c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Anti-Christian hatemongers would be boring if they weren’t so dangerous.

Let’s start with University of Minnesota biology professor Paul Z. Myers, who has been attacking Catholic belief and practice, his comments veiled by his tissue-thin notion of “free speech.”

Myers, who otherwise studies zebra fish, routinely blogs against anything vaguely religious. He has a particular penchant for anti-Catholicism.

Hence he was wild with glee when Webster Cook, a member of the student senate at the University of Central Florida, held a consecrated Communion wafer hostage for a week, protesting UCF’s allotment of $40,000 in student fees to various campus religious groups.

On June 29, Cook reportedly sat reading and talking in the back of the 400-seat UCF student center room where Sunday Mass is routinely celebrated. After receiving Communion, Cook removed the host from his mouth. Although some people told him to consume the host and attempted to detain him when he refused, he left the service.

Cook’s actions seem to qualify as disorderly conduct. He probably should have been arrested. You would think he will be soon. But a university spokesman waffles on the point, saying no one (including university officials) has filed a police complaint.

Then it gets even stranger. Now Cook wants a personal apology from the Catholic bishop of Orlando because someone tried to pry the host from his hands. If you can believe it, Cook also filed hazing charges against the interveners, citing university policy that bans forced consumption of any food where “affiliation with a University of Central Florida organization may be directly or indirectly conditioned.” Cook also charges the Catholics violate UCF underage drinking policy by providing Communion wine.

Yes, Disney World is only an hour away from UCF.

Meanwhile, blogging from tiny Morris, Minn., Myers has made Cook an international cause celebre to every stripe of anti-religious weirdo. Myers calls the Eucharist “a frackin’ cracker!” and “crackergate” comments have spread like summer mildew. Myers asks his readers to “score” him some consecrated hosts so he can desecrate them and post photographs on his blog, which until recently was linked to his official university Web page. He told a Minnesota newspaper: “I’ll do something that shows this cracker has no power. This cracker is nothing.”

Both state and local law in Minnesota define disorderly conduct as engaging “in offensive, obscene or abusive language or in boisterous and noisy conduct tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger or resentment in others.” But no one seems to be doing much about Myers.

Small minds need large targets. There are 2 billion Christians in the world, half of them Catholics. When atheists attack religion, they often default to going after Catholicism; witness Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and, on a lower level but in the blogosphere near you, Paul Myers.

As school officials, lawyers and public relations people trip over their imaginings about the First Amendment, the larger point is missed. Suggestible students like Cook are examples of what happens when professors like Myers freely use “offensive, obscene or abusive language” to “arouse alarm, anger or resentment.” Even though Cook acted before Myers issued his international call for desecration, chances are there will be Cook copycats in universities around the globe come the fall.

We’re in the high season for worldwide anti-Christian _ specifically anti-Catholic _ commentary. The obnoxiousness of one fish professor in Minnesota is supported by a state-funded salary, and the disorderly conduct of a Florida student is overlooked by a state-funded university.

Public institutions are directly or indirectly (depending on how you look at it) attacking Catholicism. And the world’s 2 billion Christians seem powerless to stop it.

Come to think of it, Minnesota seems pretty close to Disney World, too.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)

KRE/PH END ZAGANO

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