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This just boggles the mind:
You may or may not have heard the story of Webster Cook, a University of Central Florida student who decided to be funny, and smuggle the Eucharist out of a Catholic mass, rather than eat it.
Cook's plan, which seems about average in terms of wacky college schemes, triggered horrible cries of outrage and indignation, for his horrible desecration of the Body of Christ... It also led to death threats against Cook. ( Shakesville )
I can't go anywhere near the doctrine of transubstantiation or the beliefs of the offended that Mr. Cook walked out of the church with the literal body of Christ. The doctrine itself relies on some philosophical deftness that I'm much to literal to work with. In my ignorance, I would have assumed that each wafer was "merely" a piece of the flesh of Christ, but for people to say that Cook was holding their god hostage the doctrine must be that each wafer becomes the whole and complete body of Christ.
There are so many things wrong with the way the faithful have responded to the situation. I'm pretty sure Jesus was down on murder. I'm also fairly certain he taught that mortals were supposed to be nice and forgiving and it was his father's job to be the heavy. So the appropriate Christian response would have been to nicely ask for the return of the wafer and then pray for the soul of the poor misguided fool who now lived in danger of hellfire and damnation. But that's just me, I guess, because that is so not what happened.
But this is what really burns my shorts:
...if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.
A hate crime? Are you @#$@(* kidding me? BAM! Down comes the victim card. K. Hate Crimes 101: a hate crime is a violent crime that targets a specific group of individuals and is intended to terrorize the entire community of individuals who belong to that group. So did Cook beat up the priest and take the wafer by force? No. Did Cook rush from the sanctuary elbowing and punching people as he went? No. Are Catholics everywhere, or even this specific congregation, going to thing twice before going to mass next week? I seriously doubt it. In other words not any@#$(@)*where close to being a hate crime.
Does this explain why these people are so against hate crimes legislation? Because they think a hate crime is merely a sacrilegious/derogatory act? What Cook did wasn't even intimidating. Have they considered that some people might feel equally offended they believe they are eating God? When someone is dragged from a worship service and beaten to within an inch of his or her life for believing that a wafer is the whole and complete body of Christ, we can talk about hate crimes.