Posted on 09/10/2010 4:09:40 PM PDT by Colofornian
On the morning of Sept. 11, a small group of dedicated men launched a surprise attack that resulted in the vicious slaughter of men, women and children. The assailants were forced to act, they believed, because their religious community was under siege by the United States government.
They perpetrated their murders with the blessing of their leaders and in the name of God, although the religions highest authorities would immediately disavow themselves of any connection with the massacre. In its wake, most Americans claimed the faith itself was inherently violent and supported military action against the associates of those who perpetrated the massacre.
This scene played out nine years ago in New York City and Washington, D.C., with al-Qaidas terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But it also describes another Sept. 11 morning in 1857 when Mormon settlers in southern Utah, along with some Paiutes they had recruited, mercilessly killed more than 100 California-bound emigrants.
If history doesnt exactly repeat itself, it certainly has a profound sense of irony in placing two of the most horrific acts of religious violence in American history on the same day, nearly a century and a half apart.
For decades afterward, the Mountain Meadows Massacre was a flashpoint for opponents of Mormonism. Works of popular fiction depicted Mormons as bloodthirsty zealots whose primary form of religious devotion was murdering gentiles. Testimony in the 1879 Reynolds v. U.S. trial placed Mormons alongside other thugs who commit murder with impunity, on the ground that it was sanctioned and enjoined by their system of religious belief.
Some Southern mobs cited vengeance for the fallen emigrants as their rationale for vigilante violence against Mormon missionaries who were not even born at the time of the massacre.
The raw wounds of mass violence do not heal easily. It took four decades after this incident for the rest of America to drop its suspicions and grievances enough to pursue the path of accommodation.
Mormons then became one of the great success stories of the 20th century, trailing perhaps only Catholics and Jews as once-reviled religious minorities who earned a modicum of acceptance and achievement in American society. Enough skepticism remains on each side to preclude a full embrace, but Mormonism and America have at least become skilled, if wary, dancing partners.
What else do I want people to know about me? Let’s see, I go to Spain often and I’m a very conservative Catholic who is still hoping for the revival of Latin Mass here in St. Augustine (where it probably won’t happen because the bishop hates it).
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People who live in glass houses should not throw stones...
May I remind you of the Spanish Inquisition!
BTW What happen at MMM was not from the Church but a few members who amock took things upon themselves.
Using your template should I hold today Catholics to what happen in their history
I think there are some of the adapted Mormons who genuinely want to be Christians
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The LDS are Christians and don’t need you or any other permission when none of you have been annoited by the Lord Jesus Christ!
I didn't know that.
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There are all kinds of hearsays and web sites their are those who have not allowed their hearts to heal and those who walk with the Lord and their heart have healed.
Only the Lord today knows the details of what really happen on that shameful day and everything else is bias and speculation many continue to pick at the wounds are responsible for them not healing!
The real justic will come from the Lord and that is a promise all the rest of this retoric is fodder being used to stir up hate which is not of the Lord!
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