Over at Pharngula, Crackergate promises to draw to a close very soon.  PZ has announced the ignomineous demise of the cracker.

I have to admit, I found his decision to go through with it distateful and unecessary.  After all, why should he feel pushed by the out-cry to go through with something that was so obviously just illustrative hyperbole to begin with?  Acquireing a host merely to desecrate it (apparently, it is desecration to merely aquire the Host for any other purpose than mashing it with your teeth, mixing it with you saliva, swallowing it, and turning it into poop) seemed unessesarily provocative to me.

But I learned something when I got to this comment:

I feel very sad and hurt to read this. Many of you obviously don't understand that to Catholics what you have done is worse than spitting on us, abusing us or violating us. We would rather you did that to us than see a host desecrated. It is not a symbol or a religious object it is the one we love more than our own mothers and fathers, more than our children.
To do this is worse for us in one sense than if you had raped and tortured our loved ones. We are called to forgive so we will but that doesn't take away from the sheer revulsion, hurt and pain that you have caused to every Catholic who has heard of this very sad act of hatred and bigotry.

Posted by: Aron | July 24, 2008 7:52 AM

And this leads us back to PZ's original point:  It is a piece of starchy material.  It is not a person, and it is not the moral equivilant of a person, and it sure as heck isn't the moral superior of a person.

I realize that this guy doesn't speak for all Catholics.  I know many sane Catholics.  I'm related to some of them, but it is clear that someone like Aron would view them as not REAL Catholics.

And if he holds reverance for a peice of bread over the lives and well-being of people he loves, or even his own life...then that could one day end up being a real problem...like it has in the past.

How many Catholics do you know who don't believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation?  I know a few who go to mass every Sunday who have confessed doubt even about the divinity of Jesus.  What about the use of birth control?  More than one or two Catholics I know use it.

Those people are not the people who worry me.  The people who worry me are the people like Aron, who would rather see their children raped than see the Host desecrated.  Is that a real position of the Catholic church?  I don't think so.  I certainly hope not.

I would like to think that is hyperbole, but it was less than a year ago that I sat in my diningroom and listened to a lady complain about how people were "going after" and "hurting" the Catholic church because of pedophile cases.

I've heard a lot on the internet where people say the Inquisitions were not that bad...I hope we never end up having a modern demonstration.