Saturday, July 26, 2008

Holy War Heats up in Florida

A couple of weeks ago, I told you about Webster Cook, a Florida college student who went to Communion at a Catholic mass, but didn't eat the communion wafer; he stuck it in his pocket. He was later physically harassed and Catholic officials want to charge him with a hate crime.

Here's an update: Cook, who is a member of the student Senate, is being impeached. The vote was 35-2 in favor of impeachment after 15 minutes of discussion. This starts an official investigation about whether Cook violated Senate ethics rules, which is based on allegations that he represented himself as a student government official at the religious service when it happened.

If that's not bad enough, his friend Benjamin Collard, is in trouble too, just for being at the service with Cook.

Collard says that he was trying to look at his class schedule and found out that a hold had been put on his account, and he couldn't sign up for classes. When he went to find out what was wrong, he discovered that Catholic Campus Ministries had filed charges against him - the exact same charges as against Cook.

These are the charges filed against both young men:
1) misconduct
2) disruptive conduct
3) giving false identification

Collard says he never talked to anyone during the whole controversy. He didn't participate in the "wafer-napping", never lied about who he was, never talked to a university official.

If the charges stick to the two men, they can be expelled from the university.

Now, I wasn't there. I didn't witness the godnapping. I don't know if there was a big disruption or not. But come on. This modern-day witch hunt, a Christian jihad, against two college students? One just for being friends with the "criminal"?

I'm not saying Catholics shouldn't be offended. I understand their feelings towards their holy bread. But they're making themselves look like sadistic idiots. And it actually kind of scares me.




No comments: