The Great Desecration
Friday, July 25th, 2008A while back there was a furore about a guy who walked out of a Catholic mass with an uneaten cracker. For the uninitiated, Catholics believe in a thing called “transubstantiation” which is the belief that a wafer of bread literally turns into the flesh of a guy called Jesus who died 2000 years ago. As part of this ritual they eat what they believe to be, literally, the flesh of Jesus. Bizarre, I know but there are over one billion people who think this is rather neat.
Anyway, many Catholics got very upset that this person had - to their minds - taken their God hostage. He was accused of committing a hate crime along with kidnapping and he even received death threats.
A bemused science blogger called PZ Myers wrote an article about it entitled It’s a Fracken’ Cracker and in it (along with expressing his astonishment that seemingly rational people could threaten the life of a person over the incorrect ritual use of a cracker) he said he’d be more than happy to desecrate one to show the absurdity of the situation.
The Catholic community quickly rounded on Myers and targeted him with threats among other things.
Myers has finally put the whole thing to bed in an article today entitled The Great Desecration. Within four hours of the article being posted it had attracted over 1000 comments. I’m reproducing it in its entirity below for posterity and because I think it’s important that issues like this be brought to light when they arise.
No matter what your beliefs it should be fairly simple to understand that the theft or desecration of a cracker (which was actually given to the guy in the first place) does not justify personal threats to a person’s well-being.
