Presumably, this is an attempt by the Occupy movement to further ingratiate itself with The Episcopal Church.
Oddly enough, even though any minute I’m expecting to read a statement from an Occupy admiring bishop explaining how this furthers the church’s mission in some obscure way, it hasn’t worked.
The Occupiers have been asked to leave within two weeks. This gives them plenty of time to come up with new mischief with which to tax the limits of the gracious pastoral response that benighted clerics feel compelled to extend to anyone muttering the incantation “poor and marginalised”.
The Occupiers also stole part of a baptismal font; still, what more could they do in two weeks?
Arson.
From here:
There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week.
When the Rev. Bob Brashear prepared for Sunday services at West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street, he noticed parts of the bronze baptismal font were gone.
In a fire-and-brimstone message to occupiers later that day, he thundered, “It was like pissing on the 99 percent.”
In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.
In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”
The pastor of the church did not return calls.
At West Park, Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl.
[….]
The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.
Just a brief comment. I once took a sociology course in criminal justice. I read a book by someone, I think the book was titled “The Criminal Man”. But this researcher read many analyses of crime. He was seeking what sterotypes were used in reporting about crime. He concluded there were two strong stereotypes: the worthy poor, and the vicious poor. He stated, with the worthy poor, we write novels about (the Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo). The vicious poor we put into prison. I would guess, in this Occupy Wall Street Movement, there are both virtuous and vicious poor persons.
I’d’ve given them two minutes to leave.