Pro-Lifers, Kill For the Cause
Anti-abortion violence has included destruction of property, vandalism, arson, bombings, kidnapping, stalking, assault, attempted murder, and murder. Christian views on abortion have been cited by Christian individuals and groups that are responsible for threats, assault, murder, and bombings against abortion clinics and doctors mostly in the United States, but has also occurred in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
The American Coalition of Life Activists feature wanted-style posters of physicians that perform abortions along with a monetary reward for any information that would lead to their "arrest, conviction and revocation of license to practice medicine". The ACLA described these physicians as “war criminals” and accused them of committing “crimes against humanity”. The Nuremberg Files was a controversial web site which published the names, home addresses, telephone numbers, and other personal information of abortion providers – highlighting the names of those who had been wounded and striking out those of which had been killed. The site was accused of being a thinly veiled hit list intended to incite violence.
The Army of God alone was responsible for bombing and setting fire to over one hundred clinics before the year 1994. They also invaded more than three hundred clinics and vandalized more than four hundred. While this group has committed numerous property crimes, they are notorious for their more personal acts of violence such as kidnapping, attempted murder, and murder. The Army of God Manual serves as a guide to arson, chemical attacks, invasions, and bombings.
The Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religiously-sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291. Other campaigns in Spain and Eastern Europe continued into the 15th century. The Crusades were fought mainly against Muslims, although campaigns were also waged against pagan Slavs, Jews, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites, Waldensians, Old Prussians, and political enemies of the popes.
Witch Trials
In Europe during the Middle Ages, witch trials were the direct result of Christian Church doctrine. Christian leaders including the Pope justified murder of the accused witches by associating witchcraft with wild Satanic ritual parties in which there was much naked dancing, orgy sex, and cannibalistic infanticide – whether true or not. More than likely an accusation for more of the church's propaganda. Scholars estimate that those executed for witchcraft vary between about 40,000 and 100,000. The number of witch trials in Europe that are known for certain to have ended in executions is around 12,000.One theory proposes that "witches" often possessed good midwifery skills, and were prosecuted in order to extinguish knowledge about birth control in an effort to repopulate Europe after the Black Death.
The Salem Witch trials serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of religious extremism, false accusations, lapses in due process, and governmental intrusion on individual liberties.
Salem Village formed their own separate covenanted church congregation and ordained their own minister. The Puritans believed in the existence of an invisible world inhabited by God and the angels including the Devil (who was seen as a fallen angel) and his fellow demons. To Puritans, this invisible world was as real as the visible one around them. The patriarchal beliefs that Puritans held in the community added further stresses. Women, they believed, should be completely subservient to men. By nature, a woman was more likely to enlist in the Devil's service than was a man, and women were considered lustful by nature. In addition, the small-town atmosphere made secrets difficult to keep and people's opinions about their neighbors were generally accepted as fact. In an age where the philosophy "children should be seen and not heard" was taken at face value, children were at the bottom of the social ladder. Toys and games were seen as idle and playing was discouraged.
Using traditional English white magic to discover the identity of a witch, a "witch cake" was made. The cake, made from rye meal and urine from the afflicted, was fed to a dog. According to English folk understanding of how witches accomplished affliction, when the dog ate the cake, the witch herself would be hurt because invisible particles she had sent to the afflicted remained in their urine, and her cries of pain when the dog ate the cake would identify her as the witch. This superstition was based on the Cartesian "Doctrine of Effluvia", which stated that witches afflicted by the use of "venomous and malignant particles, that were ejected from the eye".
Much, but not all, of the evidence used against the accused was spectral evidence, or the testimony of the afflicted who claimed to see the apparition or the shape of the person who was allegedly afflicting them. The theological dispute that ensued about the use of this evidence centered on whether a person had to give permission to the Devil for his/her shape to be used to afflict. Opponents claimed that the Devil was able to use anyone's shape to afflict people, but the Court contended that the Devil could not use a person's shape without that person's permission; therefore, when the afflicted claimed to see the apparition of a specific person, that was accepted as evidence that the accused had been complicit with the Devil.
The existence of so-called witch's teats on the body of the accused was considered evidence. A witch's teat was said to be a mole or blemish somewhere on the body that was insensitive to touch; discovery of such insensitive areas was considered de facto evidence of witchcraft, though in practice, the witch's teat was usually insensitive by design, with examiners using secretly-dulled needles to claim that the accused could not feel the prick of a pin.
Remember the fabulous fifties? Moreover, how our grandparents talk about simpler times. The Mayberryesque life, and do you remember those modern day witch-hunts? It was during this infamous McCarthy era that the McCarthy hearings took place. Mass paranoia and persecution resulted in many careers and lives ruined by accusations of communism. Anti-Communist committees, panels and "loyalty review boards" across the US, became the most famous 'witch-hunt' of the 20th century. Later deemed unconstitutional, they represented a major breakdown in civil liberties and civil discourse; those accused of being Communist sympathizers could find themselves 'blacklisted'. Ronald Reagan and Tricky Dick Nixon were among these finger pointers.
Witch-hunts against children have occurred as recently as 1999 in the Congo and in Tanzania, where women have been accused of being witches for having red eyes. Relatives seeking the property of the accused victim often lead witch-hunts in Africa.
Hysteria and a "moral panic" surrounding Satanic ritual abuse, prominent in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, in the 1980s and 90s, used much of the same occult and conspiratorial propaganda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satanic_ritual_abuse_allegations
The McMartin preschool trial of 1984 to 1990 is the longest trial currently recognized in American history. The victims were accused of satanic ritual abuse in underground tunnels, involving flying witches, blood drinking, mutilated corpses, and human sacrifice. More than 350 people were involved in the fabrication of the allegations, which were taken seriously by the media, the public, the courts, and the prosecution. The jury did not believe the allegations, and the victims were freed.
KKK
The notorious hate group has a record of using terrorism, violence, and lynching to murder and oppress African Americans, Jews and other minorities and to intimidate and oppose Roman Catholics and labor unions. Klan members donned masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers. "The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night" sometimes claiming to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers to frighten superstitious blacks. Klan violence worked to suppress black voting. Members of KKK-affiliated groups murdered civil rights workers and children in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization included about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men. Klan groups lynched and murdered Black soldiers returning from World War I while they were still in military uniforms. The Klan warned Blacks that they must respect the rights of the white race "in whose country they are permitted to reside". The number of lynchings escalated, and from 1918 to 1927, 416 African Americans were killed, mostly in the South. When two black men attempted to vote in November 1920 in Ocoee, Florida, the Klan attacked the black community. In the ensuing violence, six black residents and two whites were killed.
The Klan's popularity fell further during the Great Depression and World War II. Imagine that. How hypocritical of our country to take part in the prosecution of German war criminals for their heinous acts against Jews, Gays, Blacks, and other social and ethnic minorities. Did our political leaders reflect to hold our own accountable for the same? Many holocausts have occurred in our own country in the name of Christianity.
The Klan still poses threat today. The present-day Ku Klux Klan is not one organization. Rather it is made up of small independent chapters across the United States. The formation of independent chapters has made the KKK groups more difficult to infiltrate and researchers find it hard to estimate its numbers. KKK members have stepped up recruitment in recent years but the organization continues to grow slowly, with membership estimated at 5,000–8,000 across 179 chapters. These latest drives have seized upon issues such as people's anxieties about illegal immigration, urban crime and same-sex marriage. Membership in the Klan is secret. Like many fraternal organizations, the Klan has signs that members can use to recognize one another. A member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) in conversation to surreptitiously identify himself to another potential member. The response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the question.
Hitler and the Nazis
Adolf Hitler was a Christian preacher. He preached to anyone that would listen that his ideals were of the Christian faith. He believed he was doing "the Lord's work". Hitler described his supposedly divine mandate for his anti-Semitism: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
The German Christians, constituted the strongest Protestant movement in Germany after the 1932 Church elections, with the aim of synthesizing Christianity with the ideology of National Socialism. There were various groups within, some more radical than others, but united in the goal of establishing a national socialist Protestantism. They abolished what they considered to be Jewish traditions in Christianity, and some but not all rejected the Old Testament altogether. They rejected academic theology as sterile and not populist enough and were often anti-Catholic. On November 1933, A Protestant mass rally of the German Christians, which brought together a record 20,000 people, passed three resolutions:
• Adolf Hitler is the completion of the reformation.
• Baptized Jews are to be dismissed from the Church.
• The Old Testament is to be excluded from Sacred Scriptures.
Hitler once stated, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
Some Nazis promoted Positive Christianity, which attempted to replace traditional Christian beliefs with those agreeable with Nazism, which many German Christians accepted. Even in the later years of the Third Reich, many Protestant and Catholic clergy within Germany persisted in believing that Nazism was in its essence in accordance with Christian precepts. Typically, those who persisted were considered a threat to Nazi ideology and marginalized or censored.
A Brief Breakdown of Christian Terrorism by Area:
Canada: The "Sons of Freedom" blew up power pylons, railroad bridges, and set fire to homes. India: The National Liberation Front of Tripura has been classified by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism as one of the ten most active terrorist groups in the world for forcefully converting people to Christianity.
Northern Ireland: There are connections between the Catholic Church and the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a terrorist group in the United Kingdom and an illegal organization in the Republic of Ireland.
Russia: The Russian Orthodox Church has been accused of murders, and several terrorist attacks including the bombing of the US Consulate in Yekaterinburg.
Uganda: The Lord's Resistance Army, engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government, has used child soldiers and committed numerous crimes against humanity; including massacres, abductions, mutilation, torture, rape, porters and sex slaves It's led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium, primarily of the Christian Holy Spirit. LRA fighters wear rosary beads and recite passages from the Bible before battle.
Vatican City: The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre gave Pope Gregory XIII, more pleasure than fifty Battles of Lepanto, and he commissioned Vasari to paint frescoes of it in the Vatican. It is estimated that ten thousand to possibly one-hundred thousand French Protestants were killed by Catholic mobs. The massacre led to the start of the fourth war of the French Wars of Religion. Peter Steinfels has cited the historical case of the Gunpowder Plot, when Guy Fawkes and other Catholic revolutionaries attempted to overthrow the Protestant aristocracy of England by blowing up the Houses of Parliament, as a notable case of Christian terrorism.
United States: The white supremacist group, Ku Klux Klan engaged in arson, beatings, cross burning, destruction of property, lynching, murder, rape, tar-and-feathering, and whipping against African Americans, Jews, Catholics and other social and ethnic minorities. Members of extremist groups such as the Army of God began executing attacks against abortion clinics and doctors across the US. A number of terrorist attacks, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics, were accused of being carried out by individuals and groups with ties to the Christian Identity and Christian Patriot movements; including the Lambs of Christ. Christian Identity is a loosely affiliated global group of churches and individuals devoted to a racialized theology that asserts North European whites are the direct descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, God's chosen people. It has been associated with groups such as the Aryan Nations, Aryan Republican Army, Eric Robert Rudolph, Phineas Priesthood, and The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. It has been cited as an influence in a number of terrorist attacks around the world, including the bombings. A group called Concerned Christians were deported from Israel on suspicion of planning to attack holy sites in Jerusalem at the end of 1999, believing that their deaths would "lead them to heaven."
Today
Christians continue acts of terror with such scare tactics as false accusations that if same-sex marriage is legal than children will be graphically taught how homosexuals have sex and other absurdities. They inflamed red state fears that Barack Obama was a Muslim and therefore conspiring with terrorist organizations. There must be a separation of church and state. There must also be a separation of religion and law. There is a separation of religion and logic -- just as superstition is separate from rationale.
Source: Wikipedia
We Catholics need another Crusade.
ReplyDeleteReligion needs to stay in the churches. Get it the F*ck out of politics.
ReplyDelete