngsters who want to be abused, and he compared that abuse to homosexuality, describing them both as prejudicial to society. He said that on occasions the abuse happened because the there are children who consent to it.

‘There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you’, he said.

And of course he threw in the obligatory homophobia during this round of comments as well.

On a slight tangent, I found this article about the manufacture of communion wafers here in the States. As I read I wondered what Catholics who have Celiac disease do when it comes to communion. I read on.

The Catholic Church requires that hosts be made of wheat in order for communion to be valid, but there is a small number of Catholics who suffer from coeliac disease, a hereditary autoimmune disorder that makes it impossible to digest the protein found in wheat gluten. In the 1980s, people with coeliac disease began to agitate within the Church for alternatives to the wheaten Eucharist, that they might participate more fully in Catholic services; but the Church remained intransigent on the point.

Apparently Jesus will only transubstantiate from wheat so the Church turned its back on the gluten-intolerant in its flock. Finally in 2001 an ultra-low gluten version was developed which passed papal muster and that of those with Celiac disease.

My understanding is that Jesus consecrated wheat bread hence the need for wheat wafers. But doesn't the story go that he also consecrated grape wine and not fresh grape juice? If unfermented grape juice is passable for communion these days, then why not rice wafers? Is there some passage in the Bible where Jesus smotes spelt or explains why he won't reify in rice?

I can just imagine a bunch of Sophisticated Theologians® sitting in the basement of The Vatican arguing over why their omnipotent deity preferred wheat and won't let his body be sorghum. It'd be just like that scene from The Name of the Rose.