Sept. 2006 Brent Matthews in Lewiston, Maine, rolled a frozen head of a pig through an open door, across a store-front Mosque's floor. Mr. Matthews said that the incident was "a prank." Mr. Matthews was indicted on criminal charges and charged with a misdemeanor for defacement and desecration of a place of worship.
Sept. 2007 Peggy Davidson and Judy Overby, of Syracuse, were indicted by a Grand Jury for disrupting services at two local temples by becoming verbally "loud and obnoxious." Each pleaded guilty to ... two misdemeanor counts of disrupting a religious service
July 2008: UCF Student Webster Cook disrupts worship at a Catholic Mass by stealing and desecrating the Holy Eucharist. Absolutely no problem... legal charges or University action would be such an over-reacting... I mean you have to consider, it was only done against Catholics...
It is either everything listed above is wrong, or nothing listed above is wrong. Which one is it?
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7 comments:
The arguments i keep reading on the various 'critical thinking' blogs are that you can't commit a hate crime against a cracker.
Interesting how it is then possible to commit a hate crime with 'just' a pig. (which i do not endorse btw!)
I'm a bit confused about what desecration he actually did. You mean, *not* eating it. He did not stomp on it, feed it to an animal, fold, mutilate, or spindle it, he did not poison it, or draw on it, or use it in a work of questionable merit.
He kept it. Rather non-negligently, I might add, since he even preserved and kept it from going stale by putting it in a plastic bag (well, unless it was stale to begin with. But I'm sure that wouldn't have been the case).
I mean, theoretically it should still be worthwhile body of Christ, suitable for consumption, right? Or, does something happen at some point that no longer makes this the case?
I don't see how the pig one should be a crime. Unless the frozen pig damaged something in the building.
For the second one, the being 'loud and obnoxious', I would think that they would be trespassing after they were told to leave. Plus the bomb threat.
A fair question for a non-Catholic, Cryptic.
Catholics believe that the Eucharist is the actual, true presence of Christ, the true God. With the belief of this presence comes the absolute reverence in which this sacrament must be treated with.
The Roman Catholic catechism puts such a premium on this belief that disrespecting the Eucharist can be an automatic excommunication. Other posters have commented that Webster Cook may be excommunicated based on this action.
Webster Cook took the true presence of God for his own selfish purposes, maligning and desecrating the sacrament. The original , and true, story was he was going to hold it to protest public funds for religious clubs. This is the official story that is now stated on his facebook page asking people for support. It was premeditated, and there was malice involved.
Placing it in a ziplock bag and keeping it in a smelly dorm room is extremely disrespectful to our Holy God. A method to transport a goldfish is not a suitable container for the Body of Christ.
To answer you final question, it is the body of Christ from the moment it is consecrated onward regardless, which is why Catholics are so upset on how it was treated.
The meat of a pig is considered unclean by Muslims, so this action was heinous to Muslims.
The women were convicted of disrupting a religious service, not trespassing. If the authorities could have added that to the list, I am sure they would have. The bomb threat was not against the location they were in, but they were saying they were going to blow up a Temple in Israel. Regardless; inexcusable.
Okay, maybe I just don't understand what you mean by "presence". God is omnipresent, is he not? So, he's already in the smelly dorm room, and I'm sure he's been in worse spots ;). Given this omnipresence, how is it different when manifested in the Eucharist compared to anywhere else?
And yes, I'm not a Catholic. I am coming to being persuaded that Cook has some blame here, though I'm much less convinced the reaction has been proportional or prudent.
Omnipresent means God is everywhere at once, not necessarily in a physical form. With the Eucharist he takes a physical form.
There is an Old Testament reading where God appears to Moses as a burning bush. God takes the physical form of the bush. Another bush, maybe right next to it, has the same exact molecular make up, but it remains just a bush. We believe at the consecration, the host wafer (bread) goes from being just a host wafer, to the actual presence of God. Similar to a normal bush becoming a burning bush, when God’s presence is in it.
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