Another Host on eBay (4/28)

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antiaphrodite:
i sure hope this is the last time this thing happens…
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It will not stop if people keep buying them. Yes, I agree its an abomination. Yes, I agree that eBay should not be selling them and Catholics should lobby against it. However, as long as people continue to pay horrendous amounts of money for these hosts, people will continue selling them. Heck, if I had no respect for the Catholic Church, I’d go out and start doing the same thing. Its simple economics for the morally unscrupulous.

I honestly believe that Christ is Really Present in the consecrated host, but seriously, don’t you think the Almighty Son of God can take care of Himself? I don’t say that to be mean or sacreligious, but because I believe that Jesus does not need “rescuing” from twisted eBay auctioneers. Its His power that saves US!🙂
 
Since I’ve been very active in this problem for two to three weeks now, I thought I would make a couple of observations.

While I agree with those members that closed their eBay account last week or the week before, I see nothing in their actions in the latest auction to justify a member closing their account. I don’t know the reason for eBay cancelling the auction and suspending the seller’s account, but I’m hopeful they’ve finally got the message.

While reception of Holy Communion on the tongue may help, as I wrote before, desecration of consecrated hosts has been a problem in prior generations before reception in the hand was permitted. Read about the Eucharistic miracle in Santarem, Portugal nearly 1,000 years ago for such an example.

While I attended a papal audience in 2001, I have not been to a papal Mass. As I understand it, sometimes these have been quite chaotic with Holy Communion being distributed in a somewhat careless manner. I spoke earlier this week from a seminarian with a friend who is a priest that served at Pope Benedict XVI’s installation Mass. He told the seminarian that the Vatican is aware of the problem with eBay and priests were given specific instructions to make sure that Holy Communion was consumed by the communicants.

There have been a few comments that speculate the purchase of consecrated hosts on eBay encourages more of the same. I have seen no evidence of this so far. To date, there have been a total of four eBay auctions of hosts claimed to be consecrated (all by a pope). Only one sale actually was completed and it was actually done outside of the auction itself since the seller removed it from the listing and only sold other souveneirs in the auction. The $2,000 host in Iowa was turned over to the diocese. That doesn’t encourage future listings, IMO. Another one involved a host in the UK and some of us bid nearly $20 million and eBay cancelled the auction. The seller’s name was turned over to diocesan officials in the UK, with no word on the outcome. This fourth auction was also cancelled. Overall, I just don’t see where someone is going to desecrate the Blessed Sacrament with the expectation of making money on eBay.

The same seminarian mentioned above made the point to me that desecration of the Blessed Sacrament is a sin that can only be absolved by the Holy Father. I doubt this will make any difference to those misguided folks that have participated in eBay auctions, but I hadn’t been aware of this and thought I’d pass that information on.

In summary, if we keep harping on this and watch eBay closely, I think this problem will be reduced as everyone is now better educated about the problem.
 
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harveyc:
There have been a few comments that speculate the purchase of consecrated hosts on eBay encourages more of the same. I have seen no evidence of this so far. To date, there have been a total of four eBay auctions of hosts claimed to be consecrated (all by a pope). Only one sale actually was completed and it was actually done outside of the auction itself since the seller removed it from the listing and only sold other souveneirs in the auction. The $2,000 host in Iowa was turned over to the diocese. That doesn’t encourage future listings, IMO. Another one involved a host in the UK and some of us bid nearly $20 million and eBay cancelled the auction. The seller’s name was turned over to diocesan officials in the UK, with no word on the outcome. This fourth auction was also cancelled. Overall, I just don’t see where someone is going to desecrate the Blessed Sacrament with the expectation of making money on eBay.
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Thank you, harveyc for sharing the information that your seminarian friend passed on to you. It’s very interesting! I’m also glad to know that the Vatican is aware of this. One thing that I wanted to say as a point of interest is that yesterday’s seller had a Buy It Now price of $2000. I don’t think that was a coincidence. I think he learned of the original story belatedly in Finland and thought he’d make some money. That particular seller also stated that Catholics should not send hatemail and if one is truly Catholic they would “save” it. That being said, ebay responded appropriately by cancelling the auction and making the seller “no longer a registered user”. This is likely to discourage any future sellers. Even if someone else tries, I agree that Catholics are aware enough of the situation that no one will bid! There will be no money in it. I can only speak for myself, but when I said that I would cancel my account if ebay did not respond by banning the sale of the Eucharist, I said so before the resolution of this latest incident. I’m very happy with the turn of events. While ebay may not officially ban the sale, I think they would continue to look at each case individually and if other ebay rules have been violated (i.e. baiting of Catholics on the last one), the auctions will be cancelled.
 
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Eden:
One thing that I wanted to say as a point of interest is that yesterday’s seller had a Buy It Now price of $2000. I don’t think that was a coincidence. I think he learned of the original story belatedly in Finland and thought he’d make some money. That particular seller also stated that Catholics should not send hatemail and if one is truly Catholic they would “save” it.
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Since I wasn’t aware of this latest (#4) auction until it had been cancelled by eBay, I wasn’t aware of the details. Thanks for making those known. It does sound like the first definite “copy cat” auction and, hopefully, the last.
 
I was lucky to be able to cancel my paypal account last week, but they won’t cancel my ebay account. I keep asking them to and then about 48 hours later I do it over and over. I even talked to someone live to close it and that person said that I must wait 24 hours. Here I go again! Frustrating! Anyway I know that Catholic Familyland www.familyland.org did an awesome thing to boycott Ebay also. Familyland use to get donations from mission fish but it was tied to Ebay and they took the company off thier donations until Ebay changes their policy. I thought that was great. They are among my favorite Catholic organizations and they’ll fight with us against evils like this. I just thought I’d share these things with you. Maybe you guys can consider donating to organizations like this because they are losing out now that they don’t have those extra funds they use to because they have the courage to do the right thing.
 
**EBAY WILL NO LONGER ALLOW THE SALE OF THE EUCHARIST! **

The boycott worked! They are pretending now that they found out about the first Eucharist too late so there was nothing they could do! What a contrast to the tone of some of the original correspondence I saw with other forum members!

I just got this e-mail in response to my complaint on Apr. 29th.

**Hello Eden,

Thank you for your email regarding the sale of the Holy Eucharist by one
of our community members. We respect and appreciate your comments
regarding this sensitive matter.

As you may know, eBay does not sell items itself. Rather, we are a
global marketplace for sellers and buyers who transact directly with one
another. Each day eBay’s sellers list 5 million items on the site, and
those sellers decide what items they want to list. eBay did not
possess, list or approve the sale of the Eucharist. The buyer and
seller completed the Eucharist transaction on April 11th, before eBay
even became aware of the listing.

As a marketplace, we strive to respect the diverse perspectives of our
sellers. We also work hard to promote an open environment for trade.
That said, eBay has policies in place to remove listings for illegal
items as well as highly offensive listings that promote hate or
intolerance.

We understand that the listing of the Eucharist was highly upsetting to
Catholic members of the eBay community and Catholics globally. Once
this completed sale was brought to our attention, we consulted with a
number of our users, including members of the Catholic Church,
concerning what course we should take in the future should a similar
listing appear on our site. We also consulted with members of other
religions about items that might also be highly sacred and inappropriate
for sale. As a result of this dialogue, we have concluded that sales of
the Eucharist, and similar highly sacred items, are not appropriate on
eBay. We have, therefore, broadened our policies and will remove those
types of listings should they appear on the site in the future.

As always, we welcome and appreciate the assistance of the community in
upholding the rules of our site. Should you see another Eucharist
listed on our site, we encourage you to notify us so we can take
appropriate action. Further, we encourage you to directly communicate
with the seller. Members are often unaware that a particular item is
offensive to others. A respectful e-mail to the seller is often all
that is needed for the seller to voluntarily remove the item. We
believe this modification strikes the appropriate balance between
respect for our community’s values and our goal of providing an open
marketplace offering practically anything on earth.

Again, we sincerely appreciate your concern and thank you for
communicating your views with us. Your (name removed by moderator)ut has helped us frame a
policy that will enable us to better serve our diverse community of
users around the world.

Regards,
Jake on behalf of Bill Cobb
Community Watch Team
eBay Trust & Safety
**
 
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