Once a Lutheran altar boy, University of Minnesota biology professor Morris P.Z. Myers has fallen from grace — at least in the eyes of some Catholics and the conservative Catholic League. One of the more prominent atheist voices in America, Myers wrote a blog post on the furor sparked by a Florida college student who smuggled a communion wafer out of mass and, once found out, received threats of harm and death. Catholics believe the bread, once blessed by a priest, has been transformed into the substance of Christ’s body and blood. Myers doesn’t buy it. He wrote that if readers of his blog send him a consecrated host, "I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare."

I reached him this morning to discuss the controversy that has resulted in several thousand comments at his blog — some calling him a "Jewboy," others announcing his need for prayer, and still others calling for his death.

Minnesota Independent: The incident with college student Webster Cook comes as religious passions everywhere are incredibly inflamed –- Shiites and Sunnis, Evangelicals and atheists, etc. Does this say anything about the state of religion?

PZ Myers: I think this is a symptom of the weakness of the religious in this country right now. Religion is actually fading a little bit. It’s still strong,and it’s still out there and there’s still a vocal political realm, but I think people know that there are people actively challenging religion now.

I think there’s also a growing discontent with what the religious have done in politics. The Bush administration is a perfect example of political cronyism and political advocacy built largely on the support of the religious right, and look where it’s gotten us. People are disillusioned. So [religious people are] worried. I think they’ve got reason to be worried. We’re going to see an increasing weakness of the church. This is them lashing out. It’s a disparate ploy to be relevant and to be important again… They’re looking for somebody to take their ire out on.

MnIndy: I was raised Catholic, was an altar boy, and attended Catholic grade school and college. While I was taught to be reverent with Catholic symbols and artifacts, I also learned of a powerful god, totally unlike this fragile one that can be damaged by a non-believer’s mishandling of a communion wafer.

Myers: It’s actually kind of sad. I grew up in a church, although I’m, of course, no longer a member of a church, but it is kind of weird to see this going on right now. The messages I’ve been getting in my email have just been insane. People who say this cracker is literally and physically the body of their god and that I’m doing this great act of heresy and sacrilege and horror — even though I didn’t actually do anything to it — is disturbing. It’s like discovering there are witch doctors lurking in your community and they’ve been doing weird practices.

MnIndy: What about the stories of US military personnel urinating on and otherwise abusing copies of the Koran in Iraq? Were you outraged by that, or is that a different version of this for you?

Myers: There’s a subtle difference there — maybe an important difference. I don’t favor the idea of going to somebody’s home or to something they own and possess and consider very important, like a graveyard — going to a grave and desecrating that. That’s something completely different. Because what you’re doing is doing harm to something unique and something that is rightfully part of somebody else — it’s somebody else’s ownership. The cracker is completely different. This is something that’s freely handed out.

MnIndy: Do you see a parallel between this case and the furor in Denmark (and later the Islamic world at large) over cartoonists’ depictions of Mohammed? It seems unlikely that these Catholics would take kindly to being compared to Islamic extremists, but death threats over the fate of a host suggests it’s not an unfair characterization.

Myers: Of course! Both are demands that quirky sectarian peculiarities be given undue respect by those who don’t believe in them. Furthermore, the majority of the email I’m receiving is making it explicit: they are telling me that I should not abuse their sacred icon, but that I should instead go do something sacrilegious with the Koran.

MnIndy: William Donohue’s Catholic League really drove the anger over this. How do you see their role? Genuine protector of the faith? Or is this one of those red-meat issues that drives donations? Some other factor?

Myers: Bill Donohue’s salary. This is Donohue’s stock in trade: demagogic manufactured outrage to get the faithful to send him money to protect their religion from largely imaginary threats… threats that he conjures up.

Constantine’s Sword is a book (and now a documentary) written by James Carroll, a former Catholic priest. It’s a personal history of the unpleasant history of the church and anti-semitism, and shows that Catholicism has benefited from fueling an image of itself as always threatened by unbelievers — Jews, Muslims, Satanists, atheists — and that this reliance on hatred of the other has damaged the virtue of the faith. (Carroll is still a devout Catholic — he just deplores the distortion of a message of love into a message of fear and hate.) The idea that Jews, for instance, want to steal consecrated wafers as an element of evil Jewish rites has been circulated fairly often, as a preliminary rationalization for oppression.

Curiously, many (but still a minority) of the email messages I have received have ‘accused’ me of being Jewish, addressing me as "jew boy" or "liberal pinko jew."

MnIndy: Are you concerned for your safety?

Myers: Well, most of the ravers who threaten me with horrible fates are far away, hiding in the safety of their mothers’ bedrooms, hurling vituperation anonymously across the internet. These are largely frustrated losers who are venting. If (and I do not have reason to suspect anyone has gotten this demented) someone were serious about doing me harm, they wouldn’t be sending me lurid warnings.

But really, the majority of the angry emails threaten nothing but to assault me with prayer.

MnIndy: Has the outrcry over your your post given you second thoughts about getting a host and treating "it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web"?

Myers: The response has done nothing but confirm it: I have to do something. I’m not going to just let this disappear. It’s just so darned weird that they’re demanding that I offer this respect to a symbol that means nothing to me. Something will be done. It won’t be gross. It won’t be totally tasteless, but yeah, I’ll do something that shows this cracker has no power. This cracker is nothing.

Related: A woman whose work computer was apparently used to send a death threat to Myers has been fired;  her husband has confessed that he sent the mail.