And yet, somehow I'm relieved that it was just some jackass defacing the property rather than the city authorities knocking it down on their own accord.
That's not graffiti, just pure, vandalism. It offends me that someone would do that to a church and I'm not even Christian. Some people have no respect.
I agree with Douglas, im a catholic turned atheist, but like him i dont like people doing that kind of thing (vandalism) to any property especially places revered by many people such as churches, mosques etc. Its a clear show of disrespect.
Don’t judge until you know the true motive behind the vandalism? Pedophilia? Wife stealing? Stealing the life's savings of the elderly who are suffering from dementia? Religion is big business and is full of corrupt individuals, and the Catholic Church is responsible for some truly horrific crimes against humanity, but somehow its past, and current, history doesn’t register in most people’s minds.
I got to see it first hand when my uncle, a priest, worked as a counselor for married couples needing help. In the end, he broke up a solid couple with a nice family, helped drive their daughter insane, and was excommunicated when he married the woman. Not very Christian in my old book.
This vandalism could be the work of some jackass jerk, or it could be the work of someone who has truly suffered at the hands of religion and sees this as their only recourse in addressing the wrongs committed against them. At least no one was hurt and the building was not destroyed.
Possibly it was the work of someone with a serious personal beef against the Catholic Church. But given the nature of the vandalism -upside down cross and "anti-Christ"- it is much more likely the work of some deranged fundamentalist who has suckled at the teat of a variety of intolerant American Protestantism that for generations has preached that the Catholic Church is the hand-maiden of Satan. Ass fucked, former alter boy? Possibly. Tongue talking Pentecostal with a huge hate-on for the Pope? Much more likely.
I agree with Douglas. This is the work of some Protestant fundamentalist who thinks that the Pope is the Antichrist. I suspect that the perpetrator isn't Korean but American instead. The inverted cross, the use of English, the correct spelling . . . all point to a native speaker of English working from within the culture.
Whatever motive or suffering the person has or incurred prompting him/her to make those vandals, it is not justified. One's personal suffering does not give him/her the right to offend a group of people (that has nothing to do with his/her problems)as represented by this Church. This is vandalism, not a protest. Any act of vandalism whether its intended to attack the government or the church is i supposed a no-no.
Examples you cited are already common and there are no more surprises about that. The Catholic/Christian Church is corrupt, priests as sexual offenders etc.
People who hates the church gains my respect for standing up against what most people believe to be true (as long as their reasons are valid), but resorting to this kind of tactic or justifying a suffering with this action is moronic for me.
I agree with Horace Jeffery Hodges that a fundamentalist is the most likely culprit, someone fueled by beliefs like this.
But as a couple people mentioned on my site, this could possibly be the work of "bored teens," or someone in a death metal band. Extremely bad taste, even if done for such a relatively innocuous reason.
“Any act of vandalism whether its intended to attack the government or the church is i supposed a no-no.”
Without the colonies use of guerilla tactics in its revolution against the ‘government’ there’d be not United States of America right now. I also believe the king of England revolted against the church at one point. How’d that turn out for the Catholic Church in England?
Right now, many of my relatives in Mexico are still rebelling against the land grabbing and fortune stealing church by taking back their indigenous (nonbiblical) names. It’s their own form of protest against hundreds of years of oppression and death in el nombre de Jesus y Maria.
We are all guessing. Your guess is as good as mine. Is this vandalism? YES, if i said its not a protest, because thats how i conceived it.
My point is IRREGARDLESS of motive, this is damage to property and should not be tolerated. For arguments sake, that the person who did was sexually assaulted by the parish priest, or hates the Pope so much in the same magnitude as i do, then does it make the action VALID???
"Without the colonies use of guerilla tactics in its revolution against the ‘government’ there’d be not United States of America right now. I also believe the king of England revolted against the church at one point. How’d that turn out for the Catholic Church in England?"
-- are you serious? please be rational with your comparison. And besides the fact that it was used as a tactic (although your way way of using proportion is way beyond)as mentioned in history, still it doesnt make the action valid. The case of King Henry VIII is not case of revolt as exemplified by this action.
with regards to the case of USA becoming a free nation from the UK using guerilla tactics, does it make sense to compare it with vandalism in the same scale as in this situation?.. did they do it in such a way like posting "ANTI-ENGLAND, ANTI KING GEORGE III" all over Government buildings and eventually was granted freedom or a positive result relevant to their cause..?
""many of my relatives in Mexico are still rebelling against the land grabbing and fortune stealing church by taking back their indigenous (nonbiblical) names. It’s their own form of protest against hundreds of years of oppression and death in el nombre de Jesus y Maria.""
-- Are they causing damage to property?? I hope you get the point
Juan de Daejeon wrote: Right now, many of my relatives in Mexico are still rebelling against the land grabbing and fortune stealing church
Please enlighten me about Mexican history. After the revolutionary governments practically stripped away all the property of the Church (and for all practical purposes criminalized Catholicism), when did the Church grab the land back and steal the fortunes back?
by taking back their indigenous (nonbiblical) names.
Is John indigenous or is it de Daejeon?
It’s their own form of protest against hundreds of years of oppression and death in el nombre de Jesus y Maria.
Hundreds of years minus a hundred years or so.
But I think you're right. The godless of Mexico would run the country so much better. You might get your wish since, sadly, our southern neighbor is teetering toward becoming a narco-state.
The indigenous would be the Mayan and Aztec survivors of the “white” man—the Spaniards who brought their church along for the ride of uprooting the locals and establishing New Spain while wiping out the Aztec empire.
“by taking back their indigenous (nonbiblical) names.” Yes, they are taking back their Aztec and Mayan names, not the nonsense forced on them by the church were most are named either Jesus, Maria, or Guadalupe (as in Virgin of).
And, they are far from godless as both religions have numerous gods; however, according to the Mayan gods, the world is about to come to an abrupt end on 2012.
And the only reason Mexico is in the sad drug-induced state it is in is because of the its drug dependent neighbor to the north.
As the sangre de Mexico doesn’t run through my veins, I’m sticking with Juan de Daejeon por ahora as that is where I’m currently located on this orb I call home.
True that the conquistadores were responsible for much evil, but let us not forget that the reason their conquest was so swift and total was that the civilization they overthrew practiced ritual mass murder. Non-Aztecs as well as the Aztec common people were glad to see the bloofthrirsty tyrants overthrown.
And let us also not forget that the Church ameliorated much of the abuses (and even suffered for it as did the Jesuits in the Guarani Republic). In fact, one of the ironies of history is that from the Conquest and its abuses the concept of universal human rights was articulated for the firt time in human history.
Dr. Thomas E. Woods, in How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, explains how in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, Fr. Francisco de Vitoria, noting the abuses he saw, came to the conclusion that "[t]he treatment to which all human beings were entitled... derives from their status as men rather than as members of the faithful in the state of grace." We are reminded of how Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, whose "Catholic faith taught him that a single code of morality bound all men, ... rendered judgment on the behavior of his own society in a spirit of strict impartiality." He quotes this remarkable statement from Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa:
"Father Las Casas was the most active, although not the only one, of those nonconformists who rebelled against abuses inflicted upon the Indians. They fought against their fellow men and against the policies of their own country in the name of the moral principle that to them was higher than any principle of nation or state. This self-determination could not have been possible among the Incas or any of the other pre-Hispanic cultures. In these cultures, as in the other great civilizations of history foreign to the West, the individual could not morally question the social organism of which he was part, because he existed only as an integral atom of that organism and because for him the dictates of the state could not be separated from morality. The first culture to interrogate and question itself, the first to break up the masses into individual beings who with time gradually gained the right to think and act for themselves, was to become, thanks to that unknown exercise, freedom, the most powerful civilization of our world."
And, at the end of the day, the original cultures survive; Nahuatl is still spoken today, as it was by Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of Mexico, Empress of the Americas on December 12, 1531, the most important date in the history of the New World.
15 comments:
And yet, somehow I'm relieved that it was just some jackass defacing the property rather than the city authorities knocking it down on their own accord.
That's not graffiti, just pure, vandalism. It offends me that someone would do that to a church and I'm not even Christian. Some people have no respect.
In the post-war period, Korea has been a place of relatively high religious tolerance despite a high degree of religious plurality.
Lately, though, we've seen more and more of these types of divisive incidents (I write more about it here).
I agree with Douglas, im a catholic turned atheist, but like him i dont like people doing that kind of thing (vandalism) to any property especially places revered by many people such as churches, mosques etc. Its a clear show of disrespect.
Don’t judge until you know the true motive behind the vandalism? Pedophilia? Wife stealing? Stealing the life's savings of the elderly who are suffering from dementia? Religion is big business and is full of corrupt individuals, and the Catholic Church is responsible for some truly horrific crimes against humanity, but somehow its past, and current, history doesn’t register in most people’s minds.
I got to see it first hand when my uncle, a priest, worked as a counselor for married couples needing help. In the end, he broke up a solid couple with a nice family, helped drive their daughter insane, and was excommunicated when he married the woman. Not very Christian in my old book.
This vandalism could be the work of some jackass jerk, or it could be the work of someone who has truly suffered at the hands of religion and sees this as their only recourse in addressing the wrongs committed against them. At least no one was hurt and the building was not destroyed.
John from Daejeon
Jawick,
Possibly it was the work of someone with a serious personal beef against the Catholic Church. But given the nature of the vandalism -upside down cross and "anti-Christ"- it is much more likely the work of some deranged fundamentalist who has suckled at the teat of a variety of intolerant American Protestantism that for generations has preached that the Catholic Church is the hand-maiden of Satan. Ass fucked, former alter boy? Possibly. Tongue talking Pentecostal with a huge hate-on for the Pope? Much more likely.
I agree with Douglas. This is the work of some Protestant fundamentalist who thinks that the Pope is the Antichrist. I suspect that the perpetrator isn't Korean but American instead. The inverted cross, the use of English, the correct spelling . . . all point to a native speaker of English working from within the culture.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
@ jawick
Whatever motive or suffering the person has or incurred prompting him/her to make those vandals, it is not justified. One's personal suffering does not give him/her the right to offend a group of people (that has nothing to do with his/her problems)as represented by this Church. This is vandalism, not a protest. Any act of vandalism whether its intended to attack the government or the church is i supposed a no-no.
Examples you cited are already common and there are no more surprises about that. The Catholic/Christian Church is corrupt, priests as sexual offenders etc.
People who hates the church gains my respect for standing up against what most people believe to be true (as long as their reasons are valid), but resorting to this kind of tactic or justifying a suffering with this action is moronic for me.
I agree with Horace Jeffery Hodges that a fundamentalist is the most likely culprit, someone fueled by beliefs like this.
But as a couple people mentioned on my site, this could possibly be the work of "bored teens," or someone in a death metal band. Extremely bad taste, even if done for such a relatively innocuous reason.
“This is vandalism, not a protest.”
Do you know more than we know?
“Any act of vandalism whether its intended to attack the government or the church is i supposed a no-no.”
Without the colonies use of guerilla tactics in its revolution against the ‘government’ there’d be not United States of America right now. I also believe the king of England revolted against the church at one point. How’d that turn out for the Catholic Church in England?
Right now, many of my relatives in Mexico are still rebelling against the land grabbing and fortune stealing church by taking back their indigenous (nonbiblical) names. It’s their own form of protest against hundreds of years of oppression and death in el nombre de Jesus y Maria.
John from Daejeon
"Do you know more than we know?"
We are all guessing. Your guess is as good as mine. Is this vandalism? YES, if i said its not a protest, because thats how i conceived it.
My point is IRREGARDLESS of motive, this is damage to property and should not be tolerated. For arguments sake, that the person who did was sexually assaulted by the parish priest, or hates the Pope so much in the same magnitude as i do, then does it make the action VALID???
"Without the colonies use of guerilla tactics in its revolution against the ‘government’ there’d be not United States of America right now. I also believe the king of England revolted against the church at one point. How’d that turn out for the Catholic Church in England?"
-- are you serious? please be rational with your comparison. And besides the fact that it was used as a tactic (although your way way of using proportion is way beyond)as mentioned in history, still it doesnt make the action valid. The case of King Henry VIII is not case of revolt as exemplified by this action.
with regards to the case of USA becoming a free nation from the UK using guerilla tactics, does it make sense to compare it with vandalism in the same scale as in this situation?.. did they do it in such a way like posting "ANTI-ENGLAND, ANTI KING GEORGE III" all over Government buildings and eventually was granted freedom or a positive result relevant to their cause..?
""many of my relatives in Mexico are still rebelling against the land grabbing and fortune stealing church by taking back their indigenous (nonbiblical) names. It’s their own form of protest against hundreds of years of oppression and death in el nombre de Jesus y Maria.""
-- Are they causing damage to property?? I hope you get the point
Juan de Daejeon wrote:
Right now, many of my relatives in Mexico are still rebelling against the land grabbing and fortune stealing church
Please enlighten me about Mexican history. After the revolutionary governments practically stripped away all the property of the Church (and for all practical purposes criminalized Catholicism), when did the Church grab the land back and steal the fortunes back?
by taking back their indigenous (nonbiblical) names.
Is John indigenous or is it de Daejeon?
It’s their own form of protest against hundreds of years of oppression and death in el nombre de Jesus y Maria.
Hundreds of years minus a hundred years or so.
But I think you're right. The godless of Mexico would run the country so much better. You might get your wish since, sadly, our southern neighbor is teetering toward becoming a narco-state.
The indigenous would be the Mayan and Aztec survivors of the “white” man—the Spaniards who brought their church along for the ride of uprooting the locals and establishing New Spain while wiping out the Aztec empire.
“by taking back their indigenous (nonbiblical) names.” Yes, they are taking back their Aztec and Mayan names, not the nonsense forced on them by the church were most are named either Jesus, Maria, or Guadalupe (as in Virgin of).
And, they are far from godless as both religions have numerous gods; however, according to the Mayan gods, the world is about to come to an abrupt end on 2012.
And the only reason Mexico is in the sad drug-induced state it is in is because of the its drug dependent neighbor to the north.
As the sangre de Mexico doesn’t run through my veins, I’m sticking with Juan de Daejeon por ahora as that is where I’m currently located on this orb I call home.
John from Daejeon
John from Daejeon,
True that the conquistadores were responsible for much evil, but let us not forget that the reason their conquest was so swift and total was that the civilization they overthrew practiced ritual mass murder. Non-Aztecs as well as the Aztec common people were glad to see the bloofthrirsty tyrants overthrown.
And let us also not forget that the Church ameliorated much of the abuses (and even suffered for it as did the Jesuits in the Guarani Republic). In fact, one of the ironies of history is that from the Conquest and its abuses the concept of universal human rights was articulated for the firt time in human history.
Dr. Thomas E. Woods, in How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, explains how in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, Fr. Francisco de Vitoria, noting the abuses he saw, came to the conclusion that "[t]he treatment to which all human beings were entitled... derives from their status as men rather than as members of the faithful in the state of grace." We are reminded of how Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, whose "Catholic faith taught him that a single code of morality bound all men, ... rendered judgment on the behavior of his own society in a spirit of strict impartiality." He quotes this remarkable statement from Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa:
"Father Las Casas was the most active, although not the only one, of those nonconformists who rebelled against abuses inflicted upon the Indians. They fought against their fellow men and against the policies of their own country in the name of the moral principle that to them was higher than any principle of nation or state. This self-determination could not have been possible among the Incas or any of the other pre-Hispanic cultures. In these cultures, as in the other great civilizations of history foreign to the West, the individual could not morally question the social organism of which he was part, because he existed only as an integral atom of that organism and because for him the dictates of the state could not be separated from morality. The first culture to interrogate and question itself, the first to break up the masses into individual beings who with time gradually gained the right to think and act for themselves, was to become, thanks to that unknown exercise, freedom, the most powerful civilization of our world."
And, at the end of the day, the original cultures survive; Nahuatl is still spoken today, as it was by Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of Mexico, Empress of the Americas on December 12, 1531, the most important date in the history of the New World.
The Western Confucian, you reminded me of "The Mission," one of my favorite films from the 1980s.
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