Vandalizing Religious Art isn’t Defending the Church. It’s Sacrilege.

What do all these incidents have in common? The first two are examples of sacrilege—the violation or improper treatment of a sacred object—which is something of an irony given that many champions of such thefts usually claim to be defenders of the Catholic faith. And all three are examples of resistance to inculturation, part of the process by which the faith becomes rooted in disparate cultures—and those cultures offer their own gifts in return—while preserving the unity of the universal communion of the church and the integrity of the Gospel message. That is not a scholar’s definition, mind you, but it’s the jist of it.