Catholic Priests Defend Eucharist Against PZ Myers

Confraternity of Catholic Clergy (a national association of 600 priests & deacons) issued a statement on PZ Myers. They state exactly the essence of what is happening and reprimand both Myers and UM University officials. If Myers, or anyone, thinks this issue is going to die without punitive measures, they are sadly mistaken. Htip The Catholic League.

"We find the actions of University of Minnesota (Morris) Professor Paul Myers reprehensible, inexcusable, and unconstitutional. His flagrant display of irreverence by profaning a consecrated Host from a Catholic church goes beyond the limit of academic freedom and free speech.

...Lies and hate speech which incite contempt or violence are not protected under the law. Hence, inscribing Swastikas on Jewish synagogues or publicly burning copies of the Christian Bible or the Muslim Koran, especially by a faculty member of a public university, are just as heinous and just as unconstitutional. Individual freedoms are limited by the boundaries created by the inalienable rights of others. The freedom of religion means that no one has the right to attack, malign or grossly offend a faith tradition they personally do not have membership or ascribe allegiance.

...A biologist has no business 'dissing' any religion, rather, they should be busy teaching the scientific discipline they were hired to teach. Tolerating such behavior by university officials is equally repugnant as it lends credibility to the act of religious hatred. We also pray that Professor Myers contritely repent and apologize."

UMN President Robert Bruininks' Past History

Here is an interesting tidbit, in September of 2006, the University of Minnesota put on a play called "The Pope and the Witch." The play was written by a well-known, anti-Catholic bigot, Dario Fo.

The Catholic League was on it and protested the funding of the play to President Robert Bruininks. Long Island's newspaper, Newsday, described this play as involving ‘a heroin-addicted, paranoid Pope called John Paul II, along with scheming priests, bumbling nuns and monks….’ Comically, Long Island Catholics consider Newsday as an extremely anti-Catholic newspaper and for them to cite this is remarkable and speaks of the vile nature of this play.

Well, Robert Bruininks ignored this protest and let the play be performed with taxpayer dollars.

Most would think this is a very bad sign for those who agree with the Catholic League and want PZ Myers dismissed; however, I have another take.

My view is that Bruininks now has a past record of ignoring a grievance coming from the Roman Catholic community, and ignoring this second more flagrant sacrilege would establish an obvious pattern. Back-to-back, pluralistic, indifferent responses ignoring the concerns of the Catholic community would establish tolerance and coddling of anti-Catholic bigotry at the level of the President’s office. The shift of focus could go from a wacko, fringe-professor, PZ Myers, to the President of the University himself, Bruininks, and involve the people he is held accountable to. Bruininks is politically skillful enough to have gained the President's office in a state university system and hopefully smart enough to see this reality.

If I were Bruininks, keeping Myers, a ranting lunatic who made his own bed, would not be worth jeopardizing my six-figure salary and established position. His trump card was played two years ago and there are no more in his deck.

Catholic League to the Rescue: Bigot PZ Myers

As many of your know, the Catholic League issued a press release on PZ Myers, who on his blog stated he wants people to send him the Eucharist so he can "treat it with profound disrespect and heinous [Eucharist] abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web."
What make this vile man even more incredible is that he is a college professor at the University of Minnesota, with access to an educational platform and captive students who sadly may need to take his course.

The Catholic League is requesting that all decent people contact the President of his university and express their disgust and outrage at the Catholic-bigotry this man spewed.

Contact UMN President Robert Bruininks at bruin001@umn.edu .

The Catholic League, and myself, have also confirmed the Myers’ had a link to his blog up on his university profile page at the university, so his writings on this blog are not a segregated, extracurricular endeavor. The University also has a strict code of conduct that comes into question. Are we also to believe that Myers has never worked on his blog on or with university property paid for with taxpayers funds? Thankfully, they can retrieve all internet records from any computer on campus which might be the smoking gun for Myers' dismissal. The fact that the blog link has been removed very quickly is interesting because it tells us that the University is siding with the Catholic League intially and knows there is a problem.

A few additional thoughts:

Freedom of speech in no way protects you from the backlash from the reactions your words could ignite. It in no way protects you from the public asking for a just remedy. Ask Don Imus, or sportscaster Jimmy the Greek. Both men were fired from lucrative jobs because public outraged called for it and they said stupid things against a certain race. If Mr. Myers joins this list, it will be well deserved and warranted as he did the same.

Secondly, when you blatantly profane someone’s religion (and we are not talking a civil exchange of ideas), you are then trouncing on and violating another Constitutionally guaranteed freedom that we have in America, the freedom of religion. The right to worship freely without persecution. Myers violated about 75 million American Catholics' Constitutional rights with his rants. Again, worthy of dismissal.

Finally, I could not think of a better person to handle this situation than Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. PZ Myers has no experience in defending himself against a retribution campaign on the scale that the Catholic League will launch or possible lawsuit. However, Mr. Donohue has the utmost experience in all America in defending the Catholic Faith and getting retribution from the associations that house these bigots. Mr. Myers will be working on his C.V. shortly and it will be very hard for him to be re-hired in any academic setting when he has a hateful diatribe of paper trails that any potential employer can access to see the true, dark heart of this man.