But sir, it's only wafer-thin!

[steveisgood]

 I've put off long enough talking about this issue, and its high time I chimed in.

Here is the very brief primer of what happened so far:
1) Some university kid rabble-rouses at a Catholic mass and steals the eucharist, holding it "hostage" (kinda reminds me of the 'don't taze me, bro' kid).
2) Parishoners violently try to get it back from him. He

Comments

[compley]

Let me get this straight:
Some Catholics are enjoying mass in a church, by themselves, and some kid comes in and steals the hosts, the body of Jesus, with (we can only presume) the intent of pissing everybody off, and we are to blame the Catholics (who were minding their own business) for getting pissed off?
Just because some of the church folks reacted badly doesn't change the fact that stealing the hosts was a douchy thing to do. None of the following drama would have occurred had he not done it. That's moral entrapment.
The fact that some have got a hate-on for Catholicism doesn't make the stealing of the hosts right. At the very least, it's theft. At most, it could be considered a type of hate crime.
Defiling another consecrated host will accomplish...what exactly? Angering more Catholics? Uh-huh.

Steve, you're my hetero-life mate and you know I love you and always will. You've been writing a lot of stuff lately I don't entirely agree with and I've resisted responding because I don't want to hurt your feelings or our friendship. I write this today because I don't want my silence to equal agreement.

[steveisgood]

This response had to be cut in two as they were aboot 1000 characters too much, so I'll label them

PART 1 of 2
Firstly, certainly no offense taken. We're adults and we can respectfully disagree easily and then go play rockband and forget about this nonesense.

Also, yes, this kid was acting like a total douche bag and deserves to be mocked. Mocked, but certainly not expelled. This was not a university event, so the church has no business calling for his expulsion. (The reasons for him taking the eucharist in the first place are a bit unclear. Some reports liken it to being some douchy-little kid who likes to piss people off. Other reports cite a protest on how the university illicitly used $40,000 of student funds to fund this particular church. It's not the make-or-break part of this story, but I do think affects how this student is being witch-hunted). It's yet another example of a church trying to flex its muscles in a secular institution because it can't handle the laws that apply to everyone, not just some particular group of devotees. It's particularly telling that the congregation tried to forcably remove it from him before he 'escaped', and then catholics around the world flooded him with death threats. Death threats...over a cracker.

Also wik, taking the eucharist out of the church does not fulfill the legal requirements to constitute theft, as he was freely given it from the priest, even though the expectation was that he would then eat it. There is no law that says he has to eat it in front of the priest, only church custom. Society has constantly been giving the church a bit of a wide berth with which to deal with their own rules (Take for instance, the number of child-molesting priests who don't go to jail, but instead get moved to a different diocese...if you don't go to jail for kiddy-rape, you've got a pretty sweet deal with the state!). For my opinion, the kid certainly can (and should) be charged with public mischief. But to hear the Catholic League call this a hate crime and kidnapping is insulting to people who actually do suffer from these crimes. I understand the concept of transubstantiation very well, but that is a practice for catholics, not for the law: a cracker is not a person, no matter how much tradition and symbolism one exhalts it to. There may be a law that prohibits such outright insults to religious icons, but I'm not sure about the state laws of Florida....I'd be really curious to know though...this does sound like it would be a state-issue and not a federal one.

[steveisgood]

PART 2 of 2
I agree with the entrapment comment, as this douchy kid started all this, but if the Catholic League and Vatican (two entities who almost never get along) were so high minded, they would have acted with more decorum than this kid, certainly not try to get him expelled (especially after he returned the eucharist, and apologized....and again, this was not a university event....the Catholic League is merely exploiting the fact that he is a student, and therefore vulnerable....if not to the law, then to the university).

As for PZ, he can be a bit a a mega-douche at times, but his point was to mock those who likened this to a kidnapping. If someone will devalue a human life to be equivalent to a cracker, I agree with PZ. And its not just lone internet flamers or some "church folks reacting badly" out there making the comparison....Susan Fani, a spokesperson for the local diocese said "We don't know 100% what Mr. Cooks motivation was, however, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it." By defintion, the motivation behind the crime makes (or doesn't make) it a hate crime, so if they're not 100% sure of the motivation, they can't make that charge. Father Migeul Gonzalez (of the same diocese) said, "Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family." Let's remember, the kid DID return the eucharist and apologized in an effort to stop all this hooey (and death threats), but the church and Catholic League didn't let it stop there. Bill Donahue even said that this was "...beyond hate speech"

The news is replete with stories of real people being kidnapped: daughters, couples, missionaries, soldiers etc. We also often hear about violent hate-crimes, such as the Jena 6, or the murder of Matthew Sheppard, or Jamed Byrd Jr. PZ hit the nail right on the head when he said, "Can you possibly diminish the abuse of real human beings any further?"

If PZ were to further this insanity and convert a eucharist into a pac-man (well, that's what I would do, cause I think pac-man totally rules and it would be way-funny) or something, it wouldn't be to piss off more catholics...it will be done DESPITE the fact that some catholics will get pissed. It's to stand up to people who threaten free speech(douchebaggy though it was) with violence and imprisonment, even after they get what they wanted in the first place!

I wrote in response to this whole embarassing debacle (your response is not the debacle I refer to, just for clarification) for the same reason you did, to not have my silence imply consent.

Word bitch. Phantoms is like a mall-fucker.