Woman Accused of Stealing a Bible

Huff Po:

If you steal a book that famously commands you not to steal, does that drive home the point or negate it?

Fleming, 23, of Powder Springs, Ga., was arrested April 26, for allegedly stealing the good book from a Barnes & Noble in Cobb County, Ga.

She was charged with misdemeanor shoplifting, according to an arrest warrant obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Fleming was released on a $1,000 bond, MyFoxAtlanta.com reported.

However, she could have avoided the whole thing if she went to a church instead of a book store.

That’s because many churches and other groups offer Bibles for free…

Duh!

 

Precious Relics Stolen from Church

CNN:

Relics were taken from a Catholic church in Sainte Genevieve, Missouri. Police say the items may eventually turn up. CNN affiliate KSDK reports

 

Recovered: Priest’s $6,000 Stolen Chalice

 The Deacon’s Bench:

But in so many ways, it’s not something you can put a price on.

Details, from the St. Louis Review:

When he was ordained to the priesthood four years ago, Father Noah Waldman took some of the money he had saved over the years and bought himself his first chalice. The handmade vessel was commissioned by Church supplier Adrian Hamers of New York and modeled after a chalice [shown on the left] used by St. Philip Neri, a 16th century Italian priest and Father Waldman’s personal patron saint.

He paid about $6,000 for the silver- and gold-plated chalice, depleting half of his savings. And earlier this month, right before he was to leave for a new parish assignment, Father Waldman’s chalice was stolen from the sacristy of Sts. Joachim and Ann Parish in St. Charles, where he had served as an associate pastor since his 2008 ordination

The chalice, which today is valued at a little under $10,000, is one of several items that were stolen from the parish in mid-June. Several offertory boxes, containing an unknown amount of money, were burglarized, along with other items from the parish.

As the Review went to press June 27, Father Waldman confirmed that the chalice was returned to him. St. Peters Police arrested 20-year-old Sean McDonald of St. Charles County. The chalice turned up at a St. Charles jewelry store. The store owner contacted police after seeing a news report about the stolen chalice. McDonald turned himself in after learning he was a suspect in the theft.

Father Waldman explained that while he considers the theft unjust, he believes that in some way it was just simply part of God’s providence. He added that as a priest, he has a special devotion to his paten and chalice — the sacred vessels used in consecrating the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ — because of his eucharistic spirituality.

“The Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ not only touch these vessels, they are created in them,” he said. “This is the center of the eucharistic action. It’s very traditional in eucharistic devotion for a priest to have a special love for the sacred vessels, his chalice especially.”

The Officer.com has additional details:

Waldman, a convert from Judaism, said that traditionally a priest’s first chalice is a present from his parents.

But because his father had died and his mother didn’t understand the tradition, he bought the $6,000 chalice with his own savings. It is sterling silver and covered in gold and is inscribed with his name and the 2008 date of his ordination.

“That’s where the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Christ,” he explained. “It is a sacred object to us. It has a lot of sentimental and devotional value.”

Waldman said parishioners had been praying for the chalice’s return, but in the meantime, he made plans to buy a new one.

Then on Wednesday morning, Sean M. McDonald, of the 900 block of Cottontail Lane in St. Charles County, turned himself in at a Cottleville fire station after realizing he was a suspect.

The firefighters called police. McDonald admitted stealing from church donation boxes and taking the chalice, police said. He knew the entry code to get into the church because a family member is a parishioner and he had gone into the church many times himself, authorities said.

He took it to a St. Charles jeweler who paid him $100 for it. The jeweler hadn’t realized the chalice was stolen and contacted police after seeing news reports about it, police said.

McDonald was charged Wednesday with burglary and theft.

Men Charged In Bible Snatching

Huffington Post:

Police say two western Pennsylvania men mistook a woman’s Bible carrying case for a purse when they tried to snatch it from her, knocking her to the ground.

Police charged Ludwig earlier this month before he told police that it was Stephenson who physically grabbed the Bible, knocking the elderly woman to the ground. Stephenson was arrested Tuesday.

Online court records don’t list an attorney for Stephenson, and Ludwig’s attorney didn’t immediately return a call Thursday.

Police say the incident happened about 7 p.m. outside the rural Robin-dale Union Church in East Wheatfield Township, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh.

How wicked.

 

Priest in Brutal Attack Left for Dead

Right here in Cape Town!

A Constantia priest was brutally attacked after Sunday service and left for dead, locked in the church’s strongroom – and was only found on Monday morning when the church secretary arrived for work.

The attackers tried to gouge out the eyes of Father Andrew Cox, 50, and tried to break his fingers before dumping him, bleeding and dazed, in the storeroom which they locked from the outside.

But Father Andrew, of the Constantia Catholic Church, said he has already forgiven his assailants.

Cox who lives on the church property, said he heard a noise and before he knew it three people came from behind some bushes and attacked him.

Cox told the Cape Argus on Tuesday morning that the three attackers were wearing balaclavas so he couldn’t identify them. “It was dark and I couldn’t see. All I saw was a knife glinting in the moonlight.”

He said the attack happened around 7.30pm and lasted about 30 minutes. “They tried to gouge my eyes out, stuffed plastic in my mouth and they also tried to break my fingers. At one point I managed to get the knife away from them but I couldn’t bring myself to stab them.”

He said they tied him up and dragged him inside the church before they made off with R3 500 of the church’s money.

Cox said he believed it was two men and a woman that attacked him. “If they were all men then one of them, his voice hadn’t broken yet.”

He said he didn’t realise at the time that they had stabbed him in his upper left thigh and his back.

Inside the church’s storeroom, Cox lay on the concrete floor on top of his South African flag as well as the Springbok flag.

“During the night I realised that the bleeding hadn’t stopped and I spent the night praying.”

He was rescued by the church secretary when she came in at 8am on Monday morning.

Cox said he had air to breathe in the strongroom because he had asked for air vents to be put in when they built it five years ago, just in case an incident like this happened.

It was not the first robbery at the church.

“Last year we had three robberies in one week while I was away on holiday. The year before that people made off with R60 000 that was stolen after a church fund-raiser.”

The attack has been met with dismay by the Catholic Archbishop of Cape Town, Stephen Brislin.

“It’s absolutely terrible,” he told the Cape Argus on Tuesday.

“I have spoken to him. (Cox) He was obviously quite shaken, but he said he had spent the night praying, and that he forgives them.

“A priest would never fight back – and he’s one of the gentlest and kindest people I know,” the archbishop said.

Police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Andrè Traut confirmed the attack on Cox.

He said that no one had been arrested.

Traut asked if anyone had information they should contact the investigating officer, Warrant Officer Brown at 021 710 7335/47.

 

Occupiers Steal Sacred Items and Desecrated Church

Hooligans!

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.

About 60 occupiers had rolled out their sleeping bags between the pews the night before as part of their evening ritual, Rev. Brashear recalled. When they returned to the church later, following the pastor’s discovery, he issued a stern warning: “You have 24 hours to find it and to come up with an amends and to come up with a plan.
‘I’m sorry and it won’t happen again’ won’t work,” he scolded.

The artifact vanished just three weeks after a $2,400 Apple MacBook vanished from Brashear’s office. He told the occupiers that even when the 100-year-old Upper West Side church extended help to addicts during the 1980s drug scourge, no visitors touched its $12,500 sacramental instrument.

“Not even crackheads messed with that,” he said.

The pastor and a worshipper finally found the missing basin tossed into a small room connected to the church. The lid is still missing. The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.

Urinating  on a cross?!

Yes, get rid of these miscreants!

HT:  Fr Z

 

Churches left with ‘Trauma’ from Metal Thefts

More than 1,000 metal thefts occur every week across the country as the   spiralling crime blights almost every aspect of British life, particulary   churches. Here a senior figure in the Church of England describes the “trauma”.

Writes the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, in The Telegraph:

“Imagine you are a faithful churchwarden in a church in a small   industrial town. You come in to church early one morning only to find that   for the third time that week lead had been stolen from your church roof.

Imagine it’s Christmas morning in a village church in Buckinghamshire. The   priest arrives for the early service to find water dripping relentlessly   through the roof at several points.

Instead of ‘Happy Christmas’, worshippers are greeted with an urgent request   that they go and find a bucket.

Imagine another village church where a large amount of money has been raised   at considerable effort to preserve priceless medieval wall paintings. Lead   theft from the roof has meant water damaging those wonderful wall paintings   and yet more money having to be raised.

Nationally, around ten churches every day experience this kind of trauma. My   experience is that the congregations are wonderfully resilient. They declare   business as usual and get on with repairing the roof and worshipping God.   But the frustration is enormous.

Metal has been watermarked, cameras installed, alarms put are in place,   churchwardens have spent the night in churches to protect them – but still   it goes on. A whole church bell is stolen from a village near Reading, a war   memorial is removed from another church, somewhere else the thieves have   returned yet again – now they know the way on to the roof…

More here.

We’ve touched on this matter before: The stripping of British Churches. Sad.

Christmas: The Most Shoplifted Items

The most shoplifted items of the season:

While most of us are out buying holiday presents some people are getting their gifts with a five-finger discount. Ad Week is reporting that one in every 11 people walks out the door with at least one item they didn’t pay for. With shoplifting up six percent this year, retailers stand to lose a whopping $119 billion of merchandise to shoplifters in 2011. And it’s not just kids with sticky fingers—75 percent of shoplifters are adults, most of whom have jobs. We know people are hunting for holiday deals, but this amount of theft is both surprising and sad.

Ad Week spoke with loss prevention experts on why shoplifting is the highest it’s been in five years. “Most shoplifters simply succumb to temptation, “Johnny Custer, director of field operations for Merchant Analytic Solutions, told Ad Week. “But add a sense of desperation because of the economy and holiday pressures, and you have the recipe for theft soup.” Barbara Staib, a spokesperson for the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention, told Ad Week, “Seventy percent of shoplifters tell us they didn’t plan to shoplift.”

Exactly what are people stealing? Ad Week has compiled the top 10 most shoplifted items of 2011 and they’re truly bizarre.

1. Filet mignon
So many people are tucking choice cuts of meats under their jackets that supermarkets are now considered the stores with the most theft.

2. Jameson
Those with an unquenchable thirst for booze just help themselves to a free bottle of expensive liquor.

3. Electric tools
Apparently the the most common items men nab are electric toothbrushes and power tools. At least they’re fighting cavities.

4. iPhone 4
Electronics like smartphones and video games are high risk items, and one research group claims 100,000 laptops are stolen annually from big box stores.

5. Gillette Mach 4
Anyone who uses non-disposable razors knows they’re pretty expensive, so in tough financial times people don’t want to pay for them anymore.

6. Axe
The men’s deodorant and body wash we love to hate are often stolen in mass quantities and resold at flea markets and corner stores. Dial is popular amongst thieves too.

7. Polo Ralph Lauren
Clothing theft is up 31 percent since 2009. It’s hard to look good in a bad economy, so some score fresh threads the illegal way.

8. Let’s Rock Elmo
The Sesame Street toy topped the Toys’R’Us “Hot Toys” list this year, so parents are stealing this must-have toy for their kids if they can’t afford it.

9. Chanel No. 5
Who wouldn’t love a bottle of this popular woman’s fragrance? Expensive perfumes make up nearly four percent of loss in stores that carry them.

10. Nikes

As Ad Week points out, some shoppers wear flip-flops into a store, try on a pair of sneakers, and walk out wearing them. Sneaker heads will do whatever it takes to score the kicks on their wish list.

My, what a fallen world we live in. Most of these items one could so easily do without…

HT, where it says:

Nothing celebrates the baby Jesus’ birthday like a little thievery.

 

Thieves Steal Copper, Priceless Gospel from Church

Is nothing sacred anymore?

(WKBW)  -  Leaders and parishioners of Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Lovejoy were stunned to find out their parish was hit by thieves over the weekend.

Stolen were copper inlays along the rear roof of the church, along with a number of items from inside, including a copy of The Gospel that dates back to the building of the church in the 1930′s.

“I can’t fathom how somebody would do that.  Especially when it comes to the items that we use in the celebration.  This Gospel book was probably used by our founders back in 1933 that built this church.  They heard messages from the Gospel from that book,” said Father Volodymyr Zablotskyy, who heads the church.

The damage to the building is estimated at about $8,000, however the Gospel, which has an intricate cover over bronze and silver, has a historical and sentimental value to parishioners that can’t be valued.

Janet Hetzel, a 15-year parishioner of the church sums up her feelings quite bluntly.

“[It's] Really a stinking shame,” she said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Buffalo Police.

I really do hope and pray that the police catch these wicked thieves, recover the Gospel, and punish the hooligans accordingly.

 

Nun Spared Jail Time for Gambling, Embezzlement

On The Deacon’s Bench:

And it nearly landed her in jail.  Details:

Sister Marie Thornton gambled her life away playing the one-armed  bandits in Atlantic City, losing nearly $1 million she pilfered from the  coffers of upstate Iona College, where she worked as a trusted  financial officer.

Sister Susie, as she is known, was spared  three years in federal prison by a compassionate Judge Kimba Wood in  Manhattan Tuesday, after pleading guilty to one count of embezzlement.

But  the 65-year-old nun has been sentenced to a lifetime of shame, shunned  by Sisters of St. Joseph, the order she has served for 48 years. As an  act of contrition, the lying nun spends her days and nights in solitary  confinement in a small dorm-like room inside a Philadelphia convent.

She does not take her meals with the sisters, nor do her superiors  allow her to work inside the Mother house doing small clerical jobs or  even weeding the garden, according to court records and a source  familiar with the case.

She is not allowed to leave the nunnery  to visit relatives or friends or be seen in public at all. Her only  escapes are trips to her therapist and group counseling.

“She  can’t even go to the store and get milk,” the source said. “My belief is  she will never be allowed to have contact with people again.”

The  high-rolling sister holds a doctorate in education, served as an  elementary-school principal and later as an assistant school  superintendent for the Archdiocese of Newark, but there seems little  chance the order will allow her to teach again, the source said.

For  10 years, until she was caught in 2009 for stealing $850,000 from Iona,  Sister Susie would drive to the Jersey Shore on weekends, usually with  an unsuspecting relative or friend, and spend the day there.

Although she didn’t have a favorite casino, her M.O. was the same: using the college corporate credit card for chips.

One weekend she blew $10,000 on the slots. Usually it was $2,000 to $5,000 a visit, the source said.

“She  covered up the thousands she would lose by systematically submitting  false vendor invoices for reimbursement to Iona College and submitting  credit-card bills for personal expenses to be paid by Iona College,”  according to US Attorney Preet Bharara.

Read more.