War on Catholics Continues: Churches and Crucifixes Desecrated

[Michie]

They are complicit in their own persecution.

The desecration of a 14-foot wooden cross erected last month at a Catholic Father’s Day Retreat in Orange County, California, is just the most recent attack on yet another sacred symbol for Catholics in a culture that continues to revile the Christian faith.

Just add the sawing down and destruction of the wooden cross at the Santiago Retreat Center in Silverado Canyon to the growing list of hundreds of acts of vandalism committed in the past three years against Catholic churches, schools, and retreat centers. CatholicVote has tracked 345 attacks on Catholic churches since the George Floyd incident in 2020, including acts of arson that damaged or destroyed historic churches; spray-painting and graffiti of satanic messages; rocks and bricks thrown through windows; and statues destroyed — often with heads cut off.


And like most of the attacks on sacred Catholic gathering places and objects since 2020, authorities debate whether the vicious acts qualify as hate crimes, as demonstrated in Sgt. Frank Gonzalez of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s reply to the destruction of the wooden cross in an interview with the Orange County Register: “Investigators were still looking into the matter as a possible hate crime.”

Charges Dropped in Catholic Vandalism Cases​

Continued below.

War on Catholics Continues: Churches and Crucifixes Desecrated - The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator | USA News and Politics

The desecration of a 14-foot wooden cross at a Catholic Father’s Day Retreat in Orange County is evidence of a war on Catholics.

spectator.org

 

[RileyG]

Lord have mercy!

 

[PeterDona]

Was any kind of catholicism involved in the George Floyd incident?
Or is it just some kind of contemporaneous history landmark?

 

[Michie]

I think it’s more of a time stamp and the way society has blamed the Church for getting in the way of the current political ideology.

For context:

Statues of St. Junípero — a beloved saint who was canonized in 2015 by Pope Francis — have been removed from many Catholic campuses and churches throughout California. One of those Catholic campuses is the University of San Diego, whose president has kept the statue of St. Junípero Serra stored away for more than three years now. In 2019 — long before the George Floyd incident in 2020 — the University of San Diego removed the name “Junípero Serra” from a main campus building and replaced it with “Saints Tekakwitha and Serra Hall.” In an email to Celina Tebor, editor-in-chief of the university’s student newspaper, the Vista, President James T. Harris III called his actions “decoloniz[ing] the campus.”

Archbishop Cordileone is correct: Attacks against Catholic sacred spaces and objects will continue to escalate. The saddest part is that too many Catholics appear to be complicit.

 

[Bob Crowley]

What has George Floyd's killing by a police officer got to do with the Catholic Church?