Paris, France, Jul 11, 2019 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- Vandalism, theft, arson and other increasing attacks on churches in France have led to debates about their causes, amid shock to the community, questions bout the perpetrators, and debates over what the attacks might mean about French culture and the place of Christianity.
“Those downplaying the vandalism, which include most leading newspapers and politicians, point to evidence that the attacks are the small-bore crimes of small-time miscreants. Those concerned that the attacks pose a more serious threat expressly dismiss that perspective,” American journalist and author Richard Bernstein has said in an essay for RealClearInvestigations titled “Anti-Christian Attacks in France Quietly Quadrupled. Why?”
Bernstein sees merit in both perspectives, putting them in the context of pressing French questions about populism, national identity, immigration, tradition, authority, and power.
At the same time, he acknowledges the deep concern of Christian communities which suffer such attacks and vandalism, even when they are not “hate crimes” properly speaking.
“Still, even if many anti-Christian acts are not hate crimes intended to intimidate a community of believers, the fact is that there are a large number of attacks on Christian sites that are sacred to many people,” he said. “Communities are shocked and made to feel vulnerable, in part by the sense that the incidents have proliferated so dramatically over the past few years, and they are taking place in virtually every corner of France: urban and rural areas, large towns and small villages alike.”
The Conference of French Bishops said there were 228 “violent anti-Christian acts” from January to March 2019.
In 2018, French police reported 129 thefts and 877 incidents of vandalism at Catholic sites, mostly churches and cemeteries. The French Minister of the Interior counted slightly fewer numbers of anti-Christian incidents that year.
Such attacks quadrupled in number from 2008 to 2019.
While France has suffered more attacks than any other country in Europe, their numbers have increased across Europe.
Some leaders downplay the attacks.
“We do not want to develop a discourse of persecution,” Archbishop Georges Pontier of Marseile, the head of the French Bishops Conference, told the magazine Le Point. “We do not wish to complain.”
In June vandals toppled more than 100 tombstones in the main Catholic cemetery in Toulouse. The incident received little national press coverage, but locals too did not want to give it attention.
In Normandy in 2016, two men who professed allegiance to the Islamic State group murdered Father Jacques Hamel while he was celebrating Mass. That same year in Paris, police thwarted Muslim extremists who attempted to blow up a car near the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Some feared anti-Christian sentiment was behind another Islamic State group sympathizer’s gun and knife attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg in 2018.
The backdrop of these and other major terrorist incidents have heightened fears that Christians would be more directly targeted.
The April 15 fire at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame shocked the world as the 19th-century roof and spire were destroyed, though the structure was saved from collapse.
As soon as the fire was reported, social media influencers and others with no presence on the scene spread speculation, rumors and even hoaxes claiming that the fire was an act of terrorism. Anonymous internet accounts as well as right-wing activists, nationalists, and white supremacists used the event to fan anti-Muslim sentiment, NBC News reported in April.
In June investigators said they had been unable to determine the cause and there was no evidence the fire was intentional. They said they would consider the possibility of negligence, including electrical malfunction or a poorly extinguished cigarette, as a cause for the fire.
Vandalism and attacks on Christian churches often appear to lack any organized coordination or shared motives.
Earlier this year, when six churches were set on fire or vandalized in one week, the perpetrators of one incident were two youths. The perpetrator in another was a 35-year-old homeless man.
Of identified perpetrators of anti-Christian attacks, more than 60 percent are minors. Many perpetrators “appear to be disaffected young people, or the psychologically disturbed or homeless, rather than members of organized groups advancing a political agenda,” Bernstein said.
“Virtually none of the reported attacks have been against people; they are all against buildings, cemeteries or other physical objects,” he added.
About 60% of vandalism incidents involved graffiti like satanic inscriptions, anarchist symbols, swastikas, or nationalist or neo-Nazi slogans. In Bernstein’s view, this “would seem to represent a kind of ugly desperate social fringe than a general growth of anti-Christian hatred.”
For Bernstein, the evidence shows attacks by Muslims “account for a small fraction of anti-Christian crimes.”
The French government itself downplays anti-Christian actions for fear of stoking anti-Muslim reaction and retaliation, though there have not been any known incidents of retaliation.
While some commentators wonder why attacks on other groups draw more attention than attacks on Christians, Bernstein attributes this to the relative historical security of Catholics, especially in comparisons to Jews who were persecuted by French collaborators with Nazis in the Second World War.
Philosopher and cultural commentator Pierre Manent suggested that many churches are targets of opportunity, telling Bernstein, “This vandalism is drawn to Christian sites because they’re less defended and present little risk, and there are a lot of them.”
Church attendance has declined and the scandals about sexual abuse of young people and children by clergy make the Church “seem a weak and easy target,” Bernstein said.
Jean-Francois Colosimo, a historian and theologian who is general director of the Editions du Cerf publishing house, said it is not “Christianophobia” but “a loss of the sense of the sacred” that is to blame.
Bernstein’s essay cited an attack in the southwest France town of Lauvar. Two teenage boys sneaked into the town’s 700-year-old Cathedral of St. Alain, set the altar on fire, turned a crucifix upside down, threw another crucifix into the nearby river, and deformed a statue of Christ.
Mayor of Lauvar Bernard Carayon told Bernstein the attack was far different than misbehavior like bathroom graffiti. He blamed “Christianophobia.”
“The two boys who set fire to the altar and defaced the statue of Christ weren’t just drunk; they carried out their attack purposefully, taking their time, and then, after they left to tell their friends what they’d done, they went back inside, no doubt to check the results,” the mayor said, contending that the Catholic Church had wrongly prioritized inter-religious dialogue and working “to avoid conflict.”
There has been vandalism and theft at the church, its pastor, Father Joseph Dequick said, but the police do not distinguish which is which. This means it is difficult to distinguish criminal theft from vandalism based in hostility to the Church.
“But when somebody turns a cross upside down, that’s an anti-Christian expression,” he said. “That represents a society that no longer transmits respect for values. It’s a loss of the sense of the sacred. It’s consumerism. Young people can do whatever they want now, have whatever they want. Where are the limits? Where are the parents?”
According to the priest, professions of atheism are fashionable and there is “a mood against the Church, against faith”
“The media are anti-Catholic. There a discourse against the Church. In France, in particular, there’s an anti-clerical feeling that goes back a long time,” the priest told Bernstein. “It’s not so much a religious argument as a political one. It’s a reaction against the moral limitations that the Church represents.”
Manent told Bernstein there is a cultural attitude that the Church is “an obstacle to contemporary life,” and this attitude “nourishes a certain hostility.”
[…]
The Archbishop asked:
“How can we find the right attitude that does not force us to take one side to the detriment of the other? How can we keep the primary focus on the victims without forever rejecting the guilty?”
Allow me:
Remove Father Dominique Spina from the priesthood for raping a boy. Then Mr. Spina can do whatever. Problem solved.
Better still:
The Archbishop could remove himself from the episcopacy, thereby sparing himself the delicate task of rescuing a rapist.
Best of all:
Pope Leo removes Archbishop Guy from the episcopacy for gross negligence to act as a spiritual father. Perhaps the Pope can find a paper pushing job for him in the Secretary of State…
Yes, the Archbishop himself should be removed, but of course will not. It is horrible to see the Church hierarchy and many priests ignore and just dance around the straightforward commands of Scripture and great Christian thinkers like St. Augustine:
Romans 1:26-27
New International Version
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
New International Version
9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a]
10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
AND SAINT AUGUSTINE
“Those sins which are against nature, like those of the men of Sodom, are in all times and places to be detested and punished. Even if all nations committed such sins, they should all alike be held guilty by God’s law” (Confessions 3.8).
This is what normal thinking Catholic men say. But when they receive Holy Orders today, some seem to think it means pardoning evil AND PRETENDING LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED. Until the Church gets real about expelling these men from the priesthood, NOTHING will be fixed. But I am beginning to think the bigger problem will be expelling these weak-minded men from the episcopate.
“Others in the end saw it as a sign of hope for abusers who had served their time and are experiencing the great trial of being totally shunned by society. For that I must ask forgiveness from the one I named and in whom I have confidence, for not having known how to find the right place to which he is entitled,” the archbishop further explained. 🤮
Speaking of “arousing suspicions,” bitter experience suggests that the Archbishop is not simply “weak-minded.” His simpering excuses are likely more than an act to survive. He chose to make a rapist his Chancellor. That’s audacious. Why? One reason would be blackmail. Another is that he and Fr. Spina are united, let’s say, at a minimum in their desire to normalize sex with children. 💋
It’s ecclesial idiocy that prompts me to make a move I’ve considered and studied
for the past few years: leaving the institutional Catholic Church and becoming
LCMS Lutheran.
How can a bishop be this incompetent and ignorant?
I think both the bishop and priest need to go.
It’s a disgrace.
In a healthy age of the Church, both would have been hung by outraged laymen.
“we have learned to look at these events first from the point of view of the people who were their victims and who suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives.”
Let us get this straight. So you contend that previously it was impossible to know that raping a child was an intrinsic evil? Or do you side with those “theologians” who say there are no intrinsic evils?
“Others in the end saw it as a sign of hope for abusers who had served their time and are experiencing the great trial of being totally shunned by society.”
Served their time?? How do criminal penalties absolve moral culpability and the need for repentance? And shunned by society? Anyone who embarrasses the Catholic Church has a great future in Hollywood.
“How can we find the right attitude that does not force us to take one side to the detriment of the other? How can we keep the primary focus on the victims without forever rejecting the guilty?”
I have an idea. Why not make an effort to discover the Catholic religion?
Too little, too late. Archbishop de Kirimel should fall on his sword and resign for even considering hiring a pedophile child rapist.
Let me get this straight. A priest who breaks the seal of Confession is automatically excommunicated, but a priest who rapes maintains his faculties and gets selected as chancellor for an archdiocese as “a sign of hope for abusers.” Maybe the latter should receive the same consequence as the former; maybe then the Faithful, to say nothing of the world at large, will believe that Church hierarchs actually care about the victims of abuse.
“For that I must ask forgiveness from the one I named and in whom I have confidence, for not having known how to find the right place to which he is entitled,” the archbishop further explained.”
What an interesting statement from the bishop. I wonder what might be the right place to which the rapist might be entitled.
This “apology” is effectively a way of saying, poor me; I made an innocent error by making an unpopular decision. But this priest is a fine man, made especially stellar as a symbol to all abusers. Yep, abusers everywhere will learn that they can become venerated if their abuse eventually becomes high profile.
We all complain about how the secular world hates the Church. But I nonetheless hope someday a prosecutor will arrest, try, and send to prison a bishop for aiding and abetting. What will it take to wake them up?
Up until quite recently in our state people who abused children that way were eligible for residency on death row.
I’m not a fan of capital punishment but it demonstrates how seriously a society takes crimes committed against minors. That seriousness seems to be lacking in this particular French archdiocese.
As with so many bishops who tolerated abuse, even in the U.S., this is not a question of
forgiveness. It is a question of competence and fitness for office.
These high clergy always hang on to office, never having the integrity
or the decency to resign.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is built upon the firm foundation of divine forgiveness. While it is a foundational truth of our faith that God’s mercy is sufficient for the atonement of all our sins, this divine prerogative does not fall within the purview of human authority. This distinction is critical when confronting grave offenses, particularly the egregious violation of a young boy by one entrusted with the sacred office of the priesthood.
Such an act is a profound betrayal of the pastoral covenant and a spiritual violence that renders a priest unfit to serve in any pastoral capacity. The dignity of the sacred office demands that such a person be removed completely from it, either to a life of perpetual penance in a monastery or through definitive removal from the priesthood. This is not a matter of human judgment superseding God’s mercy, but rather of upholding the integrity of the priesthood and ensuring the safety of the flock.
The actions of Archbishop Kirimel represent a grievous failure of pastoral duty. By choosing to overlook the deep spiritual and emotional harm inflicted upon the victim(s) and the wider community who bore witness to this sin, he has wounded the Church’s witness and fractured the trust of the faithful. Such a dereliction of office undermines confidence in the Church’s pastoral care, which is intended to be a source of healing and not further injury.
Generally, aside from lack of conviction, there seems an underlying affinity with the abuser cleric. We’ve developed into an institution in which effeminacy and same sex attraction is a commonly accepted behavior trait. Not until that’s effectively addressed does it appear it will end. How to address it in our already effeminized culture is the difficulty. Perhaps another St Peter Damian elevated to supreme pontiff.
Agree wholeheartedly, Father Morello. The cancer within the Church must be excised. We all know what that cancer is; only some have the conviction of faith to say it aloud – homosexuality.
I did not want to comment that article because what to comment? Isn’t it all clear? One does not need to be a Catholic to know how to deal with this situation. And it is so shocking to see that a Catholic (archbishop) does not know that. This is a dead end.
But I will say this: you are right, a normal man (no matter of what faith or without a faith), when he deals with such a situation, intuitively knows that he must protect the weak and abused. He even does not know that, it is an instinct which makes a man a man. All those crimes are done by men who have no true maleness. They are pathetic. It is a very small comfort for victims to know that but nevertheless it may help some: those men are pathetic weaklings.
How much longer do the laity have to suffer the abuse by priests and bishops before the laity rises up and takes each offender out into the public square and tars and feathers them? How much longer? I know that I, for one, have reached my threshold of tolerance.
Bishops who are morally corrupt cannot even understand the optics of absolute corruption. This clown should be removed from the episcopacy and forced into penance and silence.
One of the previous letter writers said homosexuality is the problem. No, homosexual acts are the problem. Homosexuality is a cross for the bearer, and if embraced as a cross can lead to sainthood. This doesn’t, however, imply that homosexuals can or should be priests. Homosexuals should not be ordained.
Thomas Heenan: Agreed. When I say that homosexuality is the problem I mean acts that are homosexual in nature and/or a disposition to make homosexuality a normative variant of sexuality which it is not. Those who do carry this burden and for whom it might be the source of grace in the struggle against homosexual acts, I would say are “same sex attracted.”