Practical Religion

The last church function I attended was a young cousin's baptism seven years ago. It went as you largely expect of religious affairs: long, boring, demeaning and nonsensical, but at least the chanting lulls you into a trance after a while. About to pass out, I finally perked up when the priest interrupted his thirteenth invocation by name of Jesus' pubic lice or whatever to switch tone a bit: "and now I believe it is time to address some practical concerns."
Wow. A priest giving practical advice? This was new! I was all ears, baby, assuming that as in fact a baby was concerned, he might give some tips on properly soothing an infant or somesuch.

Don't look at me like that; a lifetime of atheism has rendered me somewhat naive as to just how thoroughly disjointed from reality the religious mindless can get.
When the man said practical, I heard practical.

He began to piously explain that as the little brat had received a slathering of holy water, the parents were now responsible for properly disposing of said Most Holy of Waters. So when you wash the squealing little monster you have to keep the bathwater, preferably not just once but twice or three times in case she's still sweating out some leftover holy ghost. It can't go down the bathtub drain or the sink drain or the toilet drain (no, seriously, he enumerated the types of drains - without breaking his trance-like lilting chant) or mingle with any other filth, refuse or non-human creatures of the lord (just in case it spontaneously renders them sentient, refusing to work on Sundays and quoting Aquinas.) Pretty sure you can't drink it either.

Don't even get into the thorny issue of the blanket they wrapped the kid in afterwards. That required at least a Master's in Ecumenical Laundry Science.

By that point I was more or less having a petit mal seizure biting my lip to keep from laughing so I can't remember everything the prissy, overdressed mumbling buffoon considered a "practical" use of bathwater. Watering potted plants with it was permissible as I recall. In fact, I have it on good authority the holy spirit is particularly fond of being digested by the symbiotic mold on the roots of geraniums.

In the name of the farcical, the stupid and the highly suspect, Heil Messiah!