Posted on 04/05/2014 1:52:17 PM PDT by NYer
A city board on Thursday gave a Muslim group the go-ahead to remove six crosses from the roof and spires of a century-old former Catholic church so the now-vacant Gothic structure can be used as a mosque.
More than 200 people had signed an online petition calling on the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board to deny an application by North Side Learning Center, the church’s new owner, to remove the crosses and build a six-foot chain-link fence.
Before the vote to allow the church alterations, Chairman Don Radke said the board cannot interfere with a decision that involves religious freedom.
About a dozen people who spoke at the meeting were evenly divided for and against the church conversion, The Post-Standard reported.
Petition-signers, who included some local residents and former church parishioners, had argued that the former Holy Trinity Catholic Church was a neighborhood landmark built by German immigrants 100 years ago and removing the crosses would deface the architecture.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse closed the church in 2010 and merged the parish with that of St. John the Baptist because of a declining congregation as population shifted from the city to suburbs. The North Side Learning Center, a nonprofit group that provides literacy programs for immigrants, bought the church and its school and rectory for $150,000 in December.
The Christian Post is also writing about this.
This seems like common sense to me. Despite its historical significance, the building is no longer a church, and will be used by a non-Christian religion as a house of worship. The same request would be made if it were being converted to a synagogue. (Taking it a step further, a Catholic group taking over a mosque would logically ask to have the star and crescent removed.)
One headline I read said, outrageously: City Permits Muslim Group to Desecrate Catholic Church. This is patently false, and seems an obvious example of anti-Muslim bigotry. It’s no longer a Catholic church, so there is nothing to “desecrate.”
Quote-The followers of A are terrorizing, murdering, bombing, killing, and threatening good Christians ( and Jews and Hindus and others) all around the world. Not to mention what they do to women ( and sheep and goats). A is Satan. And his Legions are pouring in here Right now.
Forty years in a ‘christian nation’ we have seen 55 million abortions at the hands of their own mothers; the pornography, Hollywood and the music industries pumping their ‘rights and liberty and freedom’ to the whole world...
Secular humanism is the state religion in America and that has not been considered an ‘enemy’ by enough believers-
it has been proven that no enemy without has done more damage to this nation than the enemy within in at least the last 40 years...
Which ballgame is that? Does it means that God loses?
Uh, it means the crosses will come off the building
You really think the city will approve a mosque and then order them to keep crosses on the building? You’re dreaming.
Now I know what context you were thinking of. Of course the crosses will come off - it was basically decommissioned as a Catholic Church in 2010 and a non-Christian entity bought the unused building from whoever actually had ownership.
I was thinking in the bigger context - God and His Plan are so much bigger than an unused church being sold to "the opposition". God has already won and yet we keep getting distracted from our only useful task - carrying the Good News of the Gospel. Sometimes we get so offended over that which is God's to become offended or not, that we end up spinning our wheels in the muck instead of wading out of it and witnessing to those who might be open to hearing the Word - who wins when we do that?
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