Eucharist Desecration

Freedom At Work:

Cassandra is doing ethics today. I love ethics -- it is one of the most interesting branches of philosophy. Studying it, though, does require that you spend a few hours, or years, challenging things that might otherwise be bedrock principles of your life:

Well, in fairness, if you put people into an ethics class, you are asking them to try using their minds to challenge ethical teachings. The concept is to reaffirm ethics by teaching them not just what is wrong, but why it is wrong.

That means they have to pose challenges to the principles. You're supposed to try to see if there are ways around the principle at work: then, if there aren't, you've found something solid.

A lot of students grasp that they're supposed to try to challenge the principles -- that's the point of the class -- but lack the background or understanding to pose a real challenge. They end up sounding like idiots, but they really are doing what students are supposed to do.

This is the work of philosophy, though, which can lead you to refine what you had thought was a precisely formulated ethical principle.

Still, as the discussion shows, the momentary idiocy kept in the class can lead to a better, truer understanding of ethics to guide you through the rest of your life. That's the whole point of teaching the class.

If a student of ethics says something foolish, then, cut him some slack. If a professor of ethics says something horrible in class, he is probably trying to challenge the students in the other direction -- to challenge the principles they hold true, to force them to find a way to defend them. That, also, leads to a deeper understanding of the principles.

A professor of biology will have a harder time justifying himself.

Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”:

“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web.”

I gather from his reply (at the link) that he considers himself a sort of counter-Crusader, boldly standing against religion in the... well, against religion. He objects to Catholics trying to get him fired for using a University-owned computer and server to try and organize an attack on their faith. (Actually, being only an associate professor, he's probably in some real danger of getting fired over the matter.)

So, let's do ethics here. What is the ethical principle the professor is using to justify his behavior? Can it, in fact, be justified? Are the Catholics wrong to respond as they are doing, by trying to get him fired for this behavior? If so, why? If not, why not?

UPDATE: There appears to be some confusion about the server's ownership: I'm now seeing reports that actually it's a private server, to which the University's webpages simply link. Does that change the moral issues at work? Is it wrong to try to fire the man his private conduct? Is the fact that the University links to the blog (assuming it proves out that it is privately owned) important, or irrelevant?