Wafergate: Aftermath

Bill Donahue is still crying over PZ Myers desecrating a communion in protest to the treatment of Webster Cook, wafer smuggler. And, about a month and half after the fact, it is even more hilarious.

When I spoke to a reporter from Providence about a play that mocked the
Eucharist, I unloaded. Fortunately, he listened to me explain the source of my
anger. “Because this is the fourth incident this summer of someone playing fast
and loose with the Eucharist,” I told him.

I believe that I hear the sound of the world's violin playing. Poor wittle Bill, those meanies are making him cwy.

The first incident occurred when Washington Post religion editor Sally
Quinn decided she would show how much she cared about the late Tim Russert by
doing something she hated to do—receive Communion; Quinn is not Catholic.

Boo-friggety-hoo. The idea that you have to be "Catholic" in order to take Communion seems kind of arbitrary, doesn't it? Oh wait...I am talking about transubstantiation. Some bizarre and arbitrary criteria for participation is far from the most ludicrous aspect I assume...

The second incident was worse: a brazen student from the University of Central
Florida walked out of Mass with the Eucharist to protest some innocuous school
policy.

1. He ran out after someone tried to strong-arm him into eating it.

2. That "innocuous school policy" was an unconstitutional financial support, by a state school, of a religious organization. It is only "innocuous" to you, because it helps out Catholics.

The third was obscene: University of Minnesota Professor Paul Z. Myers
desecrated a consecrated Host to protest my criticism of the Florida student.

It wasn't just about you (though you helped put things into motion). It was all the good Catholics who sent death threats to Mr.Cook that spurred him into action. And the death threats directed at him afterwards pushed him over the edge into actually going through with it. Which he performed rather tastefully, all and all.

So when the reporter called to ask why I was unhappy with some woman who decided to mock the Eucharist in a play, he touched a raw nerve.

Cue violin again.

For fifteen years I have been president of the Catholic League, and never have I
seen such a series of assaults on the Eucharist. What’s going on?

One was an accident. The Webster Cook thing was also an accident (debatably). And Myers was reacting to incident 2. So, I think that you are overreacting [gasp].

And what accounts for the total failure of the University of Minnesota to hold
Myers accountable?

Here's my guess: because he didn't do anything wrong legally, and what he did was not done in the role of a professor at the university, but as a citizen, so...free speech...

What’s going on is that militant atheism is all the rage....Hatred of religion
in general, and Christianity in particular. The bulls-eye, of course, is Roman
Catholicism. I’ll give them this much: At least the religion bashers are smart
enough to know who’s on top.

Please. We are hardly "militant", you could hardly call what we have "hatred", and the only reason why we pick on Christianity so much is because it is the world's largest religion, and it is also the one that is adhered to by 80% of our neighbors.

As for your remarks about Catholicism, aside from having the longest history, and being the largest individual Christian institution, atheists could care less about your Church. You're an easy target, and many in mainstream Christianity (hell, even in some Catholic churches) don't even believe that you are a Christian denomination. You receive friendly fire from not only other denominations, but from your own disaffected members. Your Church and traditions are just ripe for satire, even after being plucked and pulped so many times before. You're not a bulls-eye, nor the top. You are a formerly influential corner that currently contributes very much to the population of shooters, and could be broken off and be completely disregarded by the rest of Christendom.

What these authors do is embolden their base. To be specific, they energize
atheists to be more in-your-face about their convictions, the result of which is
an agenda to attack Catholicism.

More or less correct until you get to "whaaa, why are the evil atheists picking on the cafolixx!" part. Again, we do not care about Catholicism any more than other Christian denominations that are comparably intrusive and abusive.

The sick climate that these zealots have created could not have succeeded
without a little help from their friends.In the case of Myers, that means the
administrators at the University. They had several options available to them,
and they passed on every one of them. Predictably, they hid behind academic
freedom, claiming they were impotent to do anything about Myers’ off-campus
behavior.

What did you honestly expect? You can't punish a person for being mean to ideas. Especially when he has not doing so as a representative of his place of employment.

Does anyone believe that the University of Minnesota would do absolutely nothing
about a white professor who packed them in at a local comedy club on weekends
doing his racist rendition of “Little Black Sambo”?

I would honestly hope that "being a racist" isn't a fireable offense if it doesn't extend into his role as teacher or his grading methods. Also, I find it rather hilarious to liken a harsh critique of unfounded ideas to racism. You tend to rant a lot about anti-Catholic bigotry, Bill. It is funny. Anti-Catholic sentiment does exist. It is just nowhere near as bad, currently or historically, as racism. Criticizing your beliefs isn't bigotry, though. Especially when it is coming from atheists (because we give the same kind of criticism to EVERY religion's unfounded beliefs). You should really look to your fellow Christians for that. You know, the ones who don't think that you are Christian, call you Mary-worshippers, and will go on and on about how you don't worship Jesus correctly and are going to Hell for it. Those people. Not the people who are protesting against a bunch of overreacting death-threat lobbers who happen to be Catholic.

Would the very same administrators plead helplessness about a professor who
spoke to community groups off-campus about the mythology of the Holocaust?

Holocaust Envy, huh? You really are trying to stretch here, aren't you? Honestly, once again, as long as Holocaust-denier bizarro-Myers was not using his role as professor to further such an argument, it would, ideally, be ignored.

Lest anyone not be convinced, need I remind you that Larry Summers was driven
out of his job as president of Harvard University for remarks that radical
feminists found objectionable.

And that was an overreaction. Just like your's in this situation. But, slight distinction: Summers' statement was made within his role at the University, not on a personal blog.

It cannot go unsaid that Summers’ comments were made off-campus.

At an academic conference. It is not like he was just talking with his buddies over a cup of coffee.

Moreover, when Summers spoke, it was made explicitly clear that he was not
speaking as president, but as an academic.

Well...sucks for him, then.

Academic freedom was instituted to protect contrarian professors from being
hounded out of the academy for challenging the conventional wisdom on a
particular academic subject.

There you go. Now your on the right page.

It was not instituted to protect hate speech.

Fecking moron. That didn't take long. How is "the Catholic Church has done bad things in the past, Catholics are overreacting to the Cook fiasco, and a human life is worth more than tradition ", verifiably true statements that do not reflect any hatred for individuals on the mere basis of their being Catholic, hate speech? You are chasing phantoms of something that never was, Donahue. Calling out a religious institution is not hate speech. Nor is bringing up the past deeds of that institution. Nor is bringing up the behavior of a small section of those people and responding to it. Nor is nabbing something with a price of $.02 which is handed out freely and throwing it away as your response.

Myers is free to say whatever he wants about his specialty, which is zebrafish,
but he has no moral right to assault the sensibilities of any religious group.

Myers is an American citizen first, biology professor second. The responsibilities of the second should never deprive him of the rights of the first, especially when not in the role of professor. And, considering what tiny things count as an "assault" of your "sensibilities", I am going to call bullshit. You have no right to that level of protection from opposing ideas.

At the very least, the president should have convened an assembly, with members
of the press invited, to unequivocally condemn what Myers did. Even if what
Myers did was outside the purview of the president’s authority, there was
nothing stopping him from holding such a forum.

That's just franky bizarre. Do you really think that the president of the University really wanted to drag PZ, and the entire school through the mud, just to appease the few angry cafolixx like yourself who even cared? Do you even think that this obscure thought even occurred to the president, assuming that he himself even gave a damn about it? Grasping at straws...

Over the summer, Myers’ personnel file ballooned: everything that happened
regarding this issue is in it. Which means that he’d better be careful about
bringing his religious bigotry to bear in the classroom.

The only "religious bigotry" I am aware of is in between folks who, you know, are PART OF A RELIGION THEMSELVES! Myers doesn't get a hard-on for dishing out the hurtie to Catholics, all right? That is very specific, peculiar fetish that only religious nuts have a particular enjoyment of.

If just one Catholic student complains that he is being treated unfairly because
of his religion, Myers will have to answer.

I doubt it. I doubt that Myers teaches classes that are small and intimate enough for him to be aware of a student's religion, let alone be able to discriminate against them for it.

Because of the hate-filled milieu that Myers and his ilk have created, all
kinds of copy-cats have come forth. Some have put videos of themselves up on the
Internet. They all go after me big time, and that is as it should be. They know
who the enemy is, and for that I am eternally grateful.

And thus Bill ends his tale of woe and whining, and cries for vengeance, with a brief allusion to his persecution complex and his wish to self-flagellate himself until he can finally get his Viagra to kick in. And we are, understandably, left perturbed and exasperated.