Six Boston Catholics burned alive after leaving Church (Fiction)

[ck4829]

"Jews burned six Roman Catholics alive. And a day after Catholic attacks killed 215, scores more American bodies turned up.

Philadelphia - Revenge-seeking Jewish militiamen seized six Roman Catholics as they left prayers yesterday, drenched them with kerosene, and burned them alive while US Army soldiers did nothing to stop the attack, police and witnesses said.

The fiery slayings in the mainly Roman Catholic neighborhood of Philadelphia were a dramatic escalation of the brutality coursing through this major American city. They came a day after suspected Jewish insurgents killed 215 people in Philadelphia’s main Roman Catholic district with bombs and mortars.

The attacks culminated Philadelphia’s deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the war began more than three years ago. At least 87 bodies were found across Pennsylvania yesterday."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/25/121044/91

Now of course THIS didn't really happen. But, think about it for a second. There are many RW'ers who believe that Democracy will come to Iraq, we just have to turn a couple more corners, that's all.

[trumad]

1. I think you need to change the headline....

[Redstone]

2. But of course, the JEWS have to be the bad guys. This is poor fiction, and

the anti-semitic bent makes it worse.

Redstone

[Greyhound]

Good point. n/t

[ck4829]

3. Here are the alternative stories

Burnings reported as American strife deepens

Washington, DC -- In a wave of reprisal killings, Protestant militiamen torched or sprayed gunfire at Lutheran churches in Washington DC and other parts of the US yesterday, defying a government curfew and propelling the country further toward full-scale civil war.

The exacting of revenge for the deaths of more than 200 Protestants on Thursday came as powerful politicians linked to the radical Protestant leader threatened to pull out of America’s coalition government if Vice President Dick Cheney attends a scheduled meeting with the President of the country who invaded America three years ago next week in Amman, Jordan.


Wave of Retaliation Sweeps United States

In the far northern town of Minneapolis, MN, a car bomb blast ripped through a crowded car dealership, killing at least 22 people and injuring 26.

...

As the uniformed assailants advanced to another area of St. Louis, members of a prominent Presbyterian clan in the area, fought back.

"They were ready for them and ... ambushed the attackers, countering them with RPGs and machine guns," the officer said. The ensuing fight brought casualties on both sides. A nearby hospital reported that it had received 28 dead and 32 injured.

...

In spite of an emergency 24 hour curfew, gunfire crackled throughout the day and mortar rounds arced over Seattle’s jagged skyline, smashing into houses of worship, residences and shops.

By Friday night, at least 65 deaths had been reported in the city and elsewhere.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/25/121044/91

[Redstone]

4. That's better, though Lutherans ARE Protestants. However, I do get your point, which

is a well-made one.

Redstone

[Greyhound]

5. Excellent concept, poor choice of players. n/t

[theoldman]

6. In the real world it was the other way around.

In Europe the Catholics burned the Jews and Protestants. In India the Hindus and Muslims burned each other. Things never change.

[johnfunk]

7. Focus on the Family, Christian Coalition unleash reprisals

Focus on the Family, Christian Coalition unleash reprisals
Burnings reported as Dixie strife deepens

By Jerry Swaggert, Washington Post | November 25, 2006

LYNCHBURG -- In a wave of reprisal killings, Focus on the Family militiamen torched or sprayed gunfire at Christian Coalition-aligned churches in Lynchburg and other parts of Virginia yesterday, defying a government curfew and propelling the country further toward full-scale civil war.

The exacting of revenge for the deaths of more than 200 FOF members on Thursday came as powerful politicians linked to radical Evangelical cleric Ralph Reed threatened to pull out of the Confederate States' coalition government if Prime Minister Newt Gingrich attends a scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Montreal Canada.

A boycott by loyalists of Reed, on whom Gingrich relies for political support, could upend the Confederacy's fragile unity government.

Yesterday's attacks illustrated the Confederate Defense and Security Forces' inability to rein in violence, at a time when Russian leaders want them to take greater responsibility for the country's security, a vital benchmark for any strategy to withdraw Russian troops.

Click on link above to read original...

[MasonJar]

8. I think the point is that the two groups have different religious

interpretations...the two he picks are irrelevant to his point and shouldn't be taken as a slam at the Jewish or the Catholic theology. The point is obviously the debacle in Iraq of Bush/US creation. We Dems have to take some of the blame because we did not stop the idiot-son and his cabal. If it had been a Bill Clinton or an Al Gore or a John Kerry pre-emptive war, you can bet your palace that the Rethugs would have stopped it with a flame-throwing vitriol of elephantine proportions.

[papau]

10. Militant atheists Attack! - Plausible based on DU - could be a midnight movie. n/t

n/t

[Trajan]

9. A perfect comparison ...

From Gibbon's 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' : http://ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/decline.html

http://ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume2/chap47.htm#Tyranny

(RE: Cyril of Alexandria)

His Tyranny, A.D. 413,414,415, etc
The prize was not unworthy of his ambition. At a distance from the court, and at the head of an immense capital, the patriarch, as he was now styled, of Alexandria had gradually usurped the state and authority of a civil magistrate. The public and private charities of the city were blindly obeyed by his numerous and fanatic parabolani , (24) familiarized in their daily office with scenes of death; and the praefects of Egypt were awed or provoked by the temporal power of these Christian pontiffs. Ardent in the prosecution of heresy, Cyril auspiciously opened his reign by oppressing the Novatians, the most innocent and harmless of the sectaries. The interdiction of their religious worship appeared in his eyes a just and meritorious act; and he confiscated their holy vessels, without apprehending the guilt of sacrilege. The toleration, and even the privileges of the Jews, who had multiplied to the number of forty thousand, were secured by the laws of the Caesars and Ptolemies, and a long prescription of seven hundred years since the foundation of Alexandria. Without any legal sentence, without any royal mandate, the patriarch, at the dawn of day, led a seditious multitude to the attack of the synagogues. Unarmed and unprepared, the Jews were incapable of resistance; their houses of prayer were levelled with the ground, and the episcopal warrior, after-rewarding his troops with the plunder of their goods, expelled from the city the remnant of the unbelieving nation. Perhaps he might plead the insolence of their prosperity, and their deadly hatred of the Christians, whose blood they had recently shed in a malicious or accidental tumult. Such crimes would have deserved the animadversion of the magistrate; but in this promiscuous outrage, the innocent were confounded with the guilty, and Alexandria was impoverished by the loss of a wealthy and industrious colony. The zeal of Cyril exposed him to the penalties of the Julian law; but in a feeble government and a superstitious age, he was secure of impunity, and even of praise. Orestes complained; but his just complaints were too quickly forgotten by the ministers of Theodosius, and too deeply remembered by a priest who affected to pardon, and continued to hate, the praefect of Egypt. As he passed through the streets, his chariot was assaulted by a band of five hundred of the Nitrian monks his guards fled from the wild beasts of the desert; his protestations that he was a Christian and a Catholic were answered by a volley of stones, and the face of Orestes was covered with blood. The loyal citizens of Alexandria hastened to his rescue; he instantly satisfied his justice and revenge against the monk by whose hand he had been wounded, and Ammonius expired under the rod of the lictor. At the command of Cyril his body was raised from the ground, and transported, in solemn procession, to the cathedral; the name of Ammonius was changed to that of Thaumasius the wonderful ; his tomb was decorated with the trophies of martyrdom, and the patriarch ascended the pulpit to celebrate the magnanimity of an assassin and a rebel. Such honors might incite the faithful to combat and die under the banners of the saint; and he soon prompted, or accepted, the sacrifice of a virgin, who professed the religion of the Greeks, and cultivated the friendship of Orestes. Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the mathematician, (25) was initiated in her father's studies; her learned comments have elucidated the geometry of Apollonius and Diophantus, and she publicly taught, both at Athens and Alexandria, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. In the bloom of beauty, and in the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused her lovers and instructed her disciples; the persons most illustrious for their rank or merit were impatient to visit the female philosopher; and Cyril beheld, with a jealous eye, the gorgeous train of horses and slaves who crowded the door of her academy. A rumor was spread among the Christians, that the daughter of Theon was the only obstacle to the reconciliation of the praefect and the archbishop; and that obstacle was speedily removed. On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader, and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp cyster shells, (26) and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames. The just progress of inquiry and punishment was stopped by seasonable gifts; but the murder of Hypatia has imprinted an indelible stain on the character and religion of Cyril of Alexandria. (27)

-snip-

So, in that one passage, 'Saint' Cyril:

1) Attacks and debilitates the Novations Sect
2) Attacks and debilitates the Jews of Alexandria
3) Ignored the authority of the Roman Prefect of Egypt, Orestes, and presided over an attack and stoning of the Roman by 500 monks.
4) When Orestes took revenge on one of the attackers, Cyril elevated the attacker to near-sainthood
5) Presided over the torture and murder of one of the great greek mathematcians of the age, a women named Hypatia, because of her non-christian, hellenic orientation and her friendly relationship with Orestes ..... (Peter the Reader led a mob that pulled her out of her chariot, dragged her to a church, and scraped her to death with 'shells' or 'tiles', eventually pulling her body apart limb by limb and feeding her to the dogs ..... The uncertainty about shells or tiles is due to the ambiguity of the translations of the account.

Such ugliness, while wrongly and dangerously implied in the OP's fictional account, is an unfortunate reality with a long tradition .....

Gibbon's work is a masterpiece ... IF you havent read it, then you must consider it an important goal ....

[papau]

11. Gibbon uses a 10Th century storyteller's version of events in 415 AD

Edward Gibbon even says it is a "controversial story", using his own atheist code words "a superstitious age" and only with research do you find out that the Lexicon of Suidas is 10th century while Cyril was patriarch of Alexandria, A.D. 412, October 18- A.D. 444.

But on DU this is presented as fact - not that your basic point about pointless fighting about faith is wrong - it isn't.

But these less that historical anti-religion snipits are best repeated in an atheist forum where they will be "appreciated". Good grief, there is enough real recordings of evil done in religions name that one would think the less substantiated stories would not be needed.

[Trajan]

12. Your claim is that the story of Hypatia is false ?

Or that of the Novations ?

Or that of Orestes ?

What of Nestorius ? .... the next chapter in the piece ?

The Suida is actually a compilation, a 'Fortress of Knowledge', which is a secondary source based on a number of other secondary and primary sources ....

I think the most reliable source is that of Socrates Scholasticus, Born in 380 AD, who authored 'The Historia Ecclesiastia', which was published on or about 440 AD. With Cyril being Patriarch in that period, and with Socrates being a christian himself, it is accurate to state that the Socrates work is a reliable representation of history from a contemporary of that era. The Socrates account has no viable detractors ... He is considered to this day an impeccable source for civil, military and ecclesiatical information from that era ...

As far as it being presented here 'as fact', EVERY utterance is suspect of being false, no matter the source or the cause. It is well known the Gibbon 'religiously' sought primary sources in his accounts, and he STILL considered to be one of the most honest and trustworthy authors, to this day ... I am NOT sure what precise source Gibbon's used, but given his dedication to honest reporting, and the fact that Socrates work was readily available to him, we can safely assume he relayed it to us, intact ..... Your claim that he spoke of a 'supertitious age' is being taken out of context: He refers to the state of mind of the population being 'in a supertitious age' ... NOT the source of his own material .... I am inclined to believe this misdirection were purposeful ....

The story of Cyril has many sources, for it is a long story with great visibility in the church proper .... The histories of his battles with the Nestorians and the Novations are not questioned by any specific group; even the catholic church advises us ....

To wit: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04592b.htm


He seems to have been of an Alexandrian family and was the son of the brother of Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria; if he is the Cyril addressed by Isidore of Pelusium in Ep. xxv of Bk. I, he was for a time a monk. He accompanied Theophilus to Constantinople when that bishop held the "Synod of the Oak" in 402 and deposed St. John Chrysostom. Theophilus died 15 Oct., 412, and on the 18th Cyril was consecrated his uncle's successor, but only after a riot between his supporters and those of his rival Timotheus. Socrates complains bitterly that one of his first acts was to plunder and shut the churches of the Novatians. He also drove out of Alexandria the Jews, who had formed a flourishing community there since Alexander the Great. But they had caused tumults and had massacred the Christians, to defend whom Cyril himself assembled a mob. This may have been the only possible defence, since the Prefect of Egypt, Orestes, who was very angry at the expulsion of the Jews was also jealous of the power of Cyril, which certainly rivaled his own. Five hundred monks came down from Nitria to defend the patriarch. In a disturbance which arose, Orestes was wounded in the head by a stone thrown by a monk named Ammonius. The prefect had Ammonius tortured to death, and the young and fiery patriarch honoured his remains for a time as those of a martyr. The Alexandians were always riotous as we learn from Socrates (VII, vii) and from St. Cyril himself (Hom. for Easter, 419). In one of these riots, in 422, the prefect Callistus was killed, and in another was committed the murder of a female philosopher Hypatia, a highly-respected teacher of neo-Platoism, of advanced age and (it is said) many virtues. She was a friend of Orestes, and many believed that she prevented a reconciliation between the prefect and patriarch. A mob led by a lector, named Peter, dragged her to a church and tore her flesh with potsherds till she died. This brought great disgrace, says Socrates, on the Church of Alexandria and on its bishop; but a lector at Alexandria was not a cleric (Scr., V, xxii), and Socrates does not suggest that Cyril himself was to blame. Damascius, indeed, accuses him, but he is a late authority and a hater of Christians.


As an atheist, I resent your attempt to relegate us to 'the back of the bus' simply because you dont like what is being said here: The Gibbon's history is a SERIOUS work that demands the attention of ALL students of humanity .... Your attempts to stifle these citations signify your unfounded disgust with any subject matter that might be critical of your belief system .... I say, too bad ... This is a FACTUAL account that can and HAS stood up to withering criticism.

Assuredly: Gibbon has weathered worse than from you, and still rules to history roost ...

[pinto]

13. Locking.

Flamebait.