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aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Catholic Alt-right, which may just be the old-fashioned Catholic Right, has done some bad things.
From reportage in National Catholic Reporter [ncronline.org]:

When the Catholic alt-right first began clutching their pious pearls about the presence of an Amazonian indigenous sculptures of bare-breasted, pregnant women used at ceremony hosted by Pope Francis earlier this month, I could only shake my head at the ironies.

This cabal of mostly-male, radical conservatives who are fixated on sexual purity were sexualizing a statue.

This faction, who believe that a woman's mandatory vocation in life is motherhood, were disgusted by a pregnant belly.

These extremists, who have as one of their ultimate goals the control of women's fertility, were scandalized by a symbol of fertility.

These "militants," who claim to be fervently pro-life, were revolted by a symbol of the gift of life.

But then, it got real.

But then on Monday, Oct. 21, things shifted from theater of the absurd to violence against the sacred.

LifeSite News and EWTN, both of which are among the archconservative Catholic outlets that have been publishing a litany of laments about how disgraceful the statue is, somehow came into possession of a four-minute video of two men stealing the statues from Santa Maria Traspontina Church (just steps away from St. Peter's Square), lining them up along balustrade of the Bridge of Angels, and batting them, one by one, into the muddy Tiber below.

And they were offended by Serrano's "Piss Christ"? Holy Mother of God!

But then on Monday, Oct. 21, things shifted from theater of the absurd to violence against the sacred.

LifeSite News and EWTN, both of which are among the archconservative Catholic outlets that have been publishing a litany of laments about how disgraceful the statue is, somehow came into possession of a four-minute video of two men stealing the statues from Santa Maria Traspontina Church (just steps away from St. Peter's Square), lining them up along balustrade of the Bridge of Angels, and batting them, one by one, into the muddy Tiber below.

At Monday's press conference when the issue of the video was raised, the response from Paolo Ruffini, the Vatican prefect of the Dicastery for Communications, was underwhelming to say the least. As NCR's Joshua J. McElwee tweeted at the time, Ruffini called the act a "stunt ... against the spirit of dialogue."

Vatican's Paolo Ruffini calls action of people who took an indigenous statue from an exposition for the #AmazonSynod near a Vatican-area church and threw it into the Tiber River a "stunt ... against the spirit of dialogue."
        — Joshua McElwee (@joshjmac) October 21, 2019

Before this incident, Pope Francis has made thinly veiled critiques of the Catholic alt-right's fundamentalist antics. More recently, he has criticized them more directly.

For example, when one of the alt-right characters complained about the feathered headdresses worn by some of the indigenous people at a papal Sunday Mass, Francis said, "I was pained to hear, right here, a sarcastic comment about a pious man with feathers on his head who brought an offering."

"Tell me: What's the difference between having feathers on your head and the three-peaked hat worn by certain officials in our dicasters?" he added, referring to the three-pointed red birettas worn by cardinals.

Monday's disgraceful action demands a clearer, more direct and unequivocal condemnation. These iconoclastic men, whose behavior was another way to boast about their high holiness and unquestionable piety, must be called out for the hypocritical thugs they are.

These men's misdeed was not a "stunt"; it was a desecration. If someone had entered that church and stolen a cross or a statue of Mary, and done the same thing, how different would the Vatican's response be?

This desecration wasn't an act against a "spirit of dialogue," it was act of religious violence that undoubtedly terrorized a people who already live in constant fear.

This act of terrorism was also profoundly racist and misogynist, and reasserts the neocolonial, white supremacist mentality that is at the root of the destruction of the Amazon and its native peoples.

Time to go watch the movie "The Mission [imdb.com]" again. In other news, Generalissimo Franco is still dead, but has been exhumed. [theguardian.com]

Original Submission