by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
A University of Minnesota biology professor is refusing to back down in the face of an onslaught of public outrage against his threats to publicly desecrate the Eucharist on the Internet.
“I have to do something,” Professor P.Z. Myers told the Minnesota Independent. “I’m not going to just let this disappear.”
Myers tirade against the Eucharist began several weeks ago after he read an account of a University of Central Florida student who desecrated the Eucharist in June as a way of voicing his opposition to the use of student funds by a Catholic campus group. After keeping the consecrated host in his room for a week, the student returned it and offered an apology.
Myers criticized the incident in a derisive July 8 post on his science blog, Pharyngula.
“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” he wrote. “…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… but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web.”
His impious screed prompted a flood of angry e-mails and letters which Myers claims has only strengthened his resolve.
“It’s just so darned weird that they’re demanding that I offer this respect to a symbol that means nothing to me,” he told the Independent. “Something will be done. It won’t be gross. It won’t be totally tasteless, but yeah, I’ll do something that shows this cracker has no power. This cracker is nothing.”
When asked how his proposed action differed from U.S. military personnel’s reported abuse of the Koran, Myers responded:
“There’s a subtle difference there — maybe an important difference. I don’t favor the idea of going to somebody’s home or to something they own and possess and consider very important, like a graveyard — going to a grave and desecrating that. That’s something completely different. Because what you’re doing is doing harm to something unique and something that is rightfully part of somebody else — it’s somebody else’s ownership. The cracker is completely different. This is something that’s freely handed out.”
Myers claimed the furor generated by his threat was a result of the weakening state of religion. “This is them lashing out. It’s a desperate ploy to be relevant and to be important again… They’re looking for somebody to take their ire out on.”
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights criticized Myers for showing deference to Islam but not Catholicism in Myers’ Minnesota Independent interview.
In a July 15 press release, Donohue cited Myers’ 2006 remarks on a Danish controversy surrounding derogatory depictions of Mohammed, in which he said the cartoons “lack artistic or social or even comedic merit, and are presented as an insult to inflame a poor minority.”
Donohue continued: “He even went so far as to say that Muslims ‘have cause to be furious.’ Worthy of burning down churches, pledging to behead Christians and shooting a nun in the back…”
“We hope Myers does the right thing and just moves on without further disgracing himself and his university,” Donohue stated. “The letter I received from University of Minnesota President Robert H. Bruininks makes it clear that school officials want nothing to do with his hate-filled remarks.”
Professor Paul Z. Myers can be contacted at myersp@morris.umn.edu
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