About a week ago, a student at Central Florida University attended Catholic mass was given Eucharist — i.e., a communion wafer — and did not eat it immediately as one is supposed to do and, indeed, took it home with him over the objections of the church. In addition to being physically grabbed by some of the other parishioners and igniting a media and campus firestorm, he has apparently received death threats.
Though other Christain denominations also ‘take communion,’ few believe it to be as literally true as Catholics do; indeed, they believe the wafer is literally changed into the body of Christ through during the mass and that consuming it is a vital and necessary act of communion with God. Though it still looks and tastes like a bread wafer it is, for all intents and purposes to them, Jesus’ body and holy beyond measure.
It’s unclear why the kid did it. In this article, he alternately claims to have been trying to show it to a friend to explain Catholicism to him — which is something like explaining Islam to someone by ripping the best pages out of a Koran and showing them to him…only worse — and then then seems to have been protesting the pubic university’s funding of religious institutions.
Predictably, the professional hysterics at the Catholic League launched a campaign of manufactured outrage as soon as they got wind of it. Equally predictably, biologist and atheist apologist Professor PZ Myers — whom this blog has linked to approvingly before — was outraged by the outrage, especially (and quite rightfully) by the death threats. Less predictably, Myers went on to write this, which I can only imagine would make Richard Dawkins blush for shame:
I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.
Returning back to the world of predictability, this prompted the Catholic League to launch another broadside, this one aimed squarely at Myers:
“The Myers blog can be accessed from the university’s website [Tom: yeah, and so can this blog]. The university has a policy statement on this issue which says that the ‘Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with University of Minnesota policies, local, state and federal laws.’ One of the school’s policies, ‘Code of Conduct,’ says that ‘When dealing with others,’ faculty et al. must be ‘respectful, fair and civil.’ Accordingly, we are contacting the President and the Board of Regents to see what they are going to do about this matter. Because the university is a state institution, we are also contacting the Minnesota legislature.
Myers and his university’s president subsequently received requests that he be fired and death threats:
So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.
A debate then ensued at the Corner, when Andrew Stuttaford objected (here and here)to Donahue’s actions:
[W]e should be clear that, one way or another, he is in the business of shutting down what he sees as blasphemy. In so doing he creates a space for other even more doctrinaire types, the types, say, that get worked up about what they consider to be, by their definition, ‘blasphemous’ cartoons, to insist that their sensibilities too should be cossetted, protected, and catered to.
…
[T]he culture of ’speech codes’ is bad, destructive and an invaluable weapon in the hands of those who want to see less freedom in America, not more. I’d like to think that consevatives were in the business of ending speech codes, not validating them.
Kathryn Lopez responded (here and here):
Bill brings attention to outrages that would otherwise be ignored and for this, and for him, I am thankful.
…Bill isn’t in “in the business of shutting down,” he’s in the business of pushing for a little equal treatment in a deeply imperfect world. Again, I’m glad he does what he does, shining a spotlight that is impossible to ignore, again and again.
Some thoughts. To Catholics:
- Death threats are always serious, and can never be justified or made in jest. That is not how you — or anyone else, for that matter — is supposed to act.
- Regardless of how important you believe the Eucharist to be, please do not act surprised at others’ incredulity. Believing a wafer of flour and water to be the physical incarnation of the body of the Messiah that you must consume sounds as weird to everyone else as others’ religious beliefs appear to you.*
- When you threaten legal and/or procedural action be taken on the grounds of blasphemy against your religion — however great or profane that blasphemy is — you give everyone else permission to do the same. Though you might object to the means Muslims took at expressing their outrage during the Cartoon Jihad, you cannot object to the outrage itself. Once you open this door for yourself, you cannot close it for others. That goes for Wiccas, neo-pagans, anamalists, everyone.
To Myers and others:
- Putting aside issues of blasphemy — which only matter to those of the offended religion — attending a religious service and then acting contrary to their most sacred rite is uncivilized and rude in the extreme. This kid and his grievances do not deserve to be taken seriously.
- Saying the Eucharist is ‘A frackin’ cracker’ is unhelpful even if it is true.
- More generally, Myers’ penchant for combining his atheism with science is counter-productive. This is yet another episode that Creationists will be able to point to and say “See? This is the kind of God-hater who pushes evolution!” That such people are disparaging science and damaging their children’s ability to learn is beside the point. That they have unfairly conflated theism with having a serious, moral code is beside the point. Your objective is persuade the intelligent believer that his religion does not provide answers to empirical questions of science. You make your job harder by needlessly insulting his convictions and intelligence.
* Considering the odd combination of high sacredness and easy availability of Eucharist — one need only get in line at the appropriate time, hold out cupped hands and say ‘Amen’ — it’s remarkable that incidents like this don’t happen more often.
Posted by Tom in Science & Evolution, Faith, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
