Vatican body: Minnesota professor’s sin worse than genocide
Friday, January 16, 2009 at 4:23 pm
- 7 Comments
PZ Myers (Wikipedia)
While Catholic bishops and priests can hear confessions about sins as severe as murder or genocide, the Vatican’s 830-year-old Apostolic Penitentiary is “reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious,” writes the UK’s Telegraph. In Rome this week, this secretive “tribunal of conscience” held a two-day panel to discuss what it does and how it works. Crimes so grave they can only be absolved by the pope include attempting to assassinate the pontiff, directly participating in (or funding) abortion or desecrating the Eucharist. The inclusion of that last sin seems to put University of Minnesota professor PZ Myers in a worse class of sinner, in the eyes of Catholics, than genocidal dictators. The Telegraph even mentions the atheist biology professor, who blogged about his desecration of a communion wafer last summer, although it’s not clear from the article whether his case was specifically discussed by the Apostolic Penitentiary:
Cardinal Stafford said there had been a rise in incidents in which people would receive Communion and then spit it out or otherwise desecrate it, sometimes in Satanic rituals.
In July last year an American academic, to make a point about freedom of thought and religion, drove a nail through a Communion wafer and then threw it in a rubbish bin.
Paul Myers, from the University of Minnesota, said later: “I pierced it with a rusty nail. Then I simply threw it in the trash. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your Lord.”
Such sins, which can only be dealt with by the Pope, acting through the tribunal, bring automatic excommunication from the Church. If the Pope decides to grant absolution, the excommunication is lifted.
Blogging about the news yesterday, Myers asked, “But how can I be excommunicated from a church to which I’ve never belonged?”
7 Comments
Comment posted January 16, 2009 @ 8:47 pm
Again proving how silly P.Z. Myers is and how he distorts everything to being about him. In the first case the Church does not excommunicate non-Catholics. All the Apostolic Penitentiary and thus the Church is saying is that for sins that have ecclesial punishments, some of them are more serious and require the Pope to lift them.
Comment posted January 17, 2009 @ 1:59 am
Myers actions are obviously not worse than genocide. But they are pointless, infantile and counterproductive.
My views are vastly closer to Myers than the Pope’s, but my opinions about the existence of God are not advanced by disrespecting other opinions. No one can prove God’s existence. But neither I nor Myers nor anyone else can disprove it. We can only say it is more logical to not believe in God than to believe – a matter of probabilities not empirical proof.
To disrespect those who hold other opinions on this narrow subject that is beyond scientific proof is to be just like the religious bigots.
Comment posted January 17, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
He should have dipped it in a rusty nail instead: put ice in a lowball, one part scotch, one part Drambuie, add a couple of filberts.
mmmmmm sacrilicious.
Comment posted January 17, 2009 @ 8:41 pm
Nice to know that the Pontiff’s life is deemed more valuable than Jane/John Doe to the extent that one would have to seek extreme church approved absolution. I wouldn’t want to have to answer to God for that type of disrespect and arrogance. God Himself will need the Church’s permission to forgive sin. If the Nazis would’ve designed their regime after the Catholic Church’s absolute control and mind control model their power structure would never have been toppled.
Comment posted January 18, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
Wahhhh… Myers blah blah blah….
If you want to prosecute someone how about that Catholic Professor of the Inquisition at
St Thomas, Delahunty. Torture memos, also picked up money from the UofMN.
There is a guy that should be hung at Nuremberg. And a real religious guy too.
Comment posted January 19, 2009 @ 10:12 am
Whenever I hear about PZ Myers I’m reminded of that great two-part South Park involving Richard Dawkins. It includes this perfect line, which pretty much sums up my feelings about the New Atheists:
“Logic and reason aren’t enough: You also have to be a dick to everyone who doesn’t think like you.”
Comment posted January 19, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
South Park quote: “priceless”….
I’m a Xtn, but not Catholic, tho I’d call myself catholic and simply am turned off my all the metaphysical commitments associated with RCC orthodoxy. I prefer not-so-organized religion that does not privilege distinctions that emerged in large part out of the “ever-so-fallen” 30 years war in Europe.
dlw
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