Someone broke into a church in a nearby city, Lynn, just south of Salem and just north of Boston. It’s a working-class city known for high crime, but lots of hardworking immigrant families. The city has a bad reputation of longstanding: “Lynn, Lynn, city of sin, you never come out the way you went in.”
Anyway, it wasn’t a normal breaking and entering. They walked past the gold chalices and anything else of worldly value, went straight for the tabernacle key, and stole the Blessed Sacrament. We all know why. Probably Satanists or witches.
The police said they are treating it as larceny. Kelly notes that hate crime is defined as one that is committed because of the victim’s religion, among other things. So why isn’t this being handled as a hate crime? When someone paints swastikas on a synagogue or markers at a Jewish cemetery it’s all over the local news and rightly so. So where is the media coverage of this most grave attack on the fundamentally most holy aspect of the Catholic faith?
Oh right, it is politically correct to condemn attacks on Jews or Muslims or other minority groups, but not on the big, bad Catholic Church. Double standard anyone?
Pastors ought to take note of this crime and give some thought to where they keep their tabernacle keys. Some priests leave the keys unattended and unsecured in a sacristy, which seems rather negligent.
Kelly’s right about the lack of outrage: people are rightly shocked at, say, a theft of Torah scrolls, but this crime has hardly been noticed. Let’s see if the blogosphere can improve on that.