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The communion controversy continues

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July 24, 2008
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PZ Myers

I told you Mark Shea wouldn’t have the last word. PZ Myers returns with “The Great Desecration,” a short history of how the transubstantiated body of Christ has been used to incite violence against Jews and other non-Catholics and how he thinks it applies to his call for the public defiling of a communion wafer:

Obviously, it’s not desecration they find disagreeable — it’s the idea that someone would offend their weird sectarian sensibilities. Here’s one from Jack Isaacks that fits the mold.

  Dear Professor Meyers,

  If you REALLY want to do a courageous, revolutionary act, defecate publicly on a copy of the Quran.

  Or do you have the cojones?

  Christians won’t attack you for desecrating a host, but will those wonderful cuddly peace-loving Muslims be as forbearing if you used their book for a toilet?

  Well, how brave are you?

Yeah, right. Catholics won’t attack me, but Muslims will. Never mind that the Catholic League demands that I be fired, thousands of Catholics write to me demanding I be kicked out of the university immediately, and that they send me death threats, both the explicit kind and the vaguely menacing kind. Let’s not forget Webster Cook, who started this all by simply walking back to his seat with a cracker, and now faces censure and possible expulsion from his university. Oh, those Catholics sure are forbearing and tolerant.

I have nothing more to say about this. Let me know if you do.

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