Attack on monks

[Eolas Pellor]

I read about this early today, and I am pretty horrified about it. It is terrible that people who have dedicated their lives to their god would be treated in this way.

Italian police are investigating a brutal attack on four Franciscan friars in a monastery in northern Italy.

Italian media are comparing Tuesday's attack, at the San Colombano Belmonte monastery near Turin, to the violence in the story A Clockwork Orange.

Three or four hooded attackers entered the monastery and bound and gagged the friars, the oldest of whom was 86.

The full story is here at the BBC webiste

[RevKathyV]

That is just sad, sad, sad, and stupid, and pointless!!!!!

[arthra]

There is a lot of anti-clerical feeling around .. and it shows itself occasionally. Some Buddhists were attacked at their Temple in Arizona a fews years back and it happens. Religious people tend I think to trust others and be open to them hence they can be exploited or assaulted

Ticking to a Different Tock: Attacks on clergy

Attacks on clergy create no-go parishes - Times Online

Church clergy warned to remove dog-collars to prevent attacks

[Eolas Pellor]

Originally Posted by arthra

There is a lot of anti-clerical feeling around .. and it shows itself occasionally. Some Buddhists were attacked at their Temple in Arizona a fews years back and it happens.

Unfortunately, lots of people are given to anti-Catholic sentiments, as well, and that cannot help.

But attacking 86 year old men is cowardly....

[Chaitanyananda]

I am unable to comprehend what must occur within someone who is capable of such violence, especially towards those who have dedicated themselves to a life of worship and prayer.

Though, by it's very nature, violence can only occur in a fearful mind. The victims and the attackers both are in need of prayer and compassion.

[shaw-n]

Maybe it was senseless random violence, maybe it was more.
Nobody is talking so we hear only an info blurb which one cannot even form an opinion on.
Maybe there is more and the monks are not innocent.
Just because they are monks means only so much.
After all look at the "dark ages" when catholic monks ruled Europe and all the evil they did in God's name.
All I'm saying is we do not know what went down so how can we discuss this intelligently.

[RevKathyV]

Violence is never the answer...thats how...

[Eolas Pellor]

Originally Posted by shaw-n

After all look at the "dark ages" when catholic monks ruled Europe and all the evil they did in God's name.

Nothing that happened 1200 years ago can justify this act.

[shaw-n]

My point went entirely past you.
It does not justify anything.
The point was the automatic assumption that just because they were monks and old they were innocent.
We do not know that.
Maybe they did something to seriously piss someone off and that is why they were attacked.
It would not be a first.
But we speculate.
We should leave that to the detectives.

I concur that violence is wrong.

[Eolas Pellor]

Originally Posted by shaw-n

My point went entirely past you.
It does not justify anything.
The point was the automatic assumption that just because they were monks and old they were innocent.
We do not know that.
Maybe they did something to seriously piss someone off and that is why they were attacked.
It would not be a first.
But we speculate.
We should leave that to the detectives.

I concur that violence is wrong.

...is irrelevant. The point isn't that victims are innocent, but that violence is wrong; furthermore, that violence directed against the old (and 86 is old, by anyone's standard) is doubly wrong (as it is against the young, and the feeble). That their religious profession makes it very likely that they offered no resistance whatsoever makes it a treble wrong.

Even supposing that someone had a legitimate grievance against them (a very doubtful proposition), the violence done to them would still be wrong. In fact, your suggestion is the worst kind of speculation, which you seem to want to condemn; we have no shred evidence of such an infraction by the monks as a group, nor any one of them. Your words suggest a double-standard of justice; one can only feel something is unjust if the victim of a crime can be shown to be perfectly innocent. If anyone is less that perfectly innocent, then they "deserve" what happened to them. That is an absurd concept, if ever there was one. It is also, patently, unjust.

And, no, I will not "leave it to the detectives." It is simply a fatuous to assume that such attacks must not be condemned, and publicly condemned, because their are law-enforcement authorities.