Community pressure group VFAC (Vegan Food Advocates for Catholicism) have reacted with dismay today to news that Jacob Rees-mogg MP has donated one tonne of communion wafers to a food bank in his constituency.
While some would claim the donation was meant to be really quite uplifting, and a catholic food pressure group would welcome the generous act, the communion wafer is a topic that has long vexed VFAC.
Speaking to the Rochdale Herald’s Magic Foods correspondent early this morning, a spokesman for the group had this to say,
“We agree with the MP for East Somerset and 19th century values that a good dose of old fashioned religious platitudes will fill any hungry belly. Especially if it is aimed at the deserving poor and not wasted on people who are going to hell regardless. And most of you are by the way. But, giving desperate people a meat based wafer is just abhorrent. A tonne of out of date Heinz baked beans tins would have been much better, as long as they carried the green V symbol on the side.”
It’s believed the member of parliament was moved to act after discovering his local church had mistakenly ordered too many communion wafers and the expiry date was likely to be passed before enough people had accepted the wafers in communion. It’s rumoured he initially tried to sell the wafers to the food bank, but after consideration decided a tax deductible donation would better serve his interests.
“Mr Rees-mogg is trying to alleviate hunger by continuing to vote for austerity and punitive policies designed to punish many people just for accident of birth. That’s understandable, he could be said to have won that lottery and as a public figure who professes to a deep religious faith, it’s in keeping that he will act in ways his chosen saviour would find appalling, especially when he could do many incredible things that would actually help less fortunate people, rather than batter them.
But when people are hungry and vulnerable is not the time to give them a meaty magic wafer to feed cannibal style on. Their bellies will be so full they won’t know a good quinoa stew when it is placed right in front of them. We call on the MP to withdraw the communion wafers from the food bank immediately, whether he finds his action really rather uplifting or not.”
