Posted on 02/13/2008 6:33:07 AM PST by Pyro7480
EMMITSBURG, Md. — Police have arrested two men they say vandalized the Grotto of Lourdes at Mount St. Mary’s University.
Police estimated the damage at about $1,500.
The Frederick County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that Timothy A. Hines, 20, of Silver Spring, Md.; and Jesse R. Huston, 20, of Derwood, Md., were arrested early Sunday.
Both are charged with malicious destruction of property over $500, malicious destruction of property under $500, trespassing and defacing religious property, police said.
Police said the men entered the Grotto of Lourdes and allegedly damaged a large cross and several glass jars containing prayer candles.
From Two Charged With Defacing Md. Shrine
Sheriff's deputies charged the 20-year-olds after university police allegedly caught them in the act early Sunday morning.
Catholic ping!
That's pure, calculated hatred.
Dreadful.
you have to really go out of your way to get up to that cross - especially this time of the year with the weather conditions.
Wonder what it was that motivated them to go all the way up there just to make trouble.
Hatred of a Christian religion:
a. Liberal
b. Islam
c. Satanism
d. All of the Above
e. Two of the above
There was a large youth retreat there this past weekend: ‘’Mount 2008 - Seek the Face of Christ.”
That might explain the presence of a couple of 20 year olds from Silver Spring.
My daughter was there and didn’t say anything about any vandalism to the Grotto. But there were about 1,500 kids there this weekend.
They had to leave the main road and take a narrow road up a hill behind the school, park the car, and then walk uphill from there on the path...pass the stations of the cross - pass the chapel - pass the Lourdes grotto scene - cross the footbridge, climb a set of steep stairs to get to the Cross(one of the most impressive crucixion depictions you’ll ever see).
It’s VERY much out of the way.
They had to know exactly what they were doing and where they were going.
They probably were drunk and stupid, but this seems to require premeditation as well.
See post #9. It’s a detail unmentioned by the media.
So why would kids on a retreat vandalize the cross like that?
Very strange.
a. and c. .
I was going to chose d., but it is claimed that Muslims have respect for Mary.
I vote a and c, too. The names don’t suggest Moslems.
Read the Gospels and see Jesus' solid, honest, manly character and his luminous heart, and I think even an agnostic or atheist would say, at least, "He was a good guy." (A lot of them do.) It's scary how othr people will go out of their way to spit on him, slime him with filth, try to efface his images with a claw hammer.
But I guess it shouldn't be surprising. Lent. Not surprising at all.
At my Catholic high school, we set up enough small crosses to fill the grassy area in front of the school. And on the sign out front, the words “Abortion stops a beating heart.”
That was too much to take for one poor soul who decided to drive his/her vehicle through the crosses, knocking them down and scattering them in all directions, and finished things off by splattering black paint on the sign.
As I recall, the police may have been involved in figuring out who did it. But we simply cleaned up, set the crosses back up again, and moved on. The best thing we can do is clean up and pray for the poor lost soul who would do such a thing, and for that matter also pray for all the lost souls who would consider doing such a thing but didn’t have the nerve to do it.
Yes, it is inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t know the area. Evidently these two jerks were at the youth retreat.
here’s a link with a photo of the grotto...
I might be confusing which cross they vandalized.
It sounds like they tried to burn one of the altars in the cave where all the candles are.
There must have been a large crucifix in there that got dumped into the nearby creek.
They were doing this at 3:00 am.
If you’ve ever taught youth in catechism you know there are quite a few there who are only there because their parents make them go.
I look at it as a “stoopid teenage trick” because I’m sure they didn’t think of the consequences or the ramifications. I feel sorry for them and their parents, and parish.
Thanks for the info. Drunk and stupid I assumed. I had hoped it wasn’t deliberate or premeditated, but it’s hard to imagine that it wasn’t. Especially given the 150th anniv. of Lourdes.
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