MN professor promises to desecrate Eucharist; Eucharist stolen Friday

CNA had good coverage of this outrageous and provocative gesture:

A Minnesota professor and science blogger has said he will personally desecrate the Eucharist and publish photos of the desecration on the internet if any of his readers acquire a consecrated Host and mail it to him. “I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare,” he has written.

Paul Zachary Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota at Morris, made the threat while commenting on a University of Central Florida incident in which a student senator stole and held hostage a consecrated Host from a June 29 Mass.

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Professor Myers criticized the incident in a derisive July 8 post on his science blog Pharyngula, hosted at scienceblogs.com. He also solicited his readers to acquire consecrated Hosts.

“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers 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.”

While Bill Donohue is lodging a complaint against the professor, I'm still disconcerted that I was emailed earlier today with the news that on Friday the Eucharist was stolen from Corpus Christi Cathedral.

I only have one report so far (can anyone confirm it?) which said the adoration chapel had been shut down and the police had been able to obtain fingerprints. I'm not claiming that these two stories are related. I just found it interesting that they happened so close together.

At any rate, let's pray that the Eucharist is not defiled.

Also, examples like this professor have always puzzled me. What, exactly, possesses someone with the desire to trample upon the beliefs of others in this callous manner? Is it an easy out for me to think he's been hurt in some way and this is his way to lash out?

In all seriousness, however, it's pretty clear this professor has seriously violated the terms of conduct stipulated in his contract and his immature and offensive rantings simply should not be tolerated by his employers.

And for all his bombast - he's taken down his original offending post.