{"id":1649,"date":"2005-10-05T08:44:40","date_gmt":"2005-10-05T08:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-visionary.html"},"modified":"2005-10-05T08:44:40","modified_gmt":"2005-10-05T08:44:40","slug":"the-visionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-visionary.html","title":{"rendered":"The Visionary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why they smashed the altar<\/a><\/p>\n

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Destroying a church’s altar was a dream realized for one Hartselle man, who claimed his decision to confront a Decatur Catholic congregation during Mass was heaven-sent.<\/span> <\/p>\n

In an interview Monday from the visitation room at the Morgan County Jail, Adam Joseph Turgeon, 27, admitted his act of knocking over a marble altar Sunday, shortly after communion at Annunciation of the Lord, was poor judgment.<\/span> <\/p>\n

Decatur police charged Turgeon, his common-law wife Lisa Marie Wagner, 26, and their roommates Val Eugene Loughman, 20, and Loughman’s wife Emily Beth Loughman, 21, with felony criminal mischief, following the outburst at the 11 a.m. Mass.<\/span> <\/p>\n

"I woke up Sunday, went, pulled in and there it was," Turgeon said of why the group chose Annunciation of the Lord. "I had a vision. Lisa and me were tearing a church apart. That’s not what I did. I just tore up a table that people saw as an idol, kneeling before it and bowing before an idol."<\/span> <\/p>\n

The group went inside, listened to prayers and watched parishioners take communion before the outburst, Turgeon said<\/span>. <\/p>\n

"It was so monotone," Turgeon said. "There was no passion, fire, reverence. Through the prayer they were just eyeballing everyone else and saying the words. They have no heart. That’s not love. (The Bible says) Make a joyful noise unto the Lord."<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Their library visits<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why they smashed the altar Destroying a church’s altar was a dream realized for one Hartselle man, who claimed his decision to confront a Decatur Catholic congregation during Mass was heaven-sent. In an interview Monday from the visitation room at the Morgan County Jail, Adam Joseph Turgeon, 27, admitted his act of knocking over a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Visionary - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/the-visionary.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Visionary - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why they smashed the altar Destroying a church’s altar was a dream realized for one Hartselle man, who claimed his decision to confront a Decatur Catholic congregation during Mass was heaven-sent. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}