The author confuses legitimate diversity within the Anglican communion with heresy and blasphemy. The issue is not diversity but rather whether the Anglican communion will sit still for a large group of heretical bishops,mostly from the US and Canada, trying to rewrite 2000 years of Christian doctrine and impose it on the rest of the Church. He is trying to make an apple into an orange, and is not able to do so.

I am afraid that whoever is writing these press releases for Catholic Information Service for Africa is either very misinformed, or deliberately dishonest in his description of the "recent campaign by an American biology professor against the Catholic Eucharist".

This whole incident he names began when a student at the University of Central Florida left a Catholic mass taking an unconsumed Communion wafer with him. To say the response of the Church and the faithful was extreme would be an understatement. Not only was the student assaulted by one of the church leaders as he was leaving, but he received death threats from other Catholics, and the president of the US "Catholic League" wrote to the University demanding that the student be expelled. After such a campaign of intimidation, the student returned the wafer to the church.

Enter Professor P.Z. Myers of the University of Minnesota. Professor Myers has a long history of being critical of religion, superstition, spirituality and pseudoscience - which he refers to as "fundamentally dishonest". After reading about the University of Central Florida incident, he declared that the reaction of the Church officials and the faithful was absurd, saying, "Crazy Christian fanatics right here in our own country have been threatening to kill a young man over a cracker. This is insane." He also vowed that he would happily desecrate one of their communion wafers if they really wanted something to complain about, since, as he put it, the wafer was just a "cracker" and no amount of ritual would ever change that. Just two days after referring to the communion wafer as a “cracker” Professor Myers had already received four death threats and 34 letters demanding he be sacked – and this was before he had actually done anything other than talk!

Two weeks later, Professor Myers followed through on his promise, and once again, the reaction was virulent, vocal and threats of violence were included. The president of the US "Catholic League" first asked the government of the state of Minnesota to take action against Professor Myers for committing a "hate crime", when that effort bore no fruit he launched a media campaign demanding that Myers be sacked from his university. Professor Myers has also received many death threats from members of the Catholic faithful. One notable example read: “well sir, you don't get to blaspheme and walk away from this. You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the children. Or you can get your brains beat in.”

It is correct that no actual highly placed official of the Catholic church made any of these demands, but then they hardly needed to, as they had many followers who were already doing it for them.

For the writer of press releases for the Catholic Information Service for Africa to describe these events saying: "In another historical period, one imagines some church officials and the faithful driven by 'holy' anger condemning the professor in the strongest terms possible, calling public prayers for his soul, organizing city and village demonstrations to baptize his effigy, or even demanding his sacking, arrest and prosecution.

"But the Catholic Church in the US was generally silent on Prof Myers." Is therefore both ridiculous, and completely untrue.

If the writer believes this is the model of behavior that good Catholics SHOULD follow, then I commend him and wish he would go to work convincing the Catholic faithful in the United States generally, and the president of the US "Catholic League" in particular. But he should not be telling his African readers things which are simply false.