LDS Church's essay on past violence

[TexanKnight]

If you think that’s what my point was, you are missing the point.

I didn’t choose Rwanda because your priest there killed ten times as many innocent men women and children as during the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

I chose it because the Rwanda bulldozed church incident is incredibly parallel to the exact hideous incidents of the MMM.

-A backdrop of extreme violence along religious lines.
-A low level member of the clergy instigates and leads the atrocity.
-Other clergy members are more distantly involved, and help the instigator escape punishment for a time, but eventually turn him over and denounce him.
-Numerous men, women, and children lured into a vulnerable situation, under the promise of protection, and then butchered.
-The instigating cleric acted without permission of the broader church hierarchy.
-However the church helped to “create the climate” in which the atrocity could occur. (Thanks, Rebeccca and Neb.)
-the church decries the instigator’s “individual act” but disclaims church responsibility. (As I think they should in both cases).

Rebecca, you say that the LDS church essay falls short of how you think a Christian religion should respond under these sort of circumstances. You are outraged that BY would protect Lee for two whole years.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/08/catholic-church-apologise-failure-rwanda-genocide-vatican

I’m not taking The Guardian’s position here. I’m just saying that the tone here sounds a lot like your harsh judgment of Young and the modern LDS church for describing circumstances of anarchy and impending civil war in mitigation for an inexcusable atrocity. I’ve searched for the Catholic church account of the Rwanda situation, and can’t find anything. I hope you can help me. I could better understand your criticism if you can show me a positive example of how a Christian church leadership should respond to a horrible betrayal and atrocity like the MMM or like the Rwanda bulldozer event.

This isn’t about competition. Not for me at least. But your church has been around for 1700 years or so, therefore I look to y’all to provide me a positive example of the rules you’ve applied to judge the church of my fathers.

still deflecting

 

[Sabacthani]

Rwanda wasn’t about religion it was about ethnicity.

OK. Do you really that makes it OK for the church to protect the very priests that turned her churches into extermination centers? To help disguise the guy that bulldozed a church with 2000 people inside, after using his position as priest to lure them in with promises of safety? If so, I disagree with you, Zaff. I don’t think the ethnic nature of the Rwanda conflict changes the moral equation at all.

 

[TexanKnight]

OK. Do you really that makes it OK for the church to protect the very priests that turned her churches into extermination centers? To help disguise the guy that bulldozed a church with 2000 people inside, after using his position as priest to lure them in with promises of safety? If so, I disagree with you, Zaff. I don’t think the ethnic nature of the Rwanda conflict changes the moral equation at all.

still deflecting…and it seems to be working.

Have you run out of defenses for MMM?

 

[Sabacthani]

Have you run out of defenses for MMM?

For someone so insistent that he never lies, you certainly make a lot of horrible misrepresentations. I never made any defense of the MMM. I said outright that it’s inexcusable.

I challenge you to quote anything that I said that’s a defense of the MMM.

I defended Young’s decision to temporarily cover up the facts until he had ended the Utah War. Like I said, keeping a killer from justice in order for two years before handing him over, in order to prevent a war and a force evacuation of Salt Lake City during wintertime is a decision that makes good moral sense. But that cover up is not the MMM, and it’s dishonest to argue that I’ve defended the MMM.

 

[zaffiroborant]

OK. Do you really that makes it OK for the church to protect the very priests that turned her churches into extermination centers? To help disguise the guy that bulldozed a church with 2000 people inside, after using his position as priest to lure them in with promises of safety? If so, I disagree with you, Zaff. I don’t think the ethnic nature of the Rwanda conflict changes the moral equation at all.

Of course it doesn’t change the moral equation. But I know a lot of people who blame religion for all of these types of situation, in their minds religion is full of hateful people who kill others for their beliefs, and it should be done away with or at the very least marginalized to the point of silence. So I like to keep it straight as to why people are fighting.

 

[TexanKnight]

For someone so insistent that he never lies, you certainly make a lot of horrible misrepresentations. I never made any defense of the MMM. I said outright that it’s inexcusable.

I challenge you to quote anything that I said that’s a defense of the MMM.

I defended Young’s decision to temporarily cover up the facts until he had ended the Utah War. Like I said, keeping a killer from justice in order for two years before handing him over, in order to prevent a war and a force evacuation of Salt Lake City during wintertime is a decision that makes good moral sense. But that cover up is not the MMM, and it’s dishonest to argue that I’ve defended the MMM.

I never said you defended. I asked if you had run out of defenses. I assumed you had since the topic keeps getting deflected to a different Church, a different country, a different culture, and a civil war.

And I make no misrepresentations. There is no need to attack simply because you have run out of anything substantial

 

[Sabacthani]

Of course it doesn’t change the moral equation. But I know a lot of people who blame religion for all of these types of situation, in their minds religion is full of hateful people who kill others for their beliefs, and it should be done away with or at the very least marginalized to the point of silence. So I like to keep it straight as to why people are fighting.

Thank you for clarifying. I agree with you. I likewise don’t think that the MMM killings or the extermination order or most of the violence against the LDS was at its heart religiously motivated. The LDS article by the OP agrees with my position. In Illinois, Carthage was jealous of Nauvoo’s economic success. The violence in Missouri started at at the polling places, and had something to do with the church coming from Ohio and New York down to a territory which was fighting over whether to become a free state or a slave state. And the Utah War started because some federal judge got embarrassed that the Utah papers poked fun of him bringing his prostitute girlfriend to court and having her tell him how to rule. The smuck set his own offices on fire and went back and told Congress that Utah was in revolt. It was all more about politics than religion. I think the MMM killings had more to do with greed. Lee and Haight coveted the Francher’s cattle. The whole argument in Cedar city came from an attempt to coerce a “fine” against the Francher party for “Blasphemy.” And after the murder lots of people in the town were wearing clothing and ribbons taken from the Francher party. It was a robbery … the area was at war and war from the time of Cain until some time after the civil war had always meant kill people and take their stuff. The constitution even has provisions for Congress to write laws on war loot. I thank God that we live in better times.

Lee and Haight weren’t the only Americans in the wild west who had the idea of dress up as indians, murder pioneers, and take their stuff. And that’s the exact opposite of a justification. I feel horrible for the poor children of the Francher party who saw their parents butchered and then saw the whole town wearing their stuff. I remember reading some journal of one of the families that took the kids in wondering why the kids wouldn’t pray with them. Are you kidding?

 

[TexanKnight]

Thank you for clarifying. I agree with you. I likewise don’t think that the MMM killings or the extermination order or most of the violence against the LDS was at its heart religiously motivated.

And the extermination order Mormons had against the folks of Missouri? I tend to believe calling this stuff religiously motivated is a huge over simplification. It was not the actual beliefs that caused the issues (until polygamy), it was the way Mormons acted when they got to wherever they were going. It was the bank scandal, it was the political ramifications when they would go to an area with only a few people and overnight become the majority, changing the political landscape entirely.

The LDS article by the OP agrees with my position. In Illinois, Carthage was jealous of Nauvoo’s economic success.

I think the economic success was only part of it. I think a lot of people had a huge problem with js building an army. They were afraid.

The violence in Missouri started at at the polling places, and had something to do with the church coming from Ohio and New York down to a territory which was fighting over whether to become a free state or a slave state.

Partly slave/free. It was also the ability, by the incredible number of Mormons who moved in, that they could get themselves elected to every position on the ballot and control everything

And the Utah War started because some federal judge got embarrassed that the Utah papers poked fun of him bringing his prostitute girlfriend to court and having her tell him how to rule. The smuck set his own offices on fire and went back and told Congress that Utah was in revolt. It was all more about politics than religion.

A huge over simplification. Once Utah became a territory, it fell under the US laws. Though BY was first Governor, polygamy and other issues became a problem. When a new non-LDS Governor was appointed, things started going bad in a hurry.

I think the MMM killings had more to do with greed. Lee and Haight coveted the Francher’s cattle. The whole argument in Cedar city came from an attempt to coerce a “fine” against the Francher party for “Blasphemy.” And after the murder lots of people in the town were wearing clothing and ribbons taken from the Francher party. It was a robbery … the area was at war and war from the time of Cain until some time after the civil war had always meant kill people and take their stuff. The constitution even has provisions for Congress to write laws on war loot. I thank God that we live in better times.

I believe it happened because it was either ordered by BY or because the firey speeches and blood atonement from BY set the mood. Many alleged that folks in party were responsible for killing Pratt. It was an act of vengeance. This was echoed by BY when he kicked over the monument at MMM.

Lee and Haight weren’t the only Americans in the wild west who had the idea of dress up as indians, murder pioneers, and take their stuff. And that’s the exact opposite of a justification.

But they were the only ones I have heard about who were religiously motivated and then blamed a whole tribe after kidnapping children. And the LDS Church, in getting acquittals in the first two trials certainly, if not an accessory before the fact, was one after the fact.

I feel horrible for the poor children of the Francher party who saw their parents butchered and then saw the whole town wearing their stuff. I remember reading some journal of one of the families that took the kids in wondering why the kids wouldn’t pray with them. Are you kidding?

I agree

 

[Sabacthani]

A huge over simplification. Once Utah became a territory, it fell under the US laws. Though BY was first Governor, polygamy and other issues became a problem. When a new non-LDS Governor was appointed, things started going bad in a hurry.

No. The nonLDS governor was appointed AFTER the MMM. Brigham resigned as governor as part of the settlement of that war.

I believe it happened because it was either ordered by BY or because the firey speeches and blood atonement from BY set the mood. Many alleged that folks in party were responsible for killing Pratt. It was an act of vengeance. This was echoed by BY when he kicked over the monument at MMM.

The whole Pratt thing is absurd. Mormon leaders, including Pratt’s brother, had been getting bumped off all the time by Anti’s, and nothing like the MMM ever happened before. The fiery speeches contributed, and the whole psychotic mood of the so called “mormon reformation” (why in blazes would you need to REFORM something that had been RESTORED is beyond me) contributed, I have no doubt. But the fact that 1/3 the US army was marching on Utah in a war declared by Congress, with no provocation, is obviously what kicked the Cedar City folks into war mode. Americans at that time viewed war as a license to kill people and take their stuff. Lee and Haight and those that followed them were Americans.

There is no intelligent discussion of the MMM without the context of the Utah war. It would be like telling the Rwanda Bulldozing church incident without mention of the Rwanda Civil War.

 

[TexanKnight]

The nonLDS governor was appointed AFTER the MMM. Brigham resigned as governor as part of the settlement of that war.

True. But that is only because BY refused to accept a replacement before.

As part of the settlement, he resigned.

 

[NeuroTypical]

Since my church is taking so much flack from you folks about actions taken in the aftermath of the MMM, it seems fair to ask you folks for a link to the Catholic Church’s statements regarding the incident Sabacthani is talking about.

Could you provide such a link? I’d like to hear about how the Catholic church goes about dealing with such things as a priest participating in a massacre in 1994, who is eventually convicted in 2006 by an international war crimes court.

I’m googling right now, but can’t really find anything by the Catholic church on this incident.

I did find this, from an earlier conviction of two nuns:

“The Holy See cannot but express a certain surprise at seeing the grave responsibility of so many people and groups involved in this tremendous genocide in the heart of Africa heaped on so few people,” said Mr Navarro-Valls.
Quoting a 1996 papal message to Rwandans, he said the Church “cannot be held responsible for the sins of its members”, and Catholics who did wrong should be called to account as individuals.

I’d like to see source links from the Vatican before I come to any conclusions on the issue.

 

[TexanKnight]

Since my church is taking so much flack from you folks about actions taken in the aftermath of the MMM, it seems fair to ask you folks for a link to the Catholic Church’s statements regarding the incident Sabacthani is talking about.

Could you provide such a link? I’d like to hear about how the Catholic church goes about dealing with such things as a priest participating in a massacre in 1994, who is eventually convicted in 2006 by an international war crimes court.

I’m googling right now, but can’t really find anything by the Catholic church on this incident.

I did find this, from an earlier conviction of two nuns:

I’d like to see source links from the Vatican before I come to any conclusions on the issue.

then don’t derail this thread. Start a new thread. The discussion deserves it’s own thread

 

[Stephen168]

The Father Athanase Seromba incident is quite similar to the Mountain Meadows Massacre incident:

-A backdrop of extreme violence along-] religious lines./-]tribal lines.** (so not a similarity)**
-A low level member of the clergy instigates and leads the atrocity.
-Numerous men, women, and children lured into a vulnerable situation, under the promise of protection.
-The instigating cleric acted without permission of the broader church hierarchy.

The differences:
2000 innocents died when buldozed inside that church, compared to 200 innocents murdered at Mountain Meadows.
This happened during our lifetimes.
-]My guess is that none of you have heard of it before./-] (so not really a difference)*
-]you are probably going to want to change the subject./-]* (so not really a difference)**
**low level members of the Catholic Church were perpetrators and victims as were Protestants. Two hundred or more priests and nuns, Tutsi and Hutu, were murdered during the genocide. Mormons were only perpetrators.
Event not hidden from Catholics.

Who was the government in Utah at the time?

 

[Sabacthani]

Since my church is taking so much flack from you folks about actions taken in the aftermath of the MMM, it seems fair to ask you folks for a link to the Catholic Church’s statements regarding the incident Sabacthani is talking about.

Could you provide such a link? I’d like to hear about how the Catholic church goes about dealing with such things as a priest participating in a massacre in 1994, who is eventually convicted in 2006 by an international war crimes court.

I’m googling right now, but can’t really find anything by the Catholic church on this incident.

I did find this, from an earlier conviction of two nuns:

I’d like to see source links from the Vatican before I come to any conclusions on the issue.

I agree. All I get from Tex and Rebecca are stonewalling and accusations of “derailing” the thread. Glad some others think my question is relevant.

I’ve actually spent about 90 minutes searching for a Vatican response on this, and I keep finding more articles and accusations of church complicity and cover-up. Like giving the bulldozer-murderer a new priestly identity in Italy.

I think there’s a time and place to temporarily suppress the truth in order to save lives, as I believe BY did when he kept the MMM under wraps for 2 years. The Catholic church may have had reason for its acts in protecting Mr. Bulldozer, but what about that murdering raping priest that’s still under protection in France?

 

[TexanKnight]

I agree. All I get from Tex and Rebecca are stonewalling and accusations of “derailing” the thread. Glad some others think my question is relevant.

I’ve actually spent about 90 minutes searching for a Vatican response on this, and I keep finding more articles and accusations of church complicity and cover-up. Like giving the bulldozer-murderer a new priestly identity in Italy.

I think there’s a time and place to temporarily suppress the truth in order to save lives, as I believe BY did when he kept the MMM under wraps for 2 years. The Catholic church may have had reason for its acts in protecting Mr. Bulldozer, but what about that murdering raping priest that’s still under protection in France?

that is dishonest. I have not done either. I have tried…even encouraged…that you startt a thread on this issue as Rwanda and alleged Catholic violence is not the topic of this thread. It is not stonewalling to encourage discussion on an appropriate thread. I understand why you don’t. You prefer to derail THIS one…and it is clear why.

If you TRULY had any intent or desire to discuss this, you would start a thread

 

[Sabacthani]

-A backdrop of extreme violence related to an ongoing civil war.
-A low level member of the clergy instigates and leads the atrocity.
-Numerous men, women, and children lured into a vulnerable situation, under the promise of protection.
-The instigating cleric acted without permission of the broader church hierarchy.

The differences:
*2000 innocents died when buldozed inside that church, compared to 200 innocents murdered at Mountain Meadows.
*This happened during our lifetimes.
*My guess is that none of you have heard of it before.-](so not really a difference)/-]Event not hidden from Catholics
you are probably going to want to change the subject.* -](so not really a difference)/-]**

Two mormons and one mormon-friendly exmormon (me) have been very willing to discuss the horrors of the MMM, the church cover up, in considerable detail. In contrast, you, Rebecca and Tex seem eager to shut up the whole Rwanda thing. Tex offered a couple extenuating circumstances, e.g. it was in Africa and during a civil war. To me the fact that you haven’t heard about it and you’re trying to quash discussion of it, suggests that it is being hidden by Catholics, i.e. by you. And hiding Father Bulldozer and blocking extradition of Brother Pistol out on France, is also hiding the story, by preventing or delaying open trial. So here again is similarity.

Who was the government in Utah at the time?

The feds had appointed Brigham Young as Governor at the time. As BY himself pointed out, they hadn’t even asked him to step down before sending an army to take him down. Because the federal judge had lied to Congress about BY being in rebellion.

My source on that, btw, was not an LDS source; it was basic PBS.

 

[Stephen168]

The Catholic church may have had reason for its acts in protecting Mr. Bulldozer, but what about that murdering raping priest that’s still under protection in France?

What is the name of the Priest, who has been found guilt in a court of law, who is free in France?

 

[TexanKnight]

fine. I will start the thread for you. I will see if your interest lies in the discussion or the derailing

 

[Sabacthani]

that is dishonest. I have not done either. I have tried…even encouraged…that you startt a thread on this issue as Rwanda and alleged Catholic violence is not the topic of this thread. It is not stonewalling to encourage discussion on an appropriate thread. I understand why you don’t. You prefer to derail THIS one…and it is clear why.

If you TRULY had any intent or desire to discuss this, you would start a thread

I’m not interested in defaming the Catholic church. You and Rebecca have claimed that the LDS church has done wrong in dealing with the MMM atrocity, so I’ve asked you to show me how a real Christian church deals with a very similar atrocity.

Besides, you know very well that if I started this as a new thread, I’d get banned for anti-Catholic propaganda, and the thread would get deleted. So again, you’re suppressing the story rather than answering the simple question: what is the Catholic church’s response on this? I don’t like using secularist sources like the Guardian when it comes to church issues; I’d much rather hear what your church has to say on it.

Please share.

 

[Sabacthani]

What is the name of the Priest, who has been found guilt in a court of law, who is free in France?

**Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka
**

From page 4:

theguardian.com/commentis…nocide-vatican

There is a Roman Catholic priest at a medieval church an hour’s drive from Paris who has been indicted by a United Nations court for genocide, extermination, murder and rape in Rwanda.

Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka was notorious during the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis for wearing a gun on his hip and colluding with the Hutu militia that murdered hundreds of people sheltering in his church. A Rwandan court convicted the priest of genocide and sentenced him in absentia to life in prison. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda spent years trying to bring him to trial.

But the Catholic church in France does not see any of this as a bar to serving as a priest and has gone out of its way to defend Munyeshyaka.

It’s not an isolated case. After the genocide, a network of clergy and church organisations brought priests and nuns with blood on their hands in Rwanda to Europe and sheltered them. They included Father Athanase Seromba who ordered the bulldozing of his church with 2,000 Tutsis inside and had the survivors shot. Catholic monks helped him get to Italy, change his name and become a parish priest in Florence.

After Seromba was exposed, the international tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, accused the Vatican of obstructing his extradition to face trial. The Holy See told her the priest was “doing good works” in Italy. Another Rwanda priest taken on in Italy is facing charges of overseeing the massacre of disabled Tutsi children.

The Vatican’s reluctance to confront the murderers in its midst is rooted in its refusal to face up to the church’s complicity in mass murder. But as Rwanda marks the 20th anniversary of the genocide, the time has come for Pope Francis to follow his own lead on paedophile priests and apologise for the part played by the clergy in turning churches into extermination centres. The Vatican should accompany a plea for forgiveness with a calling to account of priests complicit in the killing.

For two decades, the Vatican has maintained that, while individual clergy were guilty of terrible crimes, the church as an institution bears no responsibility. The Holy See would prefer the world to focus on the more than 200 priests and nuns killed in the genocide. But, while there is no doubt there were courageous members of the clergy, many Tutsi survivors regard the church as allied with the killers and culpability as beginning at the very top of the Catholic hierarchy in Rwanda.

Archbishop Vincent Nsengiyumva was so closely attached to the Hutu power structure that for nearly 15 years he sat in the ruling party’s central committee as it implemented the policies of discrimination and demonisation that laid the ground for genocide. His political affiliations left him well placed to at least try to urge the regime to stop the killing in 1994 and to have been a strong moral voice in public against the slaughter. Instead, he was incapable even of calling the massacres a genocide let alone condemning the politicians and military officers leading them. The archbishop became so compromised that witnesses said he stood by as Tutsi priests, monks and a nun were taken to be murdered.