Paul Zachary Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, has pledged to desecrate the Eucharist. He is responding to what happened recently at the University of Central Florida when a student walked out of Mass with the Host, holding it hostage for several days. Myers was angry at the Catholic League for criticizing the student. His post can be accessed from his faculty page on the university’s website.

Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”:

“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “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 (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“The Myers blog can be accessed from the university’s website. The university has a policy statement on this issue which says that the ‘Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with University of Minnesota policies, local, state and federal laws.’ One of the school’s policies, ‘Code of Conduct,’ says that ‘When dealing with others,’ faculty et al. must be ‘respectful, fair and civil.’ Accordingly, we are contacting the President and the Board of Regents to see what they are going to do about this matter. Because the university is a state institution, we are also contacting the Minnesota legislature.

“It 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.”

Contact President Robert Bruininks at bruin001@umn.edu

To protest student fees for religious services at the University of Central Florida (UCF), a student walked out of a campus Mass on June 29 with the Eucharist. Webster Cook, a student senator, finally returned the Host this past weekend.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue offered the following remarks today:

“For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage—regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance—is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.”

Contact UCF president John C. Hitt at jhitt@mail.ucf.edu

Reports have surfaced today by Deal Hudson and Jill Stanek that Sen. Barack Obama is dodging the issue of his support for selective infanticide. They refer to an interview that Obama granted last week to Cameron Strang of Relevant magazine.

In that exchange, Obama admitted that when he was in the Illinois senate he voted against a bill that would require health care for a baby who survived an abortion. “The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn’t think it was going to pass constitutional muster.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue weighed in on this issue today:

“Is there a single bill forbidding racial discrimination that Obama would refuse to endorse on the grounds that we already have enough such laws in place? This begs the question: If protecting innocent human life is of paramount importance, then by what reasoning can it logically or morally be said that we already have enough legislation? When in doubt, wouldn’t it make sense to vote in favor of stronger laws?

“Obama’s position that the bill he voted against would overturn Roe is not a grey area. It explicitly said just the opposite.

“Finally, if the best Obama can do when faced with accusations of supporting selective infanticide—and that is exactly what the Catholic League is charging—is to say that this is not a ‘fair characterization,’ then something really smells. Given the seriousness of the accusation, if it were totally bogus, any other candidate for the presidency would immediately hold a press conference and demand an apology and a retraction. That Obama did not do so speaks volumes.”

On June 29, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an editorial on the papal appointment of St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke to head the Vatican’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura. The mostly favorable editorial ended with a startling paragraph that cited accusations made by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). The group charged that “dozens of proven, admitted, and credibly accused predator priests have been welcomed here.” It also said that “there’s not a bishop in America who has imported so many pedophile priests into his diocese as Burke has.” (Emphasis is ours.)

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:

“When I read the operative verbs ‘welcomed’ and ‘imported,’ I knew it wasn’t true and I knew that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had been had. No bishop ever welcomes or imports troubled priests into his diocese. What many do is treat priests for behavioral disorders at various centers. That is exactly what they are supposed to do—give men who need treatment the help they need.

“As it so happens, there are two treatment facilities located in the Archdiocese of St. Louis—one in Jefferson County and one in Franklin County. The Archdiocese neither owns nor operates them and both were built before Burke became the Archbishop of St. Louis.

“I’ve been waiting all week for SNAP to send us the evidence that the Archbishop ‘welcomed’ and ‘imported’ molesting priests into his diocese. But it hasn’t been able to deliver.  All that exists is the vicious interpretation by SNAP.

“This is anti-Catholicism writ large. What we have is an advocacy group that is going broke because it can’t get any more money from steeple-chasing lawyers and a prominent newspaper swallowing its moonshine. The newspaper owes Archbishop Burke a public apology and SNAP needs to take an ethics class or shut down altogether.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue urged Catholics to reject Sen. Barack Obama’s faith-based initiative:

“If a customer walked into a New York deli and said, ‘Let me have a hot dog on a roll—hold the frankfurter’—he’d likely be thrown out. That’s what the public should do to Obama’s faith-based initiative: since he wants to gut the faith from his faith-based programs, he should be told to junk it.

“Any church or religious agency that agrees to take federal money on the condition that it must operate in a secular fashion—in hiring and in disseminating its values—is selling out. If Orthodox Jews running a day care center are not allowed to exclusively hire Orthodox Jews, there is nothing kosher about it. If a Catholic foster care program cannot place Catholic children with Catholic parents, it is doing a disservice to the children. If an evangelical drug rehab program can’t deliver a Christian message to its clients, it may as well close up shop. But that’s what Obama wants—he wants to secularize the religious workplace.

“No wonder Obama said yesterday that ‘I’m not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits, and I’m not saying that they’re somehow better at lifting people up.’ Indeed, if he really believes this then he might as well withdraw his initiative.

“The whole purpose behind funding faith-based programs is that they are, in fact, superior to secular programs. And the reason they are has everything to do with the inculcation of religious values disseminated by people of faith. No matter, Obama wants to gut the religious values and bar religious agencies from hiring people who share their religion. Hence, his initiative is a fraud.”