War on statues spreads to Catholic saints
August 22,2017
The war on statues spread to Catholic saints this weekend while a judge in Georgia lost his job because he criticized the monument vandals.
Vandals spray-painted a statue of Junipero Serra at a Los Angeles park across the street from Mission San Fernando on Thursday. A photo of the vandalized statue has gone viral.
Statue of St. Junipero Serra in Los Angeles was vandalized over the weekend.
St. Serra’s face, chest, and hands are spray-painted red, and the word “murder” is written in white down his front, reports CatholicOnline.com. A Native American boy standing with him as part of the statue has red painted under his eyes and down his front as though he were crying blood. A swastika was also painted on the boy.
This prompted Catholic Online to pose the question, “Where does this movement stop?”
The statement is to suggest that St. Serra was somehow involved in the genocide of Native Americans by Europeans, the magazine hypothesized.
“While the public appears to be in a frenzy over controversial statues, St. Serra is a Catholic saint, and his statue is a religious icon. Of course, the non-religious do not appreciate this fact. Many locals condemned the act of vandalism, holding that the park is a public place for people to share, enjoy and take photos, an experience that is ruined by graffiti.”
As in Chicago with the Lincoln statue, there is debate now afoot as to whether the city should move the St. Serra statue to a museum where it will be safer.
Some are beginning to notice a parallel with the predictions made in George Orwell’s epic novel “1984” in which politically incorrect “facts” in both history and current events were swept down the “memory hole,” where they would be forgotten as if they never occurred.
“There is a growing movement afoot to sweep distasteful moments and people out of history,” states Catholic Online. “While objective history is static, it is often clouded by time and perception. History is constantly being revised as political and social attitudes change. The heroes of one time and place are often villains in another.
“The problem is not so much the removal of a statue to a museum, but rather the question of where does the revisionism end? After the statues, what next? The names of streets, buildings and cities? Should the money be reprinted to avoid any association with slavery? Should the Constitution be discarded or rewritten because its authors were slaveholders? And who will write the new one?
“History is filled with unpleasantness, just like the present. It is important to acknowledge the sins of the past, but it is also important to recognize that some of the same people also contributed great things to the world.”
Authorities on Monday said they arrested a man in Houston for attempting to place a bomb near a Confederate statue, the Associated Press reported.
A park ranger on Saturday found the man, Andrew Schneck, stooping down near the statue of a Confederate lieutenant in Hermann Park.
Schneck is charged with trying to maliciously damage or destroy property receiving federal financial assistance, the AP report said.
Schneck in 2014 was arrested for having explosive materials stored improperly.
Meanwhile, a Gwinnett County, Georgia, magistrate judge has resigned after being suspended over politically incorrect posts he made on Facebook about the attacks on statues.
Magistrate judge James Hinkle resigned after being suspended for making comments on Facebook critical of statue vandals.
Jim Hinkle, a part-time judge who has served on the court for 14 years, resigned last week, Chief Magistrate Judge Kristina Hammer Blum said in a written statement.
“For 14 years, Judge Hinkle has dutifully served this court,” Blum said in her statement. “He is a lifelong public servant and former Marine. However, he has acknowledged that his statements on social media have disrupted the mission of this Court, which is to provide justice for all.”
Hinkle, who also was mayor of Grayson for two decades, made several posts over the weekend in which he called people protesting Civil War monuments “snowflakes” and “nut cases,” and he compared those who would tear down those monuments to radical Islamic group ISIS.
Hinkle’s critics then dug up some of his older posts to use against him. In January, the judge posted he was “proud to be a deplorable infidel.”
In other posts, Hinkle condemned Islam as a violent religion.
Later, he wrote “The nut cases tearing down monuments are equivalent to ISIS destroying history.”
University president Gregory L. Fenves announced the decision late Sunday night, saying the “horrific displays of hatred” in Virginia had made it clear that Confederate statues had become “symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.”
The mayor of West Palm Beach said the Confederate monument will be removed, reports WPTV.
The city said the monument, owned by United Daughters of the Confederacy, will be placed in storage until the UDC decides what to do with it.
“We are going to remove it for them. We will put it in storage and they can take it and do what they wish, but it will not be on public property,” said Mayor Jeri Muoio.