Posted on 12/06/2006 10:35:42 AM PST by presidio9
BEAVER COUNTY, Pa. -- New Brighton police are charging teenagers with vandalism at a Beaver County church after authorities said the teens took a pipe and hit the head off the Virgin Mary statue at the Holy Family Church on Thanksgiving.
Police said the teens admitted they were planning on burning the statue with gasoline but were scared off when neighbors saw them.
All are facing numerous charges.
If they were Muslime, they likely wouldn't be charged, beheading is part of their religion, and we wouldn't want to interfere with their free expression.
sad but twistedly true
If this were a mosque or a Temple the FBI would be investigating it as a 'hate crime'. As it is, they consider the beheading of a statue of Our Lord's Blessed Mother to be mere 'vandalism'. Crimes against Christians aren't fueled by hate, our anti-Christian government seems to be saying. Even though the criminals were planning to burn the statue, on Church property, after beheading it, it's just petty vandalism.
re: your tagline, LOL, great idea.
re: your Freepname, Grob, or ãðîá, when spelled in Russian, means a coffin.
FMCDH(BITS)
We should not condemn them just because they have become symbols of where America in going.
They were stupid kids. You see otherwise because when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Not a chance, the Judge will not want to "ruin their whole life". Personally I would give them 10 years if their parents buy a brand new statue, and 20 years if they dont.
Knocking the head off a statue as an idiotic spur of the moment thing is one matter - planning to return and immolate the statue is really bizarre.
It’s an odious crime, and if appropriate should be prosecuted as a hate crime. Most hate crimes btw are committed by stupid kids with too much time on their hands and surly attitudes. Find them (which shouldn’t bee too hard), arrest them, and make them pay for the damages picking up litter by the side of the rode, at 25 cents / hour. That’ll learn ‘em.
LOL! Yeah, hell, let's just make it legal. Then we'll make defending one's property with violence illegal.
But here in the USA, teens are free to deface sacred things and burn our flag and say the foulest slanders. They will probably get probation and a fine, instead of having their heads chopped off. Is this a great country or what?
An Eye for an eye?
LOL!
Good thing I'm an American and my language is English!
But kidding aside, the Grob109B Motorglider is no coffin - unless I screw up.
I could be wrong and I’m no shrink, but in my experience kids who do this are angry at the world and want to hurt as many people as they can. Defacing someone’s religious icon is a pretty good way to do just that – certainly got a rise outta you. Since it was a group, I’d guess that one of the kids was the ring leader and the others followed along because of peer pressure. I’d bet money that at least one of the kids has some relation with the church – perhaps a member or a student at a nearby Catholic school.
That doesn’t lessen the severity of the crime. Those kids need to be taught a lesson and that lesson should involve a great deal of pain. A couple hundred hours working alongside the road in orange pajamas outta do the trick.
What caught my attention was that you immediately assumed it was the work of religious extremists. Why would you do that? Surely you’ve read dozens of similar stories over the years. Ask yourself what sort of person has usually been responsible?
And if it’s a hate crime, by all means prosecute it as such.
I got that factoid when I checked wiki to find out WITH a Grob was. I figured it was something with wings, but I wanted to know.
Of late, ideological extremists. Like the Muslim who defaced a church of southern CA a couple of years back. Or the Jamaican Protestant who vandalized a series of churches in Brooklyn a couple of years ago. Or the Protestants who defaced a church in AL last year. Or the racist Satanists who destroyed my parish's statue of the Virgin a year and a half ago.
The ones at my parish were teenagers, but they were also members of a neo-Nazi group who targeted the church in part because they hated Christianity as a "Jew-based" relgion and because they also hated Mexicans who tend to be Catholic.
Again, returning to the scene in order to try and torch the remains of the statue you desecrated represents pretty serious animus.
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