A Quebec teenager has stirred up the passions of Roman Catholics. I like Douglas Todd’s take on “Dominiques” YouTube videos - looking at his possible reasoning behind his videos.

1) He appears to be just a teenager and
2) it appears English is his second language
3) no matter how this plays out, the videos probably come back to haunt him when he enters the job market in a Catholic dominated economy in Quebec.
4) as he socially, psychologically, intellectually matures into adult his passion and militancy may temper

A devilishly mischievous Canadian boy who mocks a central Christian ritual on YouTube has caused an international stir and earned the wrath of the Catholic Civil Rights League, which has called for his offensive, and popular, videos to be removed from the Internet.

The teenager from Quebec named Dominique, who tags himself “fsmdude,” has posted 40 videos in which the Catholic Civil Rights group maintains he desecrates the host, the small circular wafer that Catholics ingest during Eucharist service.

The Catholic Civil Rights League claims the videos are “hate speech.” At the other end of the spectrum, some YouTube commentators call them funny and right on. I would speculate most non-Christians would find Dominique’s online antics juvenile.

Should his sacrilegious videos be banned?

Dominique, who appears to be about 17 and speaks as if English is his second language, thinks it’s ridiculous to believe in transubstantiation, the Catholic teaching that the wafer becomes the literal body of Jesus Christ during Eucharist.

Dominique’s videos, many of which have been viewed by more than 20,000 people, feature him merrily drilling holes through a communion wafer, burning a wafer and flushing a wafer down a toilet.

Dominique also has himself surreptitiously filmed entering a Catholic church, accepting the sanctified wafer into his mouth and then going outside and removing the undigested host, placing it onto his hand.

The Catholic Civil Rights League and thousands of its supporters, in Canada and internationally, have petitioned YouTube officials to demand the removal of the sacrilegious videos.

The short clips were shut down for a few hours in early October, but they’ve returned. Now YouTube, which is owned by Google, has marked them as not appropriate for everyone, and restricted them, ostensibly, to viewers over age 18.

The discussion at The Search gets lively - some Catholics want this kid charged with hate speech (which carries a maximum fine of 10 years in jail)

He says he doesn’t hate Catholics.

For his part, Dominique, in response to a series of videos that Catholics have put on YouTube to counter his sacrilegious messages, has recently said he’s not attacking Catholics as a group. He calls Catholics “decent people, most of the time.”

However, Dominique declares he definitely is satirizing the concept of transubstantiation.

“I’m attacking the belief,” Dominique says, holding up a wafer, “that this thing, this cracker, is someone that can feel pain.” He calls the host “just an object you can eat.”

The YouTube debate has escalated as Catholics post counter videos. US Catholic Civil Rights League’s Bill Donahue wants Dominique’s videos permanently taken down.

Some Catholics say he has committed theft (being filmed taking communion and not swallowing the wafer). There is no way of knowing if Dominique is Catholic - the church practises closed communion and for him to go forward to take communion is seen by some as theft and fraud.

They should continue doing what they are doing on YouTube and elsewhere — responding to Dominique’s ideological attack with their own theological counter-attacks. They can treat the host controversy as a teachable moment.

Dominique is over-zealous in his militant atheism. But he’s also one of those teenagers that many Catholic clergy, used to feeling ignored, often find fascinating. After all, such clergy remember Jesus’ apostle Paul also hated Christians and their beliefs — before he converted and became the faith’s leading exponent.

The least you can say about outrageous Dominique is that, unlike most Canadians today, he is someone who actually cares what Christians believe.

Would it be helpful if Dominque was open to hanging out with a patient, understanding, teaching priest administering last rites and shadowing the priest carrying out his responsibilities to his parish? Would it be considered by those upset Dominque might learn to respect the reasons Catholics are so vocal about this issue? Would upset Catholics cool down, offer forgiveness instead of calling for hate charges and respect to Dominque?

Communion is a central doctrine to Protestants but we don’t believe in transubstantion, so you don’t see Protestants complaining. Dominique taking Closed or close Protestant communion would not incure the same hurt. For most of us, the table is open.

Update: Robert points something out in the comments that is obvious if you read Dominique’s internet handle - fsmdude - Flying Spaghetti Monster. That’s geeky for most people (including myself) who aren’t internet, anti-creationism savvy. I looked at Dominque’s YouTube channel and some of his stuff and didn’t make the connection.