Hark, the Christians are barking again

It’s probably obvious by now I’m no tree-hugging cuddly bunny merchant. And it goes without saying I find a lot of religious ‘thinking’ ridiculous.
I’m sure both parties mean well. It’s just their priorities are a bit startling, and when they're both singing from the same hymnsheet the result is like a Christmas carol service in a padded cell.
Still, I subscribe to enough feeds from green, caring groups to make the average reader puke a bucketful, and plough my way through similar amounts of earnest religious e-sermons. All this in an attempt to be fair, though in truth I tend to stop when the Prodigy or Her Indoors complain because I’m in hysterics again.
Take the hugely important question posed on one site recently: ‘Can a dog receive communion?’
I kid not. Care2, a site dedicated to thoughts and appeals from a world community of fluffy-brained soft green campaigners, has a piece which begins: “How would you feel if you saw a dog receive Holy Communion in your church?”
Under the impression that people anywhere with an IQ in more than double figures might need to know, it then tells a tale about a rumpus in a Canadian Anglican church after the priest slipped a Jesus cracker to a mutt which accompanied one of the communicants.
Even wilder, the piece had 202 comments when I last looked! You can read it at all at http://www.care2.com/causes/animal-welfare/blog/dog-receives-communion-at-church/ in case you think I’m spinning a shaggy dog story.
Couldn’t happen here on the Isle of Man though, could it?
I doubt anyone will be surprised to know that not only did one venerable old school theological scholar here believe animals had souls, he regarded the inmates at a local dogs home as parishioners. He even (and I have witnesses to this) took what looked suspiciously like a weekly confession at a dilapidated shed in the grounds which (in theory) he used as a quiet spot in which to compose sermons in return for an hour a day’s dogwalking. I also have witnesses to the funerals for the pets of Manx government bigwigs and UK colonial klingons conducted by a bishop within the last decade.
But are other local Christians barking too?
I think we should know.