Difference between revisions of "2008 sacred wafer scandal"

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'''Also known as''': Wafergate, Wafer Madness
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<hide>
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==Overview==
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[[page type::article]]
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===the undisputed facts===
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[[thing type::event]]
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[[category:events]]The [[2008 sacred wafer scandal]] began on 2008-06-29 when [[University of Central Florida]] undergraduate student government senator [[Webster Cook]] was attending [[communion]] at the University's [[Catholic Campus Ministries]] club service on the UCF campus in Orlando, [[Florida]]. As part of the communion ritual, he was given a ritually prepared wafer, known as a [[Eucharist]] and sometimes referred to as the "Body of [[Jesus Christ|Christ]]", to consume.
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[[thing type::scandal]]
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[[category:events]]
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[[category:religion]]
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</hide>
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==About==
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The [[2008 sacred wafer scandal]] was an incident in which the apparent misuse of a mass-produced replica of a sacred icon sparked mass religious outrage, sharp condemnation from religious leaders, and attempts to harshly punish the perpetrator and those who defended him.
  
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Wishing to show the wafer to a fellow student senator in order to explain more about the [[Catholic]] faith, he retained it and went to sit down, intending to eat it afterwards. Unfortunately, someone apparently objected to this, and attempted to wrestle the wafer from Mr. Cook's hands:
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* [[/facts]]: the facts which are not in dispute
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* '''discussion'''
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** [[/Catholic League]]: their position, with analysis
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** [[/John Pieret vs. Woozle]]: attempt to map out a very long, tangled dialogue
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===Nomenclature===
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'''Also known as''': Crackergate, Wafergate, Wafer Madness
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===Conclusions===
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The original perpetrator did not actually do anything wrong.
  
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{{excerpt|From a [[WFTV]] [[2008-07-05 Body Of Christ Snatched From Church, Held Hostage By UCF Student|report]], 2008-07-05:}}
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The [[Catholic Church]], by its failure in this matter to rebuke those behaving poorly in its name or in its defense &ndash; especially those who claimed that Cook's act was "worse than a hate crime" &ndash; has merely sealed the coffin of its [[moral authority]], already decimated by its indefensible stances on [[assisted suicide]], [[contraception]], and other issues. --[[User:Woozle|Woozle]] 14:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
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"When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show him," Cook said. "I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they'd leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth."
 
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A church leader was watching, confronted Cook and tried to recover the sacred bread. Cook said she crossed the line and that's why he brought it home with him.
 
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"She came up behind me, grabbed my wrist with her right hand, with her left hand grabbed my fingers and was trying to pry them open to get the Eucharist out of my hand," Cook said, adding she wouldn't immediately take her hands off him despite several requests.
 
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{{-excerpt}}
 
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It is apparently more or less at this point that Mr. Cook left the church, taking the wafer with him.
 
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The Catholic community promptly went into an uproar, fueled in part by remarks by officials at The [[Catholic League (US)]], a Catholic advocacy organization not affiliated with the [[Catholic Church]]:
 
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{{excerpt|from a [[Fox News]] Orlando [[2008-07-07 Student Who Took Religious Icon Getting Death Threats|report]], 2008-07-07:}}
 
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“We don’t know 100% what Mr. Cook's motivation was,” said Susan Fani, a spokesperson with the local Catholic diocese.  “However, if anything were to qualify as a [[hate crime]], to us this seems like this might be it.”
 
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{{-excerpt|The article would appear to be misleading about Ms. Fani's affiliation; she is with the Catholic League's local diocese branch, not a member of the [[diocese]] itself [http://www.onenewsnow.com/Election2008/Default.aspx?id=152074]}}
 
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Mr. Cook subsequently received threats of [[death threat|death]] and other harm from those supporting the Catholic side of the disagreement. He also returned the wafer, apparently never having intended to keep the cracker indefinitely or harm it, though the death threats may have played a part in his decision.
 
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The story apparently first hit the web on July 5 in an [[[[2008-07-05 Body Of Christ Snatched From Church, Held Hostage By UCF Student|online article]] by [[WFTV]] 9, a local TV station.
 
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On '''July 6''', a [[2008-07-06 Student Holds Eucharist Hostage|post]] on the [[Creative Minority Report]] blog strongly condemned Cook's actions and many commenters on the posting were also supportive of further physical action against Mr. Cook. The blog moderator shut down commenting apparently due to a number of dissenting comments, however, which he claimed did not "follow the rules"; these comments were also removed.
 
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On '''July 7''', the Orlando [[Fox News]] affiliate [[2008-07-07 Student Who Took Religious Icon Getting Death Threats|reported]] that Cook was receiving death threats. This article and the July 5 WFTV article apparently came to the attention of [[PZ Myers]], outspoken defender and advocate of [[atheism]].
 
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On '''July 8''', PZ [[2008-07-08 IT'S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!|posted]] in Webb's support, decrying the responses of the Catholic community as "Dark Age superstition and malice, all thriving with the endorsement of secular institutions here in 21st century America" and "a culture of deluded lunatics" and sending out a call for further ritually-prepared crackers on which he planned to commit more "desecration".
 
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At this point, PZ himself became the target of death threats and attempts by Catholic League president [[Bill Donohue]] to have PZ fired or otherwise censured for his conduct. Much debate ensued throughout the blogosphere, and the dust has not yet settled as of this writing.
 
  
 
==Links==
 
==Links==
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===Reference===
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* [https://pharyngula.fandom.com/wiki/Crackergate Pharyngula Wiki]
 
===Filed===
 
===Filed===
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{{links.tagged}}
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{{links/news}}
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===Timeline===
 
===Timeline===
 
''Some of these links have been filed, but not all''
 
''Some of these links have been filed, but not all''

Latest revision as of 14:23, 31 July 2019

About

The 2008 sacred wafer scandal was an incident in which the apparent misuse of a mass-produced replica of a sacred icon sparked mass religious outrage, sharp condemnation from religious leaders, and attempts to harshly punish the perpetrator and those who defended him.

Nomenclature

Also known as: Crackergate, Wafergate, Wafer Madness

Conclusions

The original perpetrator did not actually do anything wrong.

The Catholic Church, by its failure in this matter to rebuke those behaving poorly in its name or in its defense – especially those who claimed that Cook's act was "worse than a hate crime" – has merely sealed the coffin of its moral authority, already decimated by its indefensible stances on assisted suicide, contraception, and other issues. --Woozle 14:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Links

Reference

Filed

Related

  • 2008/07/15 [L..T] Much ado about transubstantiation "In the previous post, I suggested that the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which asserts that when the priest during the communion service consecrates the bread and wine, the bread becomes the actual body of Jesus and the wine becomes his actual blood, was a fairly bizarre thing to believe in this day and age and raised the possibility that perhaps even Catholics did not really believe in it but were just humoring the church by going along with a doctrine that came into being a long time ago."
  • 2008/07/11 [L..T] HYSTERIA MARKS MYERS AND HIS ILK "Yesterday, Catholic League president Bill Donohue issued a news release calling attention to the plea that Paul Zachary Myers made on his blog: he solicited the Communion Host for the express purpose of desecrating it. Donohue now responds to the reaction he has received from the University of Minnesota Morris professor, as well as others:"
  • 2008/07/06 [L..T] Student Holds Eucharist Hostage “Webster Cook is a student at the University of Central Florida. He is also a top notch jerk.”


Timeline

Some of these links have been filed, but not all

  • 2008-07-08 IT'S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!: PZ asks for more samples of the Host upon which to commit sacrilege and thereby somehow threaten the Catholic faith with a fate worse than death; PZ shuts down the comments at #1007 in order to reduce load on the server, but posts "fresh crackers!" specifically for further comments.
  • 2008-07-10
    • Fight back against Bill Donohue!: The president of the Catholic League is putting pressure on both the UMM and the State of Minnesota to "do something" about this horrible desecration, regarding which it is apparently "hard to think of anything more vile". o.0 Comments are shut down at #1227, and "Internet getting full" is opened for further comments.
    • Fresh crackers!: 579 comments as of this writing
    • Commentary: It Gets Me! "So Bill Donohue, bumbling idiot, decides to go after my favorite blogger, all-around nice guy (except to religion!), and professor PZ Myers... ...For a cracker." Author admits to having abducted not one but two communion wafers without eating them.
    • Letters of support for PZ:
  • 2008-07-11
  • 2008-07-12
  • 2008-07-13: Mail dump: PZ posts a couple of insanely vile hate emails he recieved, along with full headers. The Pharyngulites go to work and are able to track down substantial identifying information on both of them.
  • 2008-07-14: Letter of support for PZ: En Tequila. Key point: people are more important than symbols.

Reference: Support PZ blog

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