Just because I know how much you all love religion and how these kinds of threads earn me a bunch of SD friends.
Protesters decide to repay kindness and support with insult, sacrilege and desecration. Plaster old Catholic Christian church with slogans for a heathen religion, removes or deface depictions of virgin Mary and other Catholic images they find offensive, light open fires on floor, remove pulpit, bars Christians from entering, hold no-Christian prayer sessions. etc. If this is any indication of how they’ll respect Belgium, back to hell with them.
From the outer to the inner circle of this pit I condemn:
*) To the outer circle: the ungrateful idiots who so repay support and kindness with insult and vandalising. If you can’t even respect the places that give you refuge, back to the hellhole that spawned and obviously formed you.
*) For the middle circle: the naïve and foolish Cardinal Godfried Danneels who allows his church to be so used and abused. “VENGEANCE IS MINE”, sayeth the Lord. All I timidly ask for is that I get one small kick in old Godfried’s nuts beforehand.
*) The coldest place of this pit is reserved for those Belgian parishioners and Belgians in general, who silently allow and tacitly agree with this desecration of an old beautiful European Christian church. No castle is stronger than the men manning the walls, and if they can’t even be bothered to stand up for their inherited cultural heritage, then fuck them in the ass with a large print Koran including commentaries. They deserve all of their promised future slavery.
Got any links that aren’t to bloggers with an axe to grind? I assume this is somewhat linked to the Belgian asylum rule changes but I couldn’t be arsed wading through all the bile and rhetoric to find out.
Hmm. In those links I don’t see any damage being done to the church, apart from one vague allegation about a different church entirely, and a small fire being lit (perhaps for, umm, warmth?). Sure, if you’re taking a wide definition of desecration, you can include observations that “the altar has been moved. The statue of Our Lady has been covered by a cloth in such a way that she is mostly hidden from the eyes of the occupants.” But that’s not vandalism.
I like this page: “Muslim protest group in Brussels effectively preventing access of the Faithful to the Church of the Minimes, for all but the brave”. Walking past brown people counts as bravery?
I’m confused. I haven’t seen any coverage of this in the US, so all I have to go by are the sites you cite, but these don’t seem to corroborate your claims. I see banners put up, but no desecration of paintings or images. If these are Muslims worshipping in a Catholic Chapel, I wouldn’t be surprised if they covered up a statue of Mary. Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, I don’t see any fires kindled on floors. There may indeed be nefarious things going on, but I’ve seen more mayhem at a Newman Community doing than is shown in these pictures.
It’s illegal immigrants in Belgium demanding to be legalised, kinda like what you have in the US. I doubt you’ll find any images or descriptions of the trouble with desecration in the news, as it’s not the kind of thing they like to report. But you can look at the pictures from the links. They speak pretty much for themselves. Anyway it’s not like all news outlets don’t have an axe to grind.
It makes little reason for what reason the fires were lit, you don’t light up a bonfire inside a church. If you hang up banners for false prophets or heathen Gods inside the Church, it is desecration. If you turn a Christian church into a temple for false Gods, it’s sacrilege. If you are offended by essential Catholic imagery you are in the wrong place and ought to remove yourself from the church rather than demolishing the Catholic items or covering them up. I wasn’t there, you weren’t there, they were there and they reported the men lighting the fire were very aggressive and the men guarding the entrance looked forbidding. etc. Sure, it’s not as bad as tearing up old bibles and using them for toilet paper and defacing Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. But it needn’t be and if they can’t stand to be in the same room as the religion which fights their cause, they should get the hell out. But more seriously, no self-respecting priest should stand by silently while his church is converted into a prayer house for, what he considers, false Gods and false prophets.
Happens all the time in the States. I knew a Catholic Church that let itself be used by the local Mormons when their Church was damaged and they had noplace else to go. I’ve heard of other examples. And almost every college campus and hospital has an interfaith chapel used by all religions.
A lot of folks don’t think allowing someone with different beliefs to use their worship space as “desecration”.
If the people in charge of the church don’t mind, what’s the problem? As long as the changes can be put back easily.
It sounds to me like people of different religions working together, instead of fighting each other like we tend to hear more often. I thought this was good thing.
And the folks who did it could claim that it’s a church to false prophets and false/heathen gods with just as much plausibility. Your insults lack bite against those who don’t believe as you do.
You are aware, that it has been a tradition going WAY back to build Catholic churches on the former sacred sites of the various cultures that are embracing the Church, right? Example. My point being, that if it is felt that the church is somehow not pure anymore, there should be no problem re-dedicating it and cleansing it for it’s purpose, right? I mean, it has already happened so often in the past what with various places being pillaged, or torn down then rebuilt later.
Nothing personal, Rune, but Muslims are not worshiping a “heathen” god. They’ve got the same god that Christians and Jews worship.
I would have thought that in the 21st century we could at least pretend to be tolerant of folks who have different faiths than us. Maybe it’s a language barrier thing, but the use of ‘heathen’ seems very archaic, outdated, and insulting.
And, as long as the folks staying as guests in the churches aren’t doing any actual damage to the buildings (hanging banners and draping cloths over statues does not count), then they are not vandalizing the churches.
Of course it is. And Rune is right; he’s far more capable of determining what counts as “desecration” than a Cardinal. Because, you know, the fact that the episcopate has passed in an unbroken line from the Apostles doesn’t mean anything, and nor does any amount of theological training that the Cardinal might have.
Pride is a sin, you know, Rune. Be careful in placing yourself above your Church’s leaders. Apparently sinning can have adverse effects on your mortal soul.
Zabali’s link is interesting; similarly, many, many of Spain’s churches and cathedrals were once Mosques; in many of them, the Islamic architecture is still quite apparent.
In the United States, it’s very common for upstart Jewish congregations to hold their services in a Christian church, until they can build a synagogue of their own, especially in smaller towns where there might not be a Jewish community center or freestanding Hebrew academy that could house them. Same thing with new Protestant congregations; a new Lutheran congregation might hold their services at a Methodist church, for instance. Until now, though, I’ve never seen Catholic churches serving as temporary locations for the congregations of other faiths.
There’s reference to “prayer services” in those links, but again it’s a vague assertion. It could be nothing more than private prayer, in which case the church isn’t being used for ‘congregations’ in any sense.
If the symbols of the Catholic faith are THAT offensive to them, they shouldn’t be there in the first place. And remember that these people are not being persecuted by the secular authorities. Illegals in Belgium are seldom deported even when they’re violent criminals.
I used to think * The Camp of the Saints * was a wild rant by a right-wing loonie. Now with every passing week it’s looking more and more like a prophecy.
Or maybe they could, I dunno, cover them up. Assuming they got the permission of a higher-up in the Church. Like a Cardinal, maybe? Don’t they have some authority?
This pitting is so weak it’s just sad. If the Church doesn’t have a problem with it, then you self-righteous morons don’t have any business whining about it either. It’s disrespectful to the Catholic Church - you know, the ones who own the church in question - to suggest that they’re not capable of making their own decisions about the use of their property.
So much for the CHRISTIAN notion of loving thy neighbor, doing good works, offering kindness and charity, and all that stupid food and shelter to the needy crap.
What a bunch of bigoted, self important bullshit. Some of you people should feel ashamed of yourselves. Before you get on your high horse about “desecration” and invoking your own false notion of God, maybe you’d better sit down and READ the Bible you are thumping so vigorously. What would Jesus do? He’d open the church doors wide open for ANYONE in need.