Thanks Elsie:
Posted on 04/22/2019 2:39:13 PM PDT by robowombat
The Burning of Notre Dame and the Destruction of Christian Europe by Guy Millière April 22, 2019 at 5:00 am
Barely an hour after the flames began to rise above Notre Dame -- at a time when no explanation could be provided by anyone -- the French authorities rushed to say that the fire was an "accident" and that "arson has been ruled out." The remarks sounded like all the official statements made by the French government after attacks in France during the last decade.
The Notre Dame fire also occurred at a time when attacks against churches in France and Europe have been multiplying. More than 800 churches were attacked in France during the year 2018 alone.
Churches in France are empty. The number of priests is decreasing and the priests that are active in France are either very old or come from Africa or Latin America. The dominant religion in France is now Islam. Every year, churches are demolished to make way for parking lots or shopping centers. Mosques are being built all over, and they are full.
The fire that destroyed much of the Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris is a tragedy that is irreparable. Even if the cathedral is rebuilt, it will never be what it was before. (Photo by Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images) The fire that destroyed much of the Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris is a tragedy that is irreparable. Even if the cathedral is rebuilt, it will never be what it was before. Stained glass windows and major architectural elements have been severely damaged and the oak frame totally destroyed. The spire that rose from the cathedral was a unique piece of art. It was drawn by the architect who restored the edifice in the nineteenth century, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who had based his work on 12th century documents.
In addition to the fire, the water needed to extinguish the flames penetrated the limestone of the walls and façade, and weakened them, making them brittle. The roof is non-existent: the nave, the transept and the choir now lie in open air, vulnerable to bad weather. They cannot even be protected until the structure has been examined thoroughly, a task that will take weeks. Three major elements of the structure (the north transept pinion, the pinion located between the two towers and the vault) are also on the verge of collapse.
Notre Dame is more than 800 years old. It survived the turbulence of the Middle Ages, the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, two World Wars and the Nazi occupation of Paris. It did not survive what France is becoming in the 21st century.
The cause of the fire has so far been attributed to "an accident," "a short circuit," and most recently "a computer glitch."
If the fire really was an accident, it is almost impossible to explain how it started. Benjamin Mouton, Notre Dame's former chief architect, explained that the rules were exceptionally strict and that no electric cable or appliance, and no source of heat, could be placed in the attic. He added that an extremely sophisticated alarm system was in place. The company that installed the scaffolding did not use any welding and specialized in this type of work. The fire broke out more than an hour after the workers' departure and none of them was present. It spread so quickly that the firefighters who rushed to the spot as soon as they could get there were shocked. Remi Fromont, the chief architect of the French Historical Monuments said: "The fire could not start from any element present where it started. A real calorific load is necessary to launch such a disaster".
A long, difficult and complex investigation will be conducted.
The possibility that the fire was the result of arson cannot be dismissed. Barely an hour after the flames began to rise above Notre Dame -- at a time when no explanation could be provided by anyone -- the French authorities rushed to say that the fire was an "accident" and that "arson has been ruled out." The remarks sounded like all the official statements made by the French government after attacks in France during the last decade.
In November 2015, on the night of the massacre at the Bataclan Theater in Paris, in which jihadists murdered 90 people, the French Department of the Interior said that the government did not know anything, except that a gunfight had occurred. The truth came out only after ISIS claimed responsibility for the slaughter.
In Nice, after the truck-attack in July 2016, the French government insisted for several days that the terrorist who crushed 86 people to death was a "man with a nervous breakdown".
In 2018, Sarah Halimi's murderer, who recited verses from the Quran while torturing his victim, was declared "mentally disturbed" and held in a psychiatric institution immediately after his arrest. He will most likely never face a court. On April 8, Alain Finkielkraut and 38 other intellectuals published a text saying that her murderer must not escape justice. The text had no effect.
The fire at Notre Dame took place less than three years after a "commando unit" of jihadi women, later arrested, tried to destroy the cathedral by detonating cylinders of natural gas. Three days before last week's fire, on April 12, the leader of the jihadis, Ines Madani, a young French convert to Islam, was sentenced to eight years in prison for creating a terrorist group affiliated with the Islamic State.
The Notre Dame fire also occurred at a time when attacks against churches in France and Europe have been multiplying. More than 800 churches were attacked in France during the year 2018 alone. Many suffered serious damage: broken, beheaded statues, smashed tabernacles, feces thrown on the walls. In several churches, fires were lit. On March 5, the Basilica of St. Denis, where all but three of the Kings of France are buried, was vandalized by a Pakistani refugee. Several stained-glass windows were broken, and the basilica's organ, a national treasure built between 1834 and 1841, was nearly wrecked. Twelve days later, on March 17, a fire broke out at Saint Sulpice, the largest church in Paris, causing serious damage. After days of silence, the police finally admitted that the cause had been arson.
For months, jihadist organizations have been issuing statements calling for the destruction of churches and Christian monuments in Europe. Notre Dame was repeatedly named as a primary target. Despite all that, the Cathedral was not adequately protected. A couple of young men, who entered the Cathedral at night, climbed on the roof last November and shot a video that they then put on YouTube.
Many messages were posted by people with Muslim names on social media -- Twitter, Facebook, the website of Al Jazeera -- expressing a joy to see an important Christian symbol destroyed. Hafsa Askar, a migrant from Morocco and the vice president of the National Union of Students of France (UNEF), the main student organization in France, published a tweet saying, "People are crying on little pieces of wood... it's a delusion of white trash".
French President Emmanuel Macron, who had never even mentioned the attacks on Saint Denis or Saint Sulpice, quickly went to Notre Dame and declared, "Notre Dame is our history, our literature, our imagination". He totally left out cathedral's religious dimension.
The next evening, he said that Notre Dame would be rebuilt in five years: it was a bold statement. Many commentators interpreted his words as dictated by his will desperately to try to regain the confidence of the French people after five months of demonstrations, riots and destruction stemming from his ineffective handling of the "Yellow Vests" uprising. (On March 16, much of the Champs-Élysées was damaged by rioters; repairs have barely begun.) All experts agree that it will almost certainly take far longer than five years to rebuild Notre Dame.
Macron strangely added that the cathedral would be "more beautiful" than before -- as if a badly damaged monument could be more beautiful after restoration. Macron went on to say that the reconstruction would be a "contemporary architectural gesture". The remark raised concern, if not panic, among defenders of historic monuments, who now fear that he may want to add modern architectural elements to a jewel of Gothic architecture. Again, he totally left out the cathedral's religious dimension.
Macron's attitude is not surprising. From the moment he became president, he has kept himself away from any Christian ceremony. Most of the presidents who preceded him did the same. France is a country where a dogmatic secularism reigns supreme. A political leader who dares to call himself a Christian is immediately criticized in the media and can only harm a budding political career. Nathalie Loiseau -- the former director of France's National School of Administration and the leading candidate on the electoral list of Macron's party, "Republic on the Move," for the May 2019 European Parliament elections -- was recently photographed exiting a church after mass, which led to a media debate on whether her church attendance is a "problem."
The results of French secularism are visible. Christianity has been almost completely wiped out from public life. Churches are empty. The number of priests is decreasing and the priests that are active in France are either very old or come from Africa or Latin America. The dominant religion in France is now Islam. Every year, churches are demolished to make way for parking lots or shopping centers. Mosques are being built all over, and they are full. Radical imams proselytize. The murder, three years ago, of Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old priest who was slaughtered by two Islamists while he was saying mass in a church where only five people (three of them old nuns) were present, is telling.
In 1905, the French parliament passed a law decreeing that all the properties of the Catholic Church in France were confiscated. Churches and cathedrals became property of the State. Since then, successive governments have spent little money to maintain them. Those churches that have not been vandalized are in poor condition, and most cathedrals are in poor condition, too. Even before the devastating fire, the Archdiocese of Paris stated that "it can't afford all the repairs" that Notre Dame needed, "estimated at $185 million." According to CBS News, in a March 20, 2018 report:
"The French government, which owns the cathedral, has pledged around $50 million over the next decade, leaving a bill of $135 million. To raise the rest, Picaud helped launch the Friends of Notre-Dame of Paris Foundation. It works to find private donors both in France and across the Atlantic.
"'We know Americans are wealthy, so we go where we think we can find money to help restore the cathedral,' Picaud said."
On the evening of the fire at Notre Dame, hundreds of French people gathered in front of the burning cathedral to sing Psalms and pray. They seemed suddenly to understand that they were losing something immensely precious.
Following the fire, the French government decided to start collecting donations from private individuals, businesses and organizations for reconstruction; more than one billion euros have poured in. French billionaires promised to pay large sums: the Pinault family (the main owners of the retail conglomerate Kering) promised 100 million euros, the Arnault family (owners of LVMH, the world's largest luxury-goods company), 200 million euros, the Bettencourt family (owners of L'Oréal), also 200 million. Many on the French "left" immediately said that wealthy families had too much money, and that these millions would be better used helping the poor than taking care of old stones.
For the foreseeable future, the heart of Paris will bear the terrible scars of a fire that devastated far more than a cathedral. The fire destroyed an essential part of what is left of the almost-lost soul of France and what France could accomplish when the French believed in something higher than their own day-to-day existence.
Some hope that the sight of the destroyed cathedral will inspire many French people to follow the example of those who prayed on the night of the disaster. Michel Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris, said on April 17, two days after the fire, that he was sure France would know a "spiritual awakening".
Others, not as optimistic, see in the ashes of the cathedral a symbol of the destruction of Christianity in France. The art historian Jean Clair said that he sees in the destruction of Notre Dame an additional sign of an "irreversible decadence" of France, and of the final collapse of the Judeo-Christian roots of Europe.
An American columnist, Dennis Prager, wrote:
"The symbolism of the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, the most renowned building in Western civilization, the iconic symbol of Western Christendom, is hard to miss.
"It is as if God Himself wanted to warn us in the most unmistakable way that Western Christianity is burning -- and with it, Western civilization."
Another American author, Rod Dreher, noted:
"This catastrophe in Paris today is a sign to all of us Christians, and a sign to all people in the West, especially those who despise the civilization that built this great temple to its God on an island in the Seine where religious rites have been celebrated since the days of pagan Rome. It is a sign of what we are losing, and what we will not recover, if we don't change course now."
For the moment, nothing indicates that France and Western Europe will change course.
Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
So the authorities declared it wasn’t arson before they had time to put the fire out? Hmmm . . .
Islam has wanted France since the 700s. Unlike Christianity, Islam doesn’t stop until it gets what it wants. It will take a huge army led by an El Cid to remove them now, or God’s Spirit inundating mosques and causing mass conversions.
Good article on the sad downfall of Christianity in Europe.
Wow. Not surprised. Disheartened.
Given the significant number of foreigners and illegal aliens living in Paris, I can't believe that they were not a part of that construction crew - as they are of construction crews in many areas of the US.
What would have prevented terrorists from infiltrating the Notre Dame construction crew for the purpose of sabotage by fire?
Yes, and perhaps it was an accident. That no terrorist organization is taking credit for such massive destruction of Christendom is telling. But that the authorities declared "not arson!" before the flames were doused tells me that there will be no serious investigation as to the cause.
Imagine my business is burning and the fire chiefs arrive on scene and immediately declared "Not arson!" before they even hooked up their hoses? They would be ridiculed.
This is essentially what happened at Notre Dame.
he transept and the choir now lie in open air, vulnerable to bad weather. They cannot even be protected until the structure has been examined thoroughly, a task that will take weeks.
.................................
Yet an hour into the fire, they ruled out arson.
Makes one want to fall to their knees and weep over the remaining smoldering embers of European civilization, and, realize it happened not by accident but as a deliberate act of political suicide.
Time for Crusade II.
I don't think a huge army defending Europe from Islam is in the cards. The EU is using the Islamic hordes to kill European (i.e., Judeo/Christian) civilization so that it can replace it with communism administered by the EU.
How the EU plans to get rid of Islam when the time comes is a mystery. I guess they plan to maintain their grip on the treasury and just turn off the spigot at the appropriate time.
When the Muslims riot and burn their own communities, the EU will just watch them burn.
The enemy of Islam is the same as the enemy of the EU...the man in the street who loves freedom.
Pockets of guerillas can wreak havoc on the Muslim communities and the nation members of the EU.
That is the enemy of Islamic/EU Europe.
I think the Gilets Jaunes are emblematic of the army of the future (even if they don't know it yet). They are the beginning of what must spread and grow.
The kings ruled by the divine right (of Kings) as leadership conferred upon them via the Pope and his priests. After WWI and WWII, Christianity was finished as Socialism hid the power the kings and queens behind socialist governments. In cases where the royal families were killed or disappeared the nations became communist states (Russian and China as prime examples).
Yet the Kings and royals still wield power and are still supported by the stipends of millions of Euros a year by the socialist states. Why are royal families still in power if they if they are supposedly not in power.
Fast forward to John Kerry and Barrack Obama who act like royalty still running around doing their illegal Hatch Act prohibited diplomacy.
I wrote the president this morning about the issue of Americans election representatives and not “Elites” as in Europe. I asked the president to remind the democrats and the American people that those elected are not royalty nor are they elites, but rather our leaders come form the common people.
I would urge Americans to write the President Trump about the current misunderstanding being foisted upon the American people by the democrats and the so called elites. Use your own words.
American still has Christianity. Jews and Christians are two groups of people which I am most comfortable. Shinto, Buddhism, Taoism, Shamanism (Shamanism and not to commingled with Witchcraft), are all examples of other peaceful religions. India’s different worshiping is something to see and try to understand for as many planets and stars there are Gods so numerous to count and it speaks to worship of travelers perceived to be out-worldly. The God of the Jews and Gentile may well too be similar or from a realm entirely.
The people who worship Satan and witchcraft do so against God. Islam is too set against God’s people.
The evil in the world that Islam sets against all others is sickening. Why has Prince Charles converted to Islam? Did the lost art of following The Bible cause that Englishman to bear the sin of his fathers?
Those European Royal families no longer rule but hide their rule behind socialism and thus “cast off God” as a moral authority and guiding principle.
Rant over.
THE DECADENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Note tagline.
"It is as if God Himself wanted to warn us in the most unmistakable way that Western Christianity is burning -- and with it, Western civilization."
"It is a sign of what we are losing, and what we will not recover, if we don't change course now."
"nothing indicates that France and Western Europe will change course."
President Trump and his supporters believe that America has not yet reached the point of no return, that the decadence of Western Civilization in America can be halted and reversed. This is what the Trump Revolution is all about. Pray that he is right.
GODLESS NATIONS FALL!
The death of Christianity linked to the ND fire? Nope. The death throes of Christianity goes further back than this fire. It goes back into the 15th century and possibly earlier. It goes back to the Inquisition and the Churches influence into government. It was not until the Church of England separated itself from the Vatican did separation of Church and State become a flicker of flame into revolutionaries everywhere. The Church or the Vatican was its own enemy of the people. It will be responsible for its own downfall. Islime and atheists will help it along.
As to the saying it wasn’t “arson before the fire was out” Think about it what better way to bring in donations or repair money than to never let an opportunity go to waste. Whatever the case, arson or not, the deed is done, people are donating huge sums and now the Church has its repair money.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
