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A UCF student, Webster Cook, smuggles a Eucharist out of mass.
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WFTV reports on the issue. The article quotes Cook on how he was physically assaulted when church-goers noticed that he was leaving with what they consider the actual body of Christ. Catholic spokespeople express their 'outrage' and 'hurt' due to his actions.
WFTV Article -
The Catholic League & Bill Donohue publish a news release in which they simultaneously seem to mislead readers about Cook's motivation for his actions, as well as bring into play the absurd protection of insane religious ideas against insult by by calling his actions "beyond hate speech".
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PZ Myers publishes his first post on the subject, saying it like it is:
"I find this all utterly unbelievable. It's like Dark Age superstition and malice, all thriving with the endorsement of secular institutions here in 21st century America. It is a culture of deluded lunatics calling the shots and making human beings dance to their mythical bunkum."
At the end of the post, he vows to publish his desecration of one of these crackers on his blog, Pharyngula. -
Another news release, where Bill Donohue calls for punitive action against PZ Myers, and then sticks his big holy foot in his mouth by stating %u201CIt is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ. We look to those who have oversight responsibility to act quickly and decisively.%u201D
PZ eloquently cuts through the voodoo bullshit in the last paragraph of this post. -
On 10 July, PZM responds with three posts. Hate mail (and death threats) from Catholics start to fill his mailbox.
- Now I've got Bill Donohue's attention
- Fresh crackers!
- Fight back against Bill Donohue! -
Bill Donohue & The Catholic League issue yet another news release, where they seem to carefully divert attention from their vacuous cracker-related grievances by supporting some public official's call for increased security at a political convention. Wow. PZ says he's going to disrespect a cracker, Bill says this makes him worry about violence towards Catholics at an unrelated political meeting. WTF?
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PZ Myers responds to the Inquisition's absurd news release regarding the need for increased security, with well-deserved derision and sarcasm: "They are increasing security at the Republican convention out of fear of ME? I am puissant. Fear me, O Trembling Republicans. A flick of my wrist, and cathedrals tumble to the earth; a nod of my head, and heathen legions rise up and swarm like flesh-eating locusts over the faithful."
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PZ Myers publishes a choice selection of the mindless, insane, hateful, threatening or just plain silly emails he has received on the cracker-matter.
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PZM outs a fraudulent Catholic commentator on his blog.
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PZ Myers publishes some of threats of physical violence he has received, with full email details of senders.
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The Minnesota Independent publishes an interview with PZ Myers, stating that: Unrepentant science-heathen PZ Myers still intends to prove "this cracker is nothing"
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Upon learning that some over-zealous readers of his blog have been emailing those whose threats he made public, PZ takes a very rational and un-Catholic-League approach in calling for this to stop.
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Bill Donohue strikes back with another attempt at inflaming people against Myers: This time they accuse PZ of showing deference to Islam, by shamelessly misquoting him. It seem to me that these poor people are completely unaware of how their frantic attempts at hate-mongering just confirm what people like PZ Myers are saying about them.
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For server performance reasons, PZ must once again create a new post to handle the hundreds of comments on the cracker-matter.
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PZM brings the world up to date regarding the sheer volume of mindlessly repetitive hate-you/pray-for-you/why-dont-you-desecrate-the-Quran emails he still receives on a daily basis.
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More hot air from Bill Donohue's bunch. Once again, he misinforms readers about PZ's stance on Islam (saying that he is sympathetic to their beliefs), and then does a classic Catholic 180 by mentioning how he has complained to the Council on American-Islamic Relations regarding PZ's plans to be rude to pages from their chosen book of fairy tales.
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PZ informs readers that the cracker has come to an undignified end, along with the Quran and another surprise entry. Details pending.
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More of the same from Bill Donohue, carefully quoting only the most inflaming parts of PZ's post, editing out the eloquently rational justification for his actions. And since they cannot rationally defend their insane belief in magic, they again resort to threatening PZ's job. One has to wonder why they don't just sit back and wait for lightning to strike him. Probably the same reason that the Popemobile has bullet-proof glass.
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Read the whole account of the desecration here. "By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything."
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Bill Donohue rants about the fact that PZ (a scientist) is not going to lose his job (at a scientific institution) for ridiculing the Catholic belief in magic on his personal blog. He then sticks his whole Catholic leg in his mouth by equating the ridicule of the belief in magic to racism and, get this, posession of child porn. Are Catholics even allowed by Vatican PR-people to mention such things?
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PZ tells his readers the he still gets tons of Catholic emails, and shares some of the more interestingly stupid ones.
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PZ informs us that "it's clear that at least this tier of the Catholic hierarchy is as deranged as the wackaloons flooding my mailbox."
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Bill Donohue continues his gripes about how a university that won't fire a scientist because he mocks the belief in magic on his personal blog is somehow criminal. I'm actually starting to feel sorry for him.
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PZ informs us that: "The Center for Inquiry has put together two letters on the Webster Cook affair, one to be sent to UCF president John Hitt, and the other to the Catholic League."
