Bishop Philip Boyce accused of "incitement to hatred" for preaching against a Godless culture

Donegal Daily is reporting that, "The Catholic Bishop of Raphoe Dr Philip Boyce is being investigated by the Director of Public Prosecutions following a formal complaint that a sermon in Knock amounted to 'incitement to hatred', it was revealed today that Gardai have confirmed to former Fine Gael election candidate John Colgan that they have prepared and forwarded a file to the DPP after he made allegations that the address by Dr Boyce was in breach of the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989.

The homily, entitled: "To Trust in God" was delivered to worshippers during a Novena in Knock last August where the Bishop referred to the church being under attack by a 'Godless culture.'

Kildare man Mr Colgan, a humanist, made a formal complaint over two passages in the Donegal bishop's sermon.

Dr Boyce had referred to the church being "attacked from outside by the arrows of a secular and godless culture".

A second passage, which was included in the complaint, stated: "For the distinguishing mark of Christian believers is the fact they have a future; it is not that they know all the details that await them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness."

Today Mr Colgan told a newspaper: "I believe statements of this kind are an incitement to hatred of dissidents, outsiders, secularists, within the meaning of the [Incitement to Hatred] Act, who are perfectly good citizens within the meaning of the civil law.

"The statements exemplify the chronic antipathy towards secularists, humanists etc, which has manifested itself in the ostracising of otherwise perfectly good Irish citizens, who do not share the aims of the Vatican's Irish Mission Church."

How about statements such as this one, delivered by the website Atheist Ireland and written by an anti-Catholic bigot who refers to himself/herself as "Nozzferrahhtoo" - a play on the name Nosferatu:

I have long heard claims being made, specifically in the Catholic faith, that during certain ceremonies, when certain propitiations are made, that normal Cracker Bread is changed “literally” into the body of a long dead Jewish Human Male who displayed later Zombie tendencies to refuse to stay in the grave.


There are those of course that claim that the transformation is symbolic not literal, which I have not concerned myself with here as they are essentially saying nothing. I limit my inquiry only to those who claim a literal transformation.

I decide some time ago therefore to investigate over a 2 year period these claims. Since the results of this have been sitting on a shelf for some time I thought it useful to disseminate a short summary of my tests and summary of my results to the internet. The hope is that further testing can be suggested that I might have missed and which I can now take up the mantel again and continue to engage in.

Experimental setup:

As a setup I obtained “normal” and “consecrated” hosts in sufficient numbers and continued to do so over the 2 year period to make sure that I was working with both “fresh” and “dormant” samples. Both are surprisingly easy to obtain as those that have them seem keen to be rid of them."

What else is this but blasphemy in the name of inciting hatred and ridicule against the Catholic Faith?  "Nozzferrahhtoo" the anti-Catholic bigot continues:

"As the transformation was meant to be into something resembling human flesh I, where possible, also used volunteer skin samples in my tests.

Blind experimentation:

To remove and risk of bias in the experiments I performed ALL experiments in the following fashion. I used 4 cracker samples in all cases.

Sample A: Chosen randomly by me from the “normal” pile.

Sample B: Chosen randomly by me from the “consecrated” pile.

Sample C: Chosen randomly by a third party from either pile without informing me which it was from.

Sample D: Chosen randomly by a third party from the other pile without informing me which it was from.

Sample E: Collection of random skin samples from human volunteers, myself included.

The order of the samples was then hidden and mixed from me by another separate party so that until the results were in I would not know if the results connected to samples A, B, C or D.


Sample summary of Experiments performed:

The samples were then subjected to many tests of which this is a random but not exhaustive sample list:

1 ) Burning tests, testing energy released in burning, burning time, change in mass of sample between before and after burning, color of flame (light wavelengths measured).

2 ) Chemical testing: Disolving in various chemicals and measuring energy releases, mass changes, chemical composition of diluted samples.

3 ) Degradation testing: Observing the differences in samples left to their own devices to measure differences in chemical breakdown due to food “going off” etc.

4 ) Luck testing: Engaged in various tests of luck in the presence of, or following the consumption of Samples from each group. Dice Games. Lottery Ticket use. Guessing Games and much more.

5 ) Emotional testing: Gauged personal subjective impression of mood changes in a group of volunteer subjects in the presence of, or following the consumption of, Samples from each group over 24 hour periods.

6 ) Priest testing: Proffered Samples to a selection of priests who were unable to identify which crackers were “normal” and which were “consecrated”.

7 ) Float testing: Tested the floating properties of each Sample.

8 ) Mass testing: Tested for differences in mass, density and other physical properties between samples, including aerodynamic abilities and resistance to physical stress such as piercing with nails (rusty and normal), tearing, toasting, hammering, bending, stamping and more. It has been suggested to me independently a number of times… seriously by those of a theistical bent, and jokingly by those who are not… that I rename this section the “Torture Testing”.

Summary of Results:

There was in ALL tests absolutely NO difference between the samples at any stage except for minute expected differences in mass between all samples (even internally among each sample group) which are within expected tolerances for normal human food manufacturing variances.

There was in ALL tests NO significant overlap of comparative results between any crackers and any human skin samples.

Conclusion:

There is no basis at this time apparent to support any claims that there is any form of “literal” transformation in the “consecrated” samples." (See full post here).

An atheistic website which ridicules Catholic teaching, referring to the Holy Eucharist as "magic crackers" and by extension ridiculing the faith of those who believe in the Real Presence, is this not an "incitement to hatred"?
Is this not an example of the Church being "attacked from outside by the arrows of a secular and godless culture"?  Are not atheists "godless"?  And is this not an attack?  And there are many more examples of this sort of anti-Catholic hatred.

Mr. Colgan's complaint is without merit.  And Bishop Boyce's observations are, sadly, entirely true.