Meh. This just proves it’s possible to be right and a dick.
Eh, it’s not really that outrageous a claim. It’s the internet. You can garner yourself some death threats by saying The Phantom Menace is your favorite Star Wars movie. Besides, if he were inventing threats to make himself look like a victim, you’d think he’d pick a more impressive number.
I think you’re confusing this forum with a courtroom.
Can he prove it here, in the same way he’d prove it in court? Of course not – we can’t get any witnesses that were there to come post here, and even if we could, we couldn’t place them under oath.
But the purpose of this forum is to discuss the implications of the case – in this instance, the legal implications.
Since that phrase is said as part of every single Mass, every single time a priest consecrates the bread, it’s a pretty solid assumption, for the purposes of our discussion, that he said it this time.
It gains you nothing to insist on some sort of rigorous proof for this fact. Not to speak for anyone else, but I’d be willing to concede that if those words were never said, then there no chance of any crime. OK? So now let’s proceed to discuss the far more likely scenario: that this Mass was conducted in the same way that all Masses are conducted, and this priest said the same words that all priests always say when consecrating the Eucharist, and proceed from there.
(As I suggested elsewhere, I still don’t think we get to a point that the actions are criminal).
Indeed he is. Great Debates is the courtroom; this is more akin to the drunk tank.
And when it’s Bricker saying this, you know you’ve gone too far. :eek:
IANACatholic, although several of my close family members are.
[Bolding mine.]
Since Cook was “raised Catholic”, he would have known that, in a Catholic Church, only only Baptized Catholics can receive the Host (“cracker”). The fact that he wanted to show it to a fellow student senator he brought to Mass who was curious about the Catholic faith suggests strongly that Cook was familiar with the “Baptized Catholics only” restriction – if not, he would just have suggested that the friend go up and see for himself what the “cracker” was all about. He would thus have known that full consumption of the Host is a crucial part of the ritual. By planning on taking it back to his seat, he was knowingly misrepresenting his intentions in participating in the Sacrament.
No, they expect that those who voluntarily participate in a Sacrament, available only to baptized members of the church who proclaim to believe in the validity of the ritual, should not then violate the ground rules of that ritual.
IMHO, the rankings here go (in increasing order of assholery):
[ol]
[li]Catholics who are express outrage at the sacrilege, but leave it at that.[/li][li]Webster Cook.[/li][li]PZ Myers in his call for crackers (I usually like the guy).[/li][li]UCF for arranging for armed University police officers to protect the Host.[/li][li]Anyone calling for Cook’s removal from UCF or Myers’ firing from UMinn.[/li][*]Anyone sending death threats.[/ol]
Change that slightly to:
[ol]
[li]Catholics who are express outrage at the sacrilege, but leave it at that.[/li][li]PZ Myers [/li][li]Webster Cook.[/li][li]UCF for arranging for armed University police officers to protect the Host.[/li][li]Anyone calling for Cook’s removal from UCF or Myers’ firing from UMinn.[/li][li]Anyone sending death threats.[/ol][/li]Heck, I’d even leave the first group off the list entirely.
Yes, you’re probably right. I also didn’t make it clear that groups 1 and 6 are huge outliers, so group 1 is at 0.1% and Group 6 is at 100%, and the rest are grouped somewhere below 50%.
After listening to various people bash Islam by saying that Christians were ever so more tolerant and rational about such things I do find the reaction to this affair extra amusing.
After reading the linked stories in the OP, I thought the kid was just being a dick. In a general, college-kid way. But after reading more about the incident, I think he was just trying to show the thing to a curious friend.
The friend could have gotten out of his seat and taken communion himself and no one would have known about it. In my experience, there isn’t any external policing method to prevent non-Catholics from participating in the Eucharist. It’s just an understood thing that people choose to respect. Instead of disrespecting this, he played by the rules and didn’t take communion.
To satisfy his friend’s curiosity, Cook brought the host back to his seat. I am sure he’s not the first person in the world to do this. In fact, I did this as a small Catholic girl shortly after my First Communion. Likely motivated by the excitement of doing something sneaky (or possibly by the desire to eat little bits of Jesus at my leisure throughout the week), I kept the host in my hand throughout the service, took it home with me, wrapped it in a paper napkin, and kept it in my play desk in the basement.
People take communion with varying degrees of sincerity. Some Catholics truly believe the host to be the physical body of Christ. Some, like Diogenes mentioned his wife feels, think of it as a slightly more metaphorical and personal experience. Some don’t believe in it at all and take communion because their parents make them or for other implicitly or explicitly imposed social reasons.
Cook probably doesn’t take communion terribly seriously, but I do not believe he took the host back to his seat with the intent to desecrate it or harm or insult anyone. His friend wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I can imagine myself reacting the same way he did when he was confronted about it. I’d feel upset and guilty, but the brisk escalation of accusation to physical force (albiet minor) would put up my guard and I’d get really pissed right away. I actually imagine I would have thrown the host at the accusors and stomped out of there.
The outcry about this is pretty ridiculous, and death threats etc. are obviously entirely outrageous. But it’s not difficult to assume the worst about a person’s intentions. And if you sincerely believe that the host is Christ’s flesh, it’s not just a cracker - it’s a big deal. Plus, some people are easily offended. Some people seek out reasons to be offended. So someone who 100% believes in transubstantiation, who has a tendency to be easily offended, and who jumps to conclusions about the kids intentions might very well get upset about this.
Meh. If this were your client, you’d be arguing til you were blue in the face that they couldn’t prove the priest said it without certified video verified by notarized signatures, and then if the notary forgot to put the date on his stamp you’d be arguing that it was insufficient. Then you’d crow about how ethical you were for providing a vigorous defense.
I like the righteous indignation though. I’ll remember it the next time you’re arguing some bullshit legal loophole technicality.
This makes no sense.
Thanks for playing.
It’s very tough to empathize with folks who have this belief. A coworker and I were discussing it, and he said that he considered this to be on par with the wackiness of Scientology. In the past I’ve generally defended Christianity of being at least not as ridiculous as Scientology, but I’m sorry; my coworker has a point. A cracker that becomes a piece of God that you eat, that can be argued to be pretty close on the batshit insane level of spacecraft that look like Douglas DC-8’s.
You know what? I hereby call Cook a liar.
Have any of the people who are expressing shock and horror at the violence exhibited by the Catholics actually been to a mass? In all the moving up to the altar and back to receive Communion, who has the time or the inclination to look around for people mistreating the host? And if someone did see such an action, how would they actually get through the crowd to confront the person so suspected? Beyond that, there is no tradition or protocol for “defending” the Eucharist. The normal reaction of a person who saw another member of the congregation pocketing a host would be that the odd person was going to bring the Eucharist to someone who was homebound (breaking the rules to do so, but acting in good faith, nevertheless). The normal reaction of someone who saw a person spit out the host would be that the spitter was (physically) ill and the natural reaction would have been a solicitous question regarding their health.
So the two possibilities that I see are that Cook invented the whole incident for his own purposes or that Cook had already made an issue of being disrespectful in the past so that some other member of the congregation would have actually 1) pay specific attention to him to notice his action, 2) decide his action was deliberately rude, and 3) required some sort of intervention.
Either way, Cook is lying and this whole episode is a matter of someone trolling for attention.
Ummmmm… no, I wouldn’t.
It makes perfect sense. You’re the moron from the legal ethics pit thread a few weeks back. You’re even referring to that thread in your shittings right above.
You hate lawyers. Yet you have no idea how lawyers work or what they do or what being an officer of the court entails. You don’t like people simply because they are lawyers. And then you try to paint them as evil.
Shirley, you’re stupid.
Now, there’s nothing wrong, per se, with being stupid.
But you’re being aggressively stupid because you don’t like Catholics or lawyers or Catholic lawyers, and you’re getting roundly trounced by varying combinations thereof.
You should quit frothing at the mouth and find somewhere else to try to find the moral or intellectual high ground, because you have neither here.
Then you should probably read up a bit more about the difference between “substance” and “accidents” before making such claims.
I’m sure a Scientologist would say something similar about the DC-8s.
I did, since this nonsense came up. It’s all as imaginary as the rest of their religion. Words and rituals over a cracker will produce nothing but the same cracker.
And yes, Catholicism IS just as silly as DC-8s in space, and all the rest of Scientology.
I dunno why them being armed is significant. Maybe UCF security is always armed (not surprising in light of recent school shootings) and the school wanted security on hand to prevent wiseguy practical-joking troublemakers (as Cook could reasonably be classified) from trollishly re-antagonizing the Catholic staff and students. Imagine these shock headlines:
Armed UCF officers watch doorway to campus.
Armed UCF officers oversee parking facility.
Armed UCF officers check student IDs at bookstore.
Armed UCF officers joke while sipping coffee at campus Starbuck’s.
Unless you have some objection to armed campus security officers in themselves, there’s no reason to think the school did anything unusual by assigning its security as it saw fit.
Almost certainly. I, for one, would bet on it.
Cite?
Yeah. Whatever.
If you say so, compadre.
I hate unethical lawyers.
Wrong again. I work with them every day and watch what they do. I’ll bet I spend more time in court than many lawyers.
Not true at all. I like many lawyers. Even some unethical ones. I go out to lunch with some unethical ones. But I call them on their bullshit when they are unethical. You call me pointing out their corruption as “painting them as evil.” Well, if it walks like a duck…
From what I’ve seen Bricker is a very ethical, upstanding person, the kind of person that argues in good faith, the kind of person I’d hire if I needed a lawyer. From what I’ve seen, you are one of the kind of lawyers that I can’t stand.
Wait a minute. Believing that a guy in a robe saying a few words over a cracker makes that cracker turn into the flesh of a dead guy automatically disqualifies you from the intellectual high ground.
Practicing cannibalism, (even symbolic cannibalism) by eating said flesh of a dead guy automatically disqualifies you from the moral high ground.