Step aside Tim Tebow. The evangelical quarterback's pro-family ad was last year's Super Bowl ad dust up. In 2011, the hot spot is an entry in the annual Pepsi-owned Doritos Crash the Super Bowl ad contest that will never air for being over-the-top offensive to people who take Communion seriously. It plays the bread and wine for snack food.

But the body and blood of Christ are no joke to those who believe they are in Communion with their God when they accept the Eucharist and the wine during Mass.

Hence the uproar among some believers when they saw one of the 5,000+ entries in the annual competition for a slot in the Super Bowl ad line up.

Feed the Flock begins with a priest (maybe Catholic, maybe Anglican or Episcopal) at his desk surrounded by bills for the parish, which clearly needs more income in the collection plate (why else show the stack of bills?).

Since it's his job to offer spiritual food to the flock, he takes it to another level (the pits, I'd say). The video shows the faithful lining up for Communion and getting Doritos (in two flavors, no less) instead of the wafer (which Catholics believe is the body of Christ and others see as symbolic of Christ). And, you guessed it, the wine, considered by Catholics to be the blood of Christ, is dished out as Pepsi MAX.

You don't have to be Catholic or Episcopalian to find this irredeemably offensive. Hence, I'm not embedding the video. According to the Mashable Business site,

The maker of the ad, a Philadelphia firm called Media Wave Productions, however, says that interpretation is way off base....

Dave Williams, president of MediaWave, says he pulled the ad from Pepsi's site and from YouTube. "We felt bad," he says. "Our intention was to win, not to offend."

(NOTE: Williams says in a comment on this blog that it walks a bit like a duck but is not a duck -- that there are tiny signs throughout that this is not really a parody of Communion. I watched for a second and third time and yes, those little signs are embedded but ... overall, I'd conclude like most viewers, I suspect, quack quack quack.)

What's surprising is that it made it up on the Pepsi site for consideration at all. Were there no standards for submission?

Needless to say, the Pepsico site listing the top 10 finalists does not include Feed the Flock and a representative of the company apologized for any offense.

It's enough to make me nostalgic for last year's Tebow hullabaloo when it became known that college quarterback, known for his evangelical faith and his drive to be picked in the NFL draft, would star with his mom, Pam, in a Super Bowl "issue ad" sponsored by Focus on the Family.

Abortion rights supporters protested that the "issue ad" would be an anti-abortion pitch from Pam, who held on through a dangerous pregnancy against doctor's advice to give birth to the future Heisman Trophy winner. The controversy gave the ad mountains of free publicity and Focus came away the winner as the friendly, funny Focus ad did nothing more than promote family -- and steer folks to their web site for the real, deeply detailed anti-abortion messaging.

So welcome to the Super Bowl ad frenzy where we all get played.

Should symbols and sacraments of faith be subjects for satire or super-commercialization?