Ecce homo

This professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris has garnered to himself notoriety after claiming to have desecrated a consecrated host by piercing it with a rusty nail and afterwards casting it into a waste basket along with old coffee grinds, a banana peel, and a few torn pages ripped from the Qur’an and from Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion.

One should think that an intellectual person over the age of fifty holding a professorship at a distinguished university would be, well ... more mature than to stoop to such juvenilia. As Jimmy Akin argues—and Melancholicus is in perfect agreement—this man has fundamentally compromised himself as an educator, and has made himself unsuitable for employment as an educator.

How he obtained possession of the host is not known. Of course it must be borne in mind that there is no proof this egregious stunt actually took place beyond what the fellow claims on his webpage. For all we know to the contrary, he might just be having a laugh at the expense of the righteous working themselves into hysteria at the prospect of such a sacrilege.

But supposing the reports are true ... Mr. Myers apparently didn’t stop at the Blessed Sacrament, but included the Qur’an and Richard Dawkins in his little party piece. Consistency, I suppose, arising from his dictum that “nothing must be held sacred”, not even Richard.

Nothing must be held sacred? As the Waffler wryly observes, “I can't help wondering what Prof. Myers reaction would be if someone dug up, say, his mother's corpse and used it for a hatstand”.

As we might expect, Mr. Myers will not suffer any negative repercussions from having desecrated the Blessed Sacrament, at least not in this world. He will retain his job, and life will go on much as before. He might not even suffer consequences in the next world, for if the fellow truly believes in his heart of hearts that there was nothing remarkable about the host he desecrated, that it was simply, as he put it, a “cracker”, he cannot be guilty of sacrilege, at least not formally. The Lord Jesus Himself said of His tormentors, even as they crucified Him, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The outrage of the faithful will cool, and the incident will be forgotten.

But will it? The outrage of the Catholic faithful will cool, certainly. But let us remind ourselves that Mr. Myers also dishonoured a copy of the Qur’an, and the kind of faithful who put their trust in that particular book are seldom disposed either to forgive, or forget.

Well with that he’s surely sealed his fate. Let the Mahometans kill him.