Things have gone dangerously awry in this country. Could Thomas Jefferson or James Madison have predicted that the religious freedom they promoted could have turned the U.S. into not only the most religious country in the Western World, but the most religiously intolerant? More to the point, would they believe that the separation of church and state they cherished could have promoted the growth of religious institutions that would be able to enforce bizarre religious rules on non-believers, while Europe enjoyed a robust secularism?
This story begins early this month when a student at the University of Central Florida took a piece of bread hostage:
[Webster] Cook claims he planned to consume it, but first wanted to show it to a fellow student senator he brought to Mass who was curious about the Catholic faith.
“When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show him,” Cook said. “I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they’d leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth.”
A church leader was watching, confronted Cook and tried to recover the sacred bread. Cook said she crossed the line and that’s why he brought it home with him.
“She came up behind me, grabbed my wrist with her right hand, with her left hand grabbed my fingers and was trying to pry them open to get the Eucharist out of my hand,” Cook said, adding she wouldn’t immediately take her hands off him despite several requests.
Naturally, it was necessary, out of Christian love, for the Catholics to threaten the kid. That goes without saying. Bu there’s more. This being America, is the following surprising:
One week after a University of Central Florida student snatched something sacred from church, armed UCF police officers stood guard during Sunday Mass to protect what Catholics call “The Body of Christ.”
Minutes before the Mass began, Student Senator Webster Cook returned the Holy Eucharist he was holding hostage in a Ziploc bag ever since smuggling the blessed wafer of bread out of the Catholic Mass service Sunday June 29.
Meanwhile, P.Z Myers (a professor at the University of Minnesota), the curmudgeonly atheist over at Pharyngula, had the gall to point out that the object in question was, after all, only a cracker.
Before you could say “This is my body, this is my blood” Catholic League President Bill Donohue, self appointed protector of the Catholic Faith, took up arms against him. As the Dominicans proved so many years ago, no holds should be barred in defense of the church. If torture is okay, then so is a little misrepresentation. Donohue’s website implied that Pharyngula was hosted on the University website, and that Myers had violated University policy with his unprovoked attack on a piece of unleavened bread. In fact, Myers blog is independently hosted, but what’s a little deception in service to Mother Church?
Myers was inundated with threatening emails, and the university president received tons of mail demanding that Myers be fired. Apparently that campaign had no effect. Among Myers posts was one in which he offered to hold a cookie hostage too, if anyone cared to send him one. One result:
On Friday the Catholic League reported that Thomas E. Foley, a Virginia delegate to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Minneapolis has asked that increased security be considered for the event in light of Myers’ threat to acquire and desecrate the Eucharist.
“I just felt security at the Republican National Convention ought to look at him and his followers,” Foley told CNA in a phone interview on Wednesday morning. He reported that he had not received an update about his request.
Voicing his concerns about Myers, Foley said: “What I think he has done, he’s loaded a cyberpistol and he’s cocked it and he’s left it on the table. He may have set something in motion that no one can stop. It was irresponsible, a hell of a thing to do.”
The other result was a Donohue fostered hate campaign against Myers, who began receiving rather vile threats in the name of a loving Jesus. Webster Cook, meanwhile, has been “impeached” by his fellow campus senators. But what’s a persecution unless you visit some divine wrath on an innocent bystander:
One UCF student claims he’s simply guilty by association.
Benjamin Collard is the friend of the student who smuggled something sacred out of Catholic mass. That friend, Webster Cook is under fire for going to mass June 29th taking a Eucharist and not eating it.
…
“I tried to look at my class schedule,” Collard said. “There was a hold placed on my account that I couldn’t sign up for classes. I went to the office of Student conduct to see what was going on and they told me Catholic Campus Ministries filed charges against me.”
Collard learned that he has been charged with misconduct, disruptive conduct and giving false identification, the exact same charges as Webster.
Collard has been silent since the episode but when he learned of the charges, he decided he’d be silent no longer.
He said during the incident he sat silently while everything else around him was happening.
“I didn’t talk to anybody, didn’t say anything,” he said. “While the situation, disruption happened, I was sitting in my seat looking forward, I did nothing.”
“I never spoke to a university official, I never lied about who I was,” Collard added. “I never engaged in any disruptive conduct. I just think this is absolutely disgusting that they’re going after me.”
These people who are getting so upset about an abused cookie live in a country that tortures real people as a matter of official policy. I haven’t heard Bill Donohue complain about that, nor have I heard much about it from the church he claims to represent. But they’re ready to start the Tenth Crusade (yes, believe it or not, there were nine Crusades) to rescue a piece of bread from an atheist. What’s frightening is that, at least in Florida (apparently not in Minnesota) they are able to enlist the state in their cause. Since when does the state dispatch armed men to prevent non-criminal behavior that calls religious superstition into question? Precisely what did they intend to do if someone else refused to swallow?
