Is nothing sacred anymore? The answer may lie on the grocery store shelves next to the chips, corn puffs and party pretzels — at least in Quebec. That’s where shoppers can pick up an increasingly popular snack: communion wafers. The paper-thin morsels made from flour and water are normally used in the sacred rite of receiving holy communion, but in today’s secular Quebec, the wafers are packaged like peanuts and popcorn and sold as a distinctly profane snack. Proponents say they melt in your mouth and aren’t fattening, so they’re better than junk food. Needless to say, they have “mass” appeal among the younger generation, who rarely, if ever, set foot inside a church. Gaston Bonneau, one of the two major commercial producers in Quebec, says his wafers aren’t sacred at all because they haven’t been consecrated by a priest or minister in a religious service. Still, not everyone is comfortable watching a symbol of religious heritage morph into a snack food. After all, holy communion is one of the most essential Christian sacraments that for believers symbolizes spiritual union with the body of Christ. Former missionary Francois Trudel put it succinctly: "Like everything these days, we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We don't respect anything. Nothing is sacred.”
