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.”
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A sad event for an outstanding witness to innocent life. At times an act of presumed compassion can offend justice, as it seems here. The tension between compassion and justice in its current application is dividing the Church. For the Church and world the balance is uniquely found in the words of Christ.
It’s too bad the journalist didn’t consider it important to ask or answer the question of why the pardon was issued. That makes all the difference in the world.
You raise the issue I too thought of. Taking her words in consideration, “I decided in favor of clemency in April of last year in the belief that the convict did not abuse the vulnerability of the children entrusted to him”, Katalin Novák may have had further information as frequently happens in such cases, such as hysteria, when abuse incites others to make exaggerated accusations. The ‘convict’ person who sought to change their testimony was not the director found guilty of sexual abuse.
Novak was a champion of the innocent, but not the sexual predator. I feel that Hungry’s autocratic PM Viktor Orban had a hand in her decision.
“On Feb. 8, two days before Novák’s resignation, Orbán had announced via his Facebook page that he had submitted a constitutional amendment on behalf of his government, making it impossible to pardon the perpetrator of a crime committed against minors”. Interestingly, any US President can pardon any criminal without cause. History doesn’t bode will for Orban.
During his FOURTH term in office Orbán’s march toward autocratic rule had been largely unopposed—at least publicly—by the leaders of the other national parties that with Fidesz made up the European People’s Party (EPP). Moreover, his increasing overtures to Russia’s Vladimir Putin did not sit well with some of Orbán’s EPP colleagues.
After winning Hungary’s 2010 election, prime minister Orban systematically dismantled the country’s democracy – undermining the basic fairness of elections, packing the courts with cronies, and taking control of more than 90 percent of the country’s media outlets. He has openly described his form of government as “illiberal democracy,”
Amazingly, our democratic form of government will face something similar in the 2024 presidential election!
I ask, how does the church view Viktor Orban and the future of Hungary and the domestic threat to our precious democracy in 2024?
God save our constitition.
“Amazingly, our democratic form of government will face something similar in the 2024 presidential election!”
No, it actually will face no such thing.
Oh? (autocratic)
I will be a dictator on day one.
I want absolute immunity, even though I did nothing wrong.
I will expand the power of the presidency.
I will clean house in the DOJ (FBI), DOD.
I will remove the US from NATO.
I expect Pence will do the right thing, or I won’t like him so much.
I am your retribution. Go home in peace, we love you, I know your pain
I will supress any nonviolent gatherings by using the military. (Marshall law).
I think Hitler did some good. I never read Mien kampf.
I see Putin, Xe and Un as brilliant men
I want to know where Nikki’s husband is? Michael Haley is a major in the South Carolina Army National Guard, which he joined in 2006. This upcoming tour in support of U.S. Africa Command marks his second active-duty overseas deployment. WOW!
And there is so much more exteme idiocy.
Hope this helps. God bless.
Oh! Don’t mention my name for fear of retrubition against my family!
Well Morgan, I wish we did have someone like Mr. Orban to choose from in our coming election but I guess we’ll just have to do the best we can with what’s available.
I don’t expect the current candidate choices will look the same by November but who knows?
Mscracker. Please read the following I clipped and reply.
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during the National Rifle Association (NRA) Presidential Forum at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., February 9, 2024. REUTERS/Leah Millis.
BRUSSELS, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Donald Trump raised a storm of criticism from the White House and top Western officials for suggesting he would “NOT DEFEND NATO allies who failed to spend enough on defense and would even ENCOURAGE RUSSIA to attack them”.
Add to that Trump’s tirade during his tenure demeaning our WWII heroes who died in combat “they are suckers and losers”. Imagine from a man who spent not an hour in the service of his country. Instead, he cowered behind a “heel spur” as reason for not serving!!!
Orban is traitor light.
Trump is a mentally deranged tyrant!