timeimmortal

For reasons that are unclear, many Protestants — and especially Evangelicals — find it important to argue against Marian theology, including her perpetual virginity and Assumption. Some argue that to elevate Mary in the way that Marian theology does “detracts from that simple faith and devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.” But this charge is absurd on its face; as noted, Mary always points us toward Jesus. Indeed, it is pointless to acknowledge the Blessed Mother without first noting her divine Son, the Logos and second person of the Holy Trinity.

I previously noted that, absent Mary, we would not have received Christ from God, and would not have had the Gospel to preach. This remains true. But only the most ignorant person would be unable to recognize that this same statement implies something far greater about Christ (even here, Mary points us to Christ). Mary is significant, above all other human beings, but she is significant because of Christ. She is the Mother of the Son because the Son was born of her, and she is the Mother of the Son by the power of the Son she bore.

Exactly what in such teaching is worth such vitriolic opposition, I am not sure, but it is perhaps one of the most curious examples (apart from the rejection of Eucharistic theology and the plain meaning of John 6) of anti-Biblical thinking in non-Catholic Christian theological thought.

We’ve looked, already, at Mary’s perpetual virginity. Now let’s look at her assumption, just briefly. One main objection, from Protestants and Evangelicals, to the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary is that it is not taught in Scripture. This is true.

I’ll say that again: it is true that the Assumption is not taught in Scripture; Mary appears for the final time in the first chapter of Acts, and nothing more in Scripture tells us what fate ultimately befell her. But that’s a blade that cuts both ways; Scripture does not profess to us that Mary was assumed, bodily, into Heaven, but neither does it tell us that she suffered and died a mortal death. Ultimately, whatever conclusion we draw about Mary is an act of faith, which we must justify with other (and then indirect) evidence.

So, we have to ask: is there indirect evidence in Scripture that points toward Mary’s assumption?

The answer: yes, and then quite a lot of it.

John Henry Cardinal Newman, even before his conversion from Anglicanism, noted that the holiness of Mary was implied from Scripture: “Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and Divine favour go together (and this we are expressly told), what must have been the transcendent purity of her, whom the Creator Spirit condescended to overshadow with His miraculous presence? What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and stature? This contemplation runs to a higher subject, did we dare follow it; for what, think you, was the sanctified state of that human nature, of which God formed His sinless Son; knowing as we do, ‘that which is born of the flesh is flesh’ (1 Jn 3:6), and that ‘none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?’ (Job 14:4).”

The Church, from a very early stage, has believed in the sinlessness of Mary. St. Athanasius, in the year 106, observed to the Virgin that “truly you are greater than any other greatness. For who is your equal in greatness, O dwelling place of God the Word? To whom among all creatures shall I compare you, O Virgin? You are greater than them all O Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold! You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which divinity resides.” St. Ephraem, in the year 201, made two telling observations. First, he noted the relationship between Mary and Eve, “two people without guilt, two simple people, were identical. Later, however, one became the cause of our death, the other the cause of our life.” He also noted, unto the Lord, that “thou and thy mother are the only ones who are totally beautiful in every respect; for in thee, O Lord, there is no spot, and in thy Mother no stain.”

Put more plainly: the belief in Mary’s sinlessness can be found in the teaching of the Church in every age, starting within its first century of existence.

Now, a common objection to this is to note that Mary, being human, would still have struggled with concupiscence, and would have needed Christ as her Lord and Saviour; thus, she must still have been a sinner. Catholics do not dispute Mary’s need for the Lord as the means of her salvation, for all people do indeed need the Lord as the means of salvation. But consider. If I fall into a pit, and am pulled out, I will thank my rescuer for saving me. But suppose I am caught at the last moment before I fall into the pit. I haven’t fallen in…but still, I have been saved, haven’t I?

In like manner, Mary’s sinlessness flows from the power of Christ, and because she was the Mother of the Son. For as Cardinal Newman pointed out, with reference to Job: none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean.

One Protestant objection, in part to Mary’s Assumption and in part to her sinless nature, is based on the greeting of the angel in Luke 1:28 — in which Mary is called favoured of God, or full of grace. “Bodily assumption is said to be the natural effect of being highly favoured or full of grace. However, the same word translated “full of grace” (Greek, charitoo) is applied to all believers in Ephesians 1:6. Yet, no-one suggests that every believer should be assumed bodily into heaven soon after death!”

This is quite correct: nobody suggests that every believer in Christ is assumed bodily into Heaven.

But then, there is a problem with the Protestant’s argument itself, and not with the Catholic belief. The variant of charitoo that appears in Luke 1:28 is kecharitomene, which means ‘endued with grace.’ In Ephesians 1:6, the variant of charitoo that appears is echaritosen, which concerns the reality of Christ’s grace being freely bestowed (one notes that in Greek, “thank you” is a permutation of echaritosen).

In other words, though the word ‘grace’ appears in both places, it is used in vastly different contexts; in Luke, it refers to an internal quality, while in Ephesians it refers to grace bestowed…and which believers must choose to accept or reject (so it cannot be referring to an internal quality as yet).

Now, Catholics like to point to Revelation 12, and to the woman clothed with the Sun, as evidence that confirms Mary’s bodily Assumption. Protestants rightly point out that this is somewhat incorrect: “[they] wrongly assume…that this ‘woman’ is Mary and ignore…the problems of such interpretation. For example, the woman of Revelation, ‘being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered’ (Revelation 12:2); whereas Catholics believe that Mary ‘gave birth to her Son without pain’ (Pope Alexander III).”

Jimmy Akin, however, notes that Catholic teaching (the opinions of lay Catholics nonwithstanding) does not specifically equate the woman in Revelation only with Mary.

Unfortunately, most of the debate over what the Woman represents is misdirected because it does not take into account the way that Revelation uses symbolism.

The vision contains “fusion imagery,” in which one symbol is composed of elements from several different things. For example, the four living creatures John sees around God’s throne (4:6–8) are a fusion of elements from the cherubim seen in Ezekiel (Ezek. 10:1–14) and the seraphim seen in Isaiah (Isa. 6:1–5).

…The Woman in Revelation 12 is part of the fusion imagery/polyvalent symbolism that is found in the book. She has four referents: Israel, the Church, Eve, and Mary.

She is Israel because she is associated with the sun, the moon, and twelve stars. These symbols are drawn from Genesis 37:9–11, in which the patriarch Joseph has a dream of the sun and moon (symbolizing his father and mother) and stars (representing his brothers), which bow down to him. Taken together, the sun, moon, and twelve stars symbolize the people of Israel.

The Woman is the Church because, as 12:17 tells us, “the rest of her offspring” are those who bear witness to Jesus, making them Christians.

The Woman is Eve because she is part of the three-way conflict also involving her Seed and the Dragon, who is identified with the ancient serpent (the one from Eden) in 20:2. This mirrors the conflict in Genesis 3:15 between Eve, the serpent, and her unborn seed — which in turn is a symbol of the conflict between Mary, Satan, and Jesus.

Finally, the Woman is Mary because she is the mother of Jesus, the child who will rule the nations with a rod of iron (19:11–16).

Because the Woman is a four-way symbol, different aspects of the narrative apply to different referents. Like Mary, she is pictured as being in heaven and she flies (mirroring Mary’s Assumption). Like the Church, she is persecuted by the Devil after the Ascension of Christ. Like Israel, she experiences great trauma as the Messiah is brought forth (figuratively) from the nation. And like Eve, it is her (distant) seed with which the serpent has his primary conflict.

Conversely, portions of the narrative do not apply to each referent. Mary did not experience literal pain when bringing forth the Messiah, but she suffered figuratively (the prophecy that a sword would pierce her heart at the Crucifixion). Eve did not ascend to heaven. And the Church did not bring forth the Messiah (rather, the Messiah brought forth his Church).

So let us pause to review what we have covered for a moment. Mary was assuredly the Mother of the Son, was assuredly a virgin until the end of her days, and was assuredly free from sin all the days of her life — all by the power of Christ. She was, in all these respects, unique among human beings, far more unique than even the apostle Paul. Shall we assume that God forgot His first and most willing servant?

Of course not; given what Christians believe about God, we cannot assume that. So what became of Mary, after she disappeared from the Biblical narrative?

Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong noted an interesting Biblical parallel, which is relevant here, in his book A Biblical Defense of Catholicism:

Lest one think that a bodily ascent to heaven (of a creature, as opposed to Jesus) is impossible and “biblically unthinkable,” Holy Scripture contains the examples of Enoch (Hebrews 11:5; cf. Genesis 5:24), Elijah (2 Kings 2:1,11), St. Paul’s being caught up to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2-4), possibly bodily, and events during the Second Coming (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17), believed by many evangelicals to constitute the “Rapture,” an additional return of Christ for believers only. All these occur by virtue of the power of God, not the intrinsic ability of the persons.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin flows of necessity from the Immaculate Conception and Mary’s actual sinlessness. Bodily death and decay are the result of sin and the Fall (Genesis 3:19, Psalm 16:10). Thus, the absence of actual and original sin “breaks the chain” and allows for instant bodily resurrection and also immortality, just as God intended for all human beings.

…Jesus’ Resurrection brings forth the possibility of universal resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:13,16), which is why He is called the “first fruits” (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). Mary’s Assumption is the “first fruits,” sign, and type of the general resurrection of all mankind, so that she represents the age to come, in which death and sin will be conquered once and for all (1 Corinthians 15:26). The Assumption is, therefore, directly the result of Christ’s own victory over sin and death. It, too, has a Christocentric meaning, in the same way as the Immaculate Conception and the designation Theotokos.

The Protestant objector might protest that “[Christ's] resurrection is the sure sign of Messiah’s triumph over the Devil. Together with all Christians, Mary would also benefit from Christ’s victory according to God’s plan of salvation at the “resurrection of life.” That is still a future event.” And Catholics would agree. Look again at what Armstrong had to say, above.

Putting Armstrong’s words more plainly, Mary — in the end of her days upon the Earth — served for us the same purpose that she served in giving her assent to being the mother of the Christ child; she is the foremost example of a Christian and disciple of Christ. She began that role with her unfailing devotion to the will of God; it is fitting that she should complete that role (in this world) by being our example of the fulfilled promise of Christ. In her sinless beauty, she was not subject to death and decay, as all the rest of us must endure, but was instead immediately glorified in the hereafter, caught up bodily in the glory and salvation of Christ.

It is true that Mary’s Assumption is a tradition that the Church inherited not from her first fathers, but from the Byzantines. It is true that those denounced as heretics, in the 4th and 5th centuries, were also the first to teach the Assumption of Mary (but it should be noted that while the Transitus was rejected as heretical, this does not imply that all the teachings within it were seen as heretical by the Church; a portion of them certainly were, but that is all we can be certain of).

But all of this doesn’t argue against the validity of the teaching. Nor does it in any way undermine the fact, as Alan Schreck noted, that “in the hundred years before Pope Pius’ declaration, the popes had received petitions from 113 cardinals, 250 bishops, 32,000 priests and religious brothers, 50,000 religious women, and 8 million lay people, all requesting that the Assumption be recognized officially as a Catholic teaching. Apparently, the pope discerned that the Holy Spirit was speaking through the people of God on this matter.”

As Mark Shea notes, the theological gap between Catholics and Protestants is, in one particular regard, quite wide. Whereas Protestant — especially evangelical — theology tends to focus on Scripture, verbal confession of faith, and the action of the Spirit, Catholic Theology tends to focus on contemplation, the human person, and (of course) Eucharist. To an evangelical, prayer is supposed to be a means of achieving something. To a Catholic, prayer is meant to draw us closer into unity with God.

And in a certain way, the difference between Catholics and Protestants can be abstracted in the difference between women and men. Evangelicalism and Protestantism0 tend to be a more masculine expression of faith, while Catholicism tends toward the feminine (no doubt inspired by the Biblical image of the Church as the bride of Christ). The misunderstandings we have of each other tend to follow the same lines.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that while Protestants and evangelicals tend to favour St. Paul as their example of witness, Catholics tend to favour Mary as the ideal Christian model (remember: Jesus can’t show us how to be a disciple of Jesus; only a follower of Jesus can do that). And of course, at the heart of the Marian example is her assent to God’s plan in her saying “let it be done to me” to the angel, when the angel announced that she was to bear the Son of God.

I think we can all accept it to be true that, were it not for Paul’s considerable efforts, the Gospels would never have reached the Gentiles. No earnest Christian could disagree with this statement. But far too many Christians disagree with another equally reasonable statement: that without Mary, Christ would not have been born; the Gospels, then would never even have come to Earth!

I’ve heard all manner of responses to this before, most of which tend to be variants on “oh, God would have just chosen someone else.” To such a speaker, Mary is merely a life-support system for her uterus, a hot-swappable piece of hardware that can be disposed of at a later date when no longer necessary.

It is odd to hear such a view espoused by supposedly “Biblical” Christians, because such a view plainly contradicts Scripture. We come back to Luke 1 again:

[26] In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,

[27] to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
[28] And he came to her and said, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”

Again, it serves to note that the term “o favoured one” is often translated as “full of grace”, and denotes that Mary herself was possessed of the sanctifying grace of the Lord at the outset. The specific term translated from Greek — kecharitomene — is the “passive participle of charitoo and means endowed with grace (charis), enriched with grace as in Ephesians. 1:6,…The Vulgate gratiae plena “is right, if it means ‘full of grace which thou hast received’; wrong, if it means ‘full of grace which thou hast to bestow’”. The translation of this word is undisputed across the broad spectrum of Christian denominations, and is a part of all common extant translations of the Bible.

In other words, we all agree on one thing, at least: Mary was indeed full of grace, and highly favoured of God. But the specific kind of grace she was endowed with was sanctifying grace, the salvific grace of God that is the basis of justification (c.f. Romans 5:20-21). We might thus construct a logical analysis thusly:

Premise: The Bible teaches that we are saved by the grace of God alone.
Premise: To be full of the grace of God is, thus, to be saved

Observation: Mary was full of the grace of God (c.f. Luke 1:28)

Conclusion: Mary, being full of grace (premise #1) is thus in a state of salvific sanctification (premise #2).

What does this mean? Well, for starters, it speaks to the uniqueness of Mary in God’s plan, and why no other woman would do. Mary was appointed, by God, for the task of bearing the Son. She was preserved from all sin by the sanctifying grace of God. And yet she was not an automoton; to the last moment, God left the decision as to whether or not she would bear the son in Mary’s hands; the angel appeared to announce the news to her, yes, but also to receive her consent (Luke 1:38).

And absent the consent of Mary, absent her saying “behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” we don’t have Christ. Not in the flesh, at any rate. We do have the Logos, the Word, the second person of the Holy Trinity. But we don’t have Jesus, the man who lived and who died, and who rose again to fulfill the Scriptures and bring salvation to all the nations.

Would God have simply chosen another, had Mary not given her assent? Is that to say, then, that another young, virginal woman existed who was already full of the sanctifying grace of the Lord? No, the very suggestion is absurd on its face, and the angel’s greeting makes it very clear that Mary has been chosen and called by name. Moreover, in the Magnificat (the name given to Mary’s testimony to Elizabeth, later in Luke 1), Mary confesses:

[46] And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,
[47] and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
[48] for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;
[49] for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.

The Spirit desired us to know that Mary is blessed of God, and (moreover) that Mary is to be seen as, and called, “blessed” by every Christian. This is no interchangeable uterus-support system we are talking about here: this is a unique woman, solely chosen of God to give birth to the Saviour. Had she refused, there was no other.

Mary’s “yes” to God was the first participation of a human being in the salvific plan of God, and was the first step by which our salvation was secured. She was the Mother of the Son. Mary, alone amongst all women, gave us Jesus, and only Mary, alone amongst all women, could have given us Jesus.

Had she refused the angel, we would likely all still be living under the Old Covenant. Food for thought.

Often, when raising opposition to the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, Christians will insist that we take Scripture at its plain meaning, that we pay attention to the “clear and unambiguous teaching of God’s Word.” The latter sentiment is a good one; the former is not.

How should we approach Scripture, hermeneutically speaking? This could make for a lengthy topic in and of itself, I suppose, and then one I don’t have much time to get into in detail. Most anti-Marian Christians that I have encountered tend to suggest that we employ a firmly literal hermeneutic when interpreting Scripture, and that (as noted above) we take what is written in the Bible at its plain meaning.

The problem with insisting on the use of literal hermeneutics, and with insisting that Scripture be taken at its “plain meaning”, is that nobody really does that with any kind of consistency. Let me put that more plainly: no Christian ever takes Scripture at its plain meaning at every opportunity — indeed, many of us are often guilty of a certain hypocrisy when we insist upon just such an approach. More often than not, what we really mean when we insist on taking things at their plain meaning is: “let us use my interpretation of Scripture; let us take it at what I say its meaning is.”

That’s a rather harsh thing to say, I admit, but let’s consider a few examples. There is not a perfect 1:1 correlation between anti-Marianism and a rejection of e.g. Eucharistic doctrine, but most of the Christians I’ve met who denounce the perpetual virginity of Mary as a flawed Catholic teaching tend to likewise denounce the Eucharist — the real, literal presence of Christ in the bread and wine — as false. And yet, if we take John 6 at its plain meaning, we should have no other choice but to assume that Christ intended for us to receive that which was literally his flesh and blood in our repetition of the Last Supper.

[53] So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you;
[54] he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
[55] For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
[56] He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

There’s really no two ways about that: if our hermeneutic is to always take Scripture at its most obvious meaning, on a passage-by-passage basis, then we should all be Eucharistic Christians. That we are not all Eucharistic Christians means that we do not always take Scripture at its plain meaning; we only do so when it is convenient to the point we are making.

But let’s take a few more generalized examples, to better illustrate the point. Consider Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:

[27]“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’

[28] But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
[29] If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into Hell.
[30] And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Taking this passage at its plain meaning, it would be very easy for Christians to justify, say, plucking out the eye of a person caught reading Playboy magazine. Likewise, it would be very easy for Christians to justify lopping off the hands of thieves. And yet, no legal system which as a Judeo-Christian basis to it issues such punishments; moreover, many Christians rightly denounce Islamic countries which do effect such disfiguring punishments upon convicted criminals. Here again, then, we see that we do not always take Scripture at its plain meaning; we only do so out of convenience, when it suits our point to do so.

Similarly, rare indeed is the Christian who takes the Book of Revelation at its plain meaning. The last book of the Bible is full of fantastic imagery and whimsical creatures; it simply cannot be taken at any kind of plain meaning, but is instead widely understood to be a profound metaphor, both for things to come and for things that have already transpired (Revelation is not just an eschatological prophecy; there is strong evidence to suggest that it was also intended as a message of hope to the persecuted churches of the day, using its amazing imagery to describe events happening under the reign of Nero).

In like manner, rare is the Christian who takes James 2:20-24 at its plain meaning — to do so would be to advocate for works-based salvation, which is of course incorrect. Similarly, when Christians look at the Song of Songs, we do not take it at its plain meaning, at least not directly. That book of the Bible mentions God very rarely (you can easily count the instances of His mention in it on one hand, and then probably without using all five digits), and at its most basic meaning is nothing more than page after page of erotic love poetry, a back-and-forth dialogue between two lovers. The most plain meaning at which Christians take that book’s contents is as a powerful image of the love that should bless the marital union of man and woman; more often, however, the Song of Songs is understood as a metaphorical image of the intensity of God’s love for humanity, which Paul tells us is imaged in the marital union (c.f. Ephesians 5:21-33).

To put it plainly, then, and succinctly: no Christian takes Scripture at its plain meaning at every opportunity — were we all to do so, we would all be Eucharistic in our faith practice, and we would lop the hands off of convicted thieves. Taking the plain meaning of what is written in Scripture can be an important hermeneutical step, to be sure, but it is not a valid hermeneutic on its own. Indeed, Paul confirms this when he instructs us to hold to the traditions by which we were taught (2 Thes 2:15), and to trust in the Church — the pillar and bulwark of truth (1 Timothy 3:15) — to reveal the manifold wisdom of God (Ephesians 3:10) according to those traditions.

This, then, begins to point us in new direction by which we should attempt to understand Scripture and its teachings, and it is this direction which I propose to use in the analysis that follows: let us take Scripture at its intended meaning.

Of course, this is a difficult proposition. Living as we do nearly 2,000 years after the authors of the New Testament, and many additional centuries after the authors of the Old Testament, it is impossible for us to fully know the minds, or the intent, of those who wrote the various books of the Bible. We can only see in a mirror dimly, and can know only in part.

But we are not totally blind, either. The Spirit wove its breath and intent through the whole of Scripture (c.f. 2 Timothy 3:16-17), and one truth cannot contradict another. Therefore, it must be the case that there exists a coherency between the teaching of any one particular part of Scripture and the whole of Scripture.

Jesus actually gives us an example of this principle in action, when he met Cleopas and the other disciple on the road to Emmaus (c.f. Luke 24:13-31). He opened the Scriptures to the two men and, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. He didn’t just enumerate His own teachings, or his own acts, but tied all of those things into the broader picture of history and prophecy, demonstrating the consistency of the whole of Scripture as it pertained to His own life, death, and resurrection.

That’s a lesson for us, in our own attempts to make sense of Scripture and its teachings; it is the model for our own hermeneutics. We should take care to consider each passage and teaching in Scripture in the context of the whole of the Bible. This helps us form an understanding not only of the intent of the authors of any particular part of Scripture (who would, of course, have been mindful of other, pre-existing written texts that eventually became the books of the Bible), but of the intent of the Spirit when and as it inspired them.

So, as we turn now to the formal matter of Mary’s perpetual virginity, let us attempt to take Scripture not at its most plain meaning, but at its intended meaning. To do that, we must first journey into the Old Testament, to help us understand a few things about Judaism, the law of Moses, sex and marriage within that paradigm, and celibacy.

Let’s begin with the Book of Leviticus.

So the anti-Catholic bigot posted a picture of his work of desecration of the Eucharist…and, while certainly offensive (one never enjoys seeing Christ mocked), it was also rather bland an unoriginal.

I mean, c’mon, Prof Myers…driving a rusty nail through the Eucharist? Lame…the Romans had the same idea 2,000 years ago. Really, if he wanted to be offensive about it, why didn’t he just do a time-lapse series of photos of his consumption of what he so derisively calls a “cracker” — that would have actually been a substantially worse desecration, theologically speaking. But he didn’t even have the smarts — or perhaps the courage — to go to those lengths.

(To tell the truth, I was honestly expecting something scatological when he claimed that he’d carried out his threat. Or a used condom.)

And then there was Myers’ suggestion, in the same blog post, that nothing should be held sacred, and that everything would be questioned. I agree with the second part — yes, question everything. But remember, too, that ours is a rational universe that often rewards inquiry with answer…and remember, then, that sometimes the answers we get in reply to our questions suggest that we should hold some things as being sacred.

Jimmy Akin feels that Myers should be fired, and I find that I more or less agree. Not because I’m particularly interested in silencing Prof Myers — his freedom of expression is important to me — but because this was not just an act of freedom of expression. It was a mixture of incitement and something far, far worse.

P. Z. Myers has demonstrated that he will go out of his way to offend the sensibilities of anybody who holds anything sacred, to treat whatever they hold sacred with public contempt. The problem thus is not limited to Catholics and Muslims. Since, in Myers own words, “Nothing must be held sacred,” and since he is willing to desecrate anything that others do hold sacred, the university must conclude that Myers is willing not only to outrage Catholic and Muslim students, parents, alumni, and citizens but members of any other group as well.

Myers is thus incapable of effectively carrying out his mission as an educator and his position must be terminated.

He also is in violation of the University of Minnesota Code of Conduct, which holds that faculty members “must be committed to the highest ethical standards of conduct” (II:2) and that “Ethical conduct is a fundamental expectation for every community member. In practicing and modeling ethical conduct, community members are expected to: act according to the highest ethical and professional standards of conduct [and] be personally accountable for individual actions” (III:1).

It also stresses that faculty members must “Be Fair and Respectful to Others. The University is committed to tolerance, diversity, and respect for differences. When dealing with others, community members are expected to: be respectful, fair, and civil . . . avoid all forms of harassment . . . [and] threats . . . [and] promote conflict resolution.”

P. Z. Myers has done none of these things. He is in fundamental breach of the University of Minnesota’s Code of Conduct and must be discharged.

To voice your opinion on this subject, contact the offices of the president and the chancellor:

President Robert H. Bruininks
202 Morrill Hall
100 Church Street S.E.
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Via phone: 612-626-1616
Via fax: 612-625-3875
Via e-mail: upres@umn.edu

Chancellor Jacqueline Johnson
309 Behmler Hall
600 East 4th Street
Morris, MN 56267

320-589-6020
E-mail: grussing@morris.umn.edu

Just to briefly illustrate: using Myers’ logic, I’d be perfectly justified in digging up the grave of one of his relatives and doing unspeakable things to what’s left of the body — being decayed meat, its not like it’s sacred or anything. It’s fine to hold that theory and belief in the abstract, but to act on it crosses a very definite line, and Myers has shown himself to be a liability to his employer because he has done as much.

From P. Z. Myers to Richard Dawkins, one struggles to find an iconoclast of atheism who is willing to actually stick his neck out and display a little courage.

In the case of P. Z. Myers, well…it’s been two weeks, and he still hasn’t made good on his threat to desecrate a Eucharistic host. And he sounded so defiant, so confident, earlier this month!

In the case of Richard Dawkins, well…he just doesn’t have the stones to debate an intellectual equal. Oh, he’s fine against two-bit televangelists. But he seems to be attempting to do everything in his power to avoid having to go up one-on-one against the likes of .

These are good events to see transpire; they give hope. After all, many people have wedded their own philosophical views to the tripe that the likes of Dawkins, Myers, Christopher Hitchens, and other “New Atheists” churn out; that such tripe can be shown up for what it is so easily, and that its proponents can be shown up as cowards so consistently, suggests that in the long run, this new atheism won’t last.

In that, it is rather like most other heresies the Church has had to endure.