The following comes from a February 19 Sierra Sun article by Kevin MacMillan:
KINGS BEACH, Calif. — Another vandalism crime has occurred at a North Lake Tahoe church, this time involving the desecration of a granite Virgin Mary statue.
According to the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, an unknown suspect or suspects sometime overnight Sunday, February 14, severed the head and hands and fingers of the large statue located out front of Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church at 8263 Steelhead Ave. in Kings Beach.
The department has some people of interest, Hunt said, and the investigation is ongoing in conjunction with the FBI and Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, considering other church vandalism crimes over the past year may be related.
“We’re not ruling that out,” Hunt said.
The series of North Lake Tahoe church vandalisms began on Easter Sunday in April 2015 in Incline Village when all five of the town’s five churches were tagged with anti-Christianity messages.
Since, similar crimes occurred last summer in Incline, as well as Kings Beach and Tahoe City.
In August, damage to two Incline churches included smashed doors and windows, and what appeared to be repeated attempts to saw down a wooden cross outside at The Village Church, a Presbyterian church at 736 McCourry Blvd.
In September, vandalisms in Kings Beach and Tahoe City involved suspects reportedly spray painting “offensive statements” on churches, prompting authorities to characterize the offenses as hate crimes.
Sick.
Hate crime.
Awful.
Reminds me of Henry VIII, Martin Luther, and the crazy people who were swayed by them to desecrate statues that others found so comforting in their hard lives.
ICONOCLASTS are sadly, nothing new, as this brief note from history reveals: “Although widespread use of Christian iconography only began as Christianity increasingly spread among gentiles after the legalization of Christianity by Roman Emperor Constantine (c. 312 AD), scattered expressions of opposition to the use of images were reported (e.g. Spanish Synod of Elvira). The period after the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527–565) evidently saw a huge increase in the use of images, both in volume and quality, and a gathering aniconic reaction.
In the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, government-led iconoclasm began with Byzantine Emperor Leo III, following what seems to have been a long period of rising opposition to the use or…
SICK IS RIGHT!!!
AND YOU KNOW OUR LADY STILL LOVES THE PEOPLE WHO DID THIS TO HER STATUE!!!
CAN’T GET AWAY FROM THE EVIL ONE, NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE!
Could you imagine if this was a ISLAMIC MOSQUE? Our buddy in the White House would have had Attorney General Lynch on an all out hunt for the people who vandalized a mosque!!!
Probably same group who vandalized statues in same manner in Carmel and Monterey and in San Diego. Same method of operation.