See the guy getting shot in the top center? A distant uncle of mine. 
Posted on 12/19/2006 8:49:11 PM PST by lightman
'Not a pretty sight' A Virgin Mary statue was found hanging at Stewartstown Presbyterian Church. By BRENT BURKEY Daily Record/Sunday News Article Launched: 12/19/2006 06:04:14 AM
rd/Sunday News Article Launched: 12/19/2006 06:04:14 AM EST
Dec 19, 2006 — Lori Adams went to work early Monday morning and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
But someone else did and told the church secretary that a Virgin Mary lawn ornament was hanging by the neck in the parking lot of Stewartstown Presbyterian Church.
"It was not a pretty sight when I came into work this morning," said Adams, who added that vandalism had not struck the church in about a year. She called the display that was placed overnight Sunday into Monday "sick."
According to the church and local police, the nearly 2½-foot-tall Virgin Mary figurine was bound by the neck with a rope and tied to a light post hanging from the southeast corner of the church building on College Avenue in Stewartstown.
Someone must have climbed onto the church's roof to commit the crime that the Rev. Bob LaForce called "pretty sick."
A motive for the crime is unknown.
Stewartstown Police Chief George Cunningham said the department wants to talk with whoever might have had a lawn ornament depicting the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus stolen recently.
Any other help would also be appreciated, Cunningham said.
The hanging was the first case of vandalism at the church since LaForce became pastor less than a year ago.
Adams said a few months prior to his appointment, someone had bent handicapped parking signs and shot out a few windows.
"Blasphemous," LaForce said.
IF YOU HAVE INFORMATION
Stewartstown Police are asking anyone with information about a Virgin Mary lawn ornament that was stolen in the past few days or about the hanging of the ornament at Stewartstown Presbyterian Church Sunday into Monday to contact the department at 717-993-5308.
>>Merry Christmas right back at you!<<
(I just want you to know that I was really serious about the Merry Christmas)
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Go to what it says about FR.
As usual from you, half the story.
the Medal was struck because the Pope was told by the Medicis that the massacre they conducted was a valiant act of defense against a Huguenot attack.
The truth was not learned until months later.
As with most Protestant vs Catholic threads, this one has sunk to the usual depths.
Let us remember the real enemy.
The sad thing is it ISN'T a Protestant vs. Catholic except that some are bent on making it one.
Butler's Lives is a far more judicious work that stands up better to historical scrutiny. Butler also makes it clear in his text what can be known for sure and what is only said to have happened.
Of course, Catholics do not put Butler's work on the pedestal that radical Protestants put Foxe's on.
I don't regard Butler as the authoritative historical text.
And you think this is solely religious and not political at all.
And you think there is not two sides to the story?
There is a big picture in everything.
As for half truths, you are in apparent denial of depredations on the Catholic side during the 16th and 17th Centuries. OTOH, I do not deny the crimes committed by Protestants.
>>The birth of our Lord and Savior is certainly reason to celebrate!<<
Amen! and we are very blessed.
This is the time of year I get teary at the drop of a hat so I'll go now......
Many ambitious men in that era cloaked their personal quest for power under the guise of religion.
And you think there is not two sides to the story?
My previous posts have recognized that there were horrors committed on both the Catholic and the Protestant side. What I find appalling is how the Catholic partisans on this thread refuse to recognize or excuse the crimes of their side during the Reformation/Counter-Reformation era.
Sooner or later this retard will trespass on the wrong lawn in his quest for statues to steal, and he'll be praying to Mary for healing.
Bright boy climbed onto the roof for this one. Darwin will catch him, if noone else does.
And of course, the vast majority of those 4,000 were men of fighting age who died fighting other men, not "gruesome" massacres of "newborns". Plenty of Irish died at settler hands during the rising too.
When you turn people off their land by force, they will be resentful and they will fight you.
basically 4,000 killed during the two years of skirmishing before the Covenanter army initiated their organized slaughter of Irishmen on their own native soil was about the number you would expect from a medium-intensity armed uprising.
The colorful accounts of slaughtered newborns are products of a feverish imagination.
The typical rising scenario:
Several Irish farmers are working as tenants on farmland they used to own before the Crown dispossessed them at swordpoint and gave their land to a settler.
They were turned out of their homes into the elements and forced to find shelter in turf huts.
Then the rising began and those several farmers and their sons confronted the settler and his sons and servants and killed them and took the house back and turned the settler's family out into the fields.
That's life.
>>What I find appalling is how the Catholic partisans on this thread refuse to recognize or excuse the crimes of their side during the Reformation/Counter-Reformation era.<<
I would be willing to bet my oldest child that not a single person here has killed in the name of religion. Protestant or Catholic.
But some stupid person stole someone's property and defaced it. That is a sure bet.
Whether it's someone's statue of Mary, a Baby Jesus from a Nativity set, or a garden gnome, it's appalling.
We certainly did issue millions of medals for the victorious military campaign in Europe of which Dresden was a part and the victorious camopaign in the Pacific of which Hiroshima was a part.
And the Medicis informed the Pope that the Huguenots, in league with the Germans, were attempting to assassinate the King and install a Geneva-style regime that would have slaughtered and dispossessed the Catholic clergy of France. And that the heroic Medicis acted just in time to save France from this horror.
If a small band of outnumbered French patriots had actually defeated a foreign-financed army of mercenaries and traitors bent on regicide and domination it would certainly have been a medal-worthy event.
Of course, it was all lies.
Both Butler and Foxe draw upon the old Latin texts known as the Acta Sanctorum.
I read Latin and I've read Foxe and Butler and parts of the Acta and Butler's translation is far more accurate than Foxe's.
Butler's book is indeed polemical. He is highly selective and biased, but he doesn't make stuff up out of whole cloth to make his case.
And Catholics realize this and don't claim that Butler is telling the whole unvarnished story.
Catholics committed plenty of crimes in the Church's name during the Counterreformation.
There are enough real crimes without the need to make up baby massacres in Ireland or pretend that the Inquisition executed one hundred times as many people as it actually executed.
See the guy getting shot in the top center? A distant uncle of mine.
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