The Ashes of the Nativity

The crèche in a French cathedral was set on fire last Friday night, largely destroying it. As the bishop responsible for the cathedral put it, “silly youngsters” may have been at fault.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for translating this report from France Bleu:

Saint-Etienne: Crèche of the St. Charles Cathedral burned down

by David Valverde
January 7, 2017

Arson destroyed the Christmas crèche of the Cathedral in Saint-Etienne on Friday night. The flames were partially extinguished with the holy water.

It was obviously a deliberate fire that broke out this Friday afternoon in the crèche of the Cathedral of Saint Charles. The incident took place between 5:45 pm and 6:00 pm precisely, before the service at two locations in the cathedral. One or more individuals set fire to the Christmas crib. The faithful present managed to extinguish the flames with water from the holy water font. Another fire was lit under the St. Mary chapel.

This Saturday morning, alerted by social networks, many parishioners came to examine the damage. The crèche was largely destroyed, and some of the figures were broken and charred. Muslims, shocked by the news, came spontaneously to offer their help to clean. Although upset, the sacristan of the cathedral does not want to succumb to despair.

“I will immediately put the figurines in the middle of the crib with a huge bouquet of roses”.

In a statement, the mayor of the city, Gaël Perdriau, speaks this morning about “the desecration of a place of worship.” Gilles Artigue the borough chairman of the UDI [French political party, center- right, Union of the Democrat and Independents] evokes an “act of vandalism”.

The composed reaction of the Bishop of Saint-Étienne

Monsignor Bataille reacted in a statement this Saturday and in front of the microphones in the afternoon. Far from the expressions of hatred and racism visible on social networks, the Bishop of Saint-Étienne wished to soothe emotions:

“The gesture is painful but the act itself is quite limited in the sense that it is just the crib and the figures. It is the symbol of the crib which is particularly strong for us Christians at this time of Christmas. This may well be an act of silly youngsters, as often happens, and then the nursery is a bit tempting: there is straw, so we are going to set it on fire. Last year in my previous diocese we had the same situation… Perhaps a malicious act, a little more serious? It’s going to be up to the police to define it, maybe with the cameras. In any case, it attracts attention, because there is this sensitivity in our country at this time, but concerning motivation, I am not sure that the act has such a weight.”

14 thoughts on “The Ashes of the Nativity

  1. A good test of this emotion is to throw a moltov at a local mosque or burn the “holy” koran. Let us ponder the different reactions.

    • A “silly” young man in Bristol last year “desecrated” a mosque
      With a bacon rasher/sandwich and was convicted to a one-year prison sentence where he subsequently died in circumstances yet unknown!

      These Stupid Bishops ( And Hollywood luvvies like Meryl Streep ) are as dangerous as the immigrants they protect.

      They should just do their own job, protect your own flock, make your film, take the money and SHUT THE HELL UP!

      Their lunatic, liberal, open border, safe space nonsense will hopefully come back and bite them in the future and not some other some poor soul!

    • Now there’s a real “fake news” category. The OIC often has an annual summary of attacks against mosques. They aren’t credible since none involve real damage. Bacon left at the entrance, a wrecked swing set, graffiti, and so on. In other words, nothing they’ll have to spend much money on but they get lots of publicity for being victimized. The media loves that stuff.

    • You mean “barracks” bring desecrated. It is the strangest weirdest most bizarre thing to see the living dead Europeans non-response. Before the western EU countries contracted the Muslim sickness any threat or perpetrator would have been swatted without a second thought. Unimaginable in Churchill’s day. We think too much. Thinking can be a mental disease.

    • ‘The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is keeping them ignorant’

  2. “The war on Christianity rages on.” Facilitated, encouraged, recommended by YES OUR UNChristian Traitors.

  3. There will be a Judgement Day! The occupant of the burnt out manger promised it!
    Woe to those who don’t believe it!

  4. It must, in all conscience, be noted that, in the immediate aftermath of this insult to Christianity, there were no dead bodies, and that ‘Muslims, shocked by the news, came spontaneously to offer their help to clean.’

    The Bishop’s sad but impeccable response of decent Christian forbearance was admirable.

    Tragically, the militant heritage of Islam will continue to drive it’s juggernaut of jihad indiscriminately over the helpless bodies of Christians and any milder followers of the Moslem faith – as it also will over those of all Western secularists – crushing any humane and rational stand.

    We are being driven, will ye or nil ye, down into the Pit with these creatures from a dim and distant past who, like vampires, will not die. As in the last World War, we will be forced to adopt many of the same evil ways as our enemies, and perhaps worse, if we wish to survive at all.

    Against the Nazis, what we had to do was not pretty, and left us open to the accusation of hypocrisy from the Nazis themselves. But our ‘terror bombing’ and the like ruthlessness in prosecuting the war was not in the cause of a Thousand Year Reich of terror and brutality, but in the desperate hope of an eventual restoration of Peace and civilised values.

    This took some grit, and there are many who, born into the security of the sheltered life their forefathers bought at such cost to their own life and limb and peace of mind, naively condemn the awful necessities of that war against an insane ideology.

    To this day our heroes of that hour are being traduced by comfortably ignorant fools. Education seems to have surrendered its tutorial function almost entirely. People of the West have forgotten, even in the face of the ongoing strife of most of the rest of humanity, just how fragile are the blessings of Peace. Perhaps – tragically – the time has come when history’s lessons must once more be taught, and, as has usually proved necessary, these lessons will be administered in the hard school of experience.

    We are indeed a tragic species of being, just a little higher than the beasts, but still infinitely far beneath the Angels. Again it may be time for us to suffer for our defective nature.

    The Crucified Christ is truly the avatar of suffering humanity, and Christianity’s War in Heaven is the moral adumbration of our mortal travails.

    • >> But our ‘terror bombing’ and the like ruthlessness in prosecuting the war was not in the cause of a Thousand Year Reich of terror and brutality, but in the desperate hope of an eventual restoration of Peace and civilised values.

      Of course events in 1917 had nothing to do with this.

      • Forgive me, but which of the momentous events of 1917 do you refer to, in particular?

        We’re all aware that the 1914-18 War, in general, was ‘unfinished business’ as far as most Germans were concerned.

        But I’m afraid you will have to spell out for me how your somewhat gnomic statement reflects upon my view that the last World War was – as it was established to have been in international law – a ‘Just War.’

          • I’m sorry – my computer didn’t clearly indicate that there was a link.

            I’m not familiar with this revisionist history of Woodrow Wilson’s influence on the course of events during the 20th century, written by an evidently isolationist American scholar.

            Considering the recent disasters arising from US intervention across the world, I can readily understand the impulse to rewrite history from an isolationist viewpoint. However Powell’s thesis does appear to be controversial.

            I am grateful for your link to a fascinating alternative history, but, with respect, this has nothing to do with my view that a ‘Just War,’ like the last World War, is alarmingly likely to be the model for dealing with the latest global crisis facing us with the rise of Islamic extremism – unless we are very lucky, or our leaders manage at the eleventh hour to get a grip on world affairs.

            I see from the reviews of Powell’s book that he lays most of the ills of the 20th century at President Wilson’s doorstep. While many consider this view that Wilson’s role in world affairs was so far-reaching is straining credibility, I can see no reason for me to engage in the controversy.

            And I don’t suppose you wish to deny that the last thing the Nazi Party was seeking was fair play, or that Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is not as great a threat to civilisation as Hitler’s Germany. Or do you?

            Even if – straining credibility further – you lay the blame for the whole debacle of the Middle East, and the horror that has arisen and gone forth from thence to conquer, at President Wilson’s door, this surely does not alter the fact that we are where we are, and that, if we want to defend our own civilised values, we may well find ourselves engaged in another tragic struggle for survival.

            Quite frankly, anyone who can unquestioningly – and irrelevantly – cite only one very dubious fount of alleged wisdom has no reason to top it over someone else who utters what is only a pretty generally shared view of where we are heading, if we don’t get a grip very soon.

            So I hope that wasn’t a derisive sneer I detected in your ironical squib – – –

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