Inside a place of peace and healing an elderly priest has his throat slit (possibly also a beheading or a botched beheading per some reports).
Churches are rightly called sanctuary. But for many years I have referred to mosques as “headquarters”. This is where the marching orders come from and it is from the mosques that the call to war is heard. It is not always noted by the Western ear. But it is there and it is given as nuance.
The assailants shouted out to their god. He is a foreign god, merciless, a god of war. When Islam rose as a nascent state both rabbi and priest alike fled with the clothes on their backs, physically carrying the sacred implements of the faith. This fact is noted in “Legacy of Jihad” by Dr. Andrew Bostom. This scholar of Islam also notes that it is forbidden for church bells to ring out their message of hope and reconciliation with the Creator.
The Judaic and Christian traditions cling to a doctrine of atonement for sin. But that atonement, that blood on the altar, is the blood of animals – and in the Christian faith the blood of a Savior, a man who proclaimed himself Son of God. “We” don’t need to kill “you” to satisfy the bloodlust of a vengeful god.
(Lest you be uninformed, the Isa of the Qur’an is not the Jesus of the Bible. Do not confuse the two, please. smile)
There was blood on the altar in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray. How easy was it? How easy for two assailants to attack a frail and elderly man of the cloth? Ambush and asymmetry. Did he die on the altar of his faith? Of that I am not sure. But he did not die in peace and he did not receive the comfort of last rites. But perhaps he died looking into a depiction of the face of the man he loved, the one whom he served.
“… Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Matthew 22:37
The police claim the usual unbelievable government-mandated script “Motive unknown.”
Do they think we are freakin’ stupid? I suppose if teenagers pilfer a pharmacy and steal all of the Valium and Xanax the French police will state “motive unknown”.
The motive is known. World War M. We are looking into the abyss.
The church bells should ring out in France. They should ring out from every cathedral in Paris, the parishes in hamlets tucked into the valleys, from the churches by the sea. They should ring out to honor the slain priest. But more importantly they should ring out to remind us of what will soon be lost.
It is the sound of freedom. It is a sound which will soon be drowned out by the horrible fate which awaits France.
When the news broke, I chose my title based on a belief that the priest was slaughtered at the altar. It is so…. and it was also filmed.
The Last English Prince 