have you forgotten a very important ritual, the Christian sacrament? Wine represents the blood of Christ and the wafer is his body. First one has to make sure they are pure by not soiling themselves with food before taking communion.

The Roman Catholic and the Anglican, High Church of England churches, take communion another step, by having confession before being contrite enough to participate in the communion service. Monks have been beating themselves for decades. Nothing new about people that flagellate themselves. Laying prostrate on the floor with arms spread out to the side is still practiced.

North American children often cut themselves and join fingers with a good friend. That act pledges their friendship to each other.

I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said "of all the perversions, perhaps the most bizarre is celibacy".

their attitudes to it, and those of the men in their culture,and it may be ritualized as unclean, if we want to get down to real basics.

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

menstruation as fundamentally unclean. Strange if you ask me. It's natural. Cycle of life. We really can be weird, we humans, yeah?

^{"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is, contempt prior to examination."}

Ayurveda, (the ancient Indian medical system)views the menstrual cycle as a special benefit that Nature has provided for women to purify their bodies (it detoxifies the blood) and minds on a monthly basis. Healthy menstruation regularizes a woman's many flows and rhythms. The culture (I forget which one - the Australian Aboriginal?) that temporarily send a menstruating woman to a private hut, had it right. Rest and relaxation far from the maddening crowd - what a luxury!

The concept of uncleanliness during menstruation is not limited to America and the West.

because it can be embarrassing, painful, relief or disappointment-bringing.....

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

No, I believe that I covered it when I said

"We must remember that some people are shocked by the ritual symbolic cannibalism of Christian Communion."

Opus dei members sometimes use a cilice, a cutting chain strapped to the thigh. This bloody ritual is sometimes practiced year round, except for certain holy days.

Obus Dei. The article mentions there is speculation that US Justice, Scalia, has connections with this group. Quote from the link, "Scalia's son is an Opus Dei priest."

I was messin' with m. Just saw 'DaVinci Code' last week.

I ran across this a bit ago looking for something else. The Opus Dei Awareness Network: http://www.odan.org/index.htm

The use of the cilice is, and has been, relatively well known.

A sizable proportion of Opus Dei members, under the guidance of a spiritual director, voluntarily take up the practice of corporal mortification, wearing the cilice for two hours most days and using the discipline. (Both items are produced in monasteries.) Father William Stetson, who runs the Catholic Information Center, in Washington, D.C., and who joined Opus Dei in the mid-nineteen-fifties, when he was at Harvard Law School, says that he learned the larger meaning of corporal mortification the first week he joined. “I understood that what was being demanded of me was an ascetical practice,” he says. “Not just the cilice and the disciplines but an austerity of life, living in the middle of the world.” Stetson and others frequently point out that corporal mortification, which may seem a throwback to medieval mysticism, was not uncommon even among recent exemplars of spiritual piety. Mother Teresa of Calcutta wore a cilice and used the discipline, telling her Sisters, ‘‘If I am sick, I take five strokes. I must feel its need in order to share in the Passion of Christ and the sufferings of our poor.
Peter Boyer, New Yorker”