Man Commits Suicide Inside Notre Dame

Some 1,500 visitors were cleared out of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after a man put a letter on the altar of the 850-year-old monument Tuesday, pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head.

It’s the first suicide in decades at the landmark site, Monsignor Patrick Jacquin, the cathedral’s rector, told The Associated Press.

“It’s unfortunate, it’s dramatic, it’s shocking,” Jacquin said.  The motives for the suicide, and the contents of the man’s letter, were unclear.

The Paris prosecutor’s office identified the man as 78-year-old Dominique Venner.

Venner’s blog describes him as a historian and essayist, and includes description of his involvement in the campaign against France’s new law authorizing gay marriage. In some posts he criticizes “massive immigration” and what he describes as encroaching Islam; others include historical analysis of revolution or American-European relations.

It says he fought with French forces against Algerian independence fighters a half-century ago in a war that ended with France losing its most prized colony.

Police ushered people out of the cathedral after the shooting, Interior Minister Manuel Valls told reporters from the grand stone plaza in front of Notre Dame. “We call for compassion,” he said.

“Notre Dame is the cathedral of Paris, one of the capital’s – and the country’s – most beautiful monuments, so we realize how symbolic this event truly is.”

It’s highly unusual for the cathedral, visited by some 13 million people from around the world every year, to be evacuated.

Police, the Paris prosecutor and church employees gathered inside the cathedral, while puzzled tourists crowded outside on the island in the Seine River that has been home to the cathedral since the 12th century.

The cathedral reopened for an evening service that church officials said would include a prayer for the man who committed suicide and other struggling souls.

Tuesday’s death comes less than a week after another unusual suicide in central Paris, when a man shot himself in front of a dozen schoolchildren at a private Catholic school in the French capital.

Jacquin said a few people had committed suicide by jumping from Notre Dame’s two towers, but he had no knowledge of anyone ever committing suicide on the altar. The Eiffel Tower occasionally shuts down because of suicides or attempts to jump off its ledges.

Source

UPDATE:  Topless Woman Arrested At Notre Dame Cathedral

A topless activist of the FEMEN movement was arrested inside Notre Dame Cathedral Wednesday, one day after far-right essayist and historian Dominique Vesser committed suicide in the Paris landmark.

The bare-chested woman was photographed in front of the altar, pointing a fake gun at her mouth. The slogan “May Fascists Rest In Hell” was written across her torso.

FEMEN leader Inna Schevchenko commented to Le HuffPost that the protest was a message to “anyone who supports fascism and who honored the memory of the extreme-right militant who committed suicide at Notre Dame.”

On Tuesday, 78-year-old far-right activist Dominique Venner took his own life in front of the altar inside the Cathedral. According to the Associated Press, Venner ran a blog that included pieces criticizing immigration and gay marriage.

On its Facebook page, FEMEN France called the topless activist “FEMEN’s angel of Death”…

The Cathedral is desecrated.

 

Catholic Church in France May Become Mosque

Unacceptable:

A church in the central French town of Vierzon may be converted to a mosque, as Muslims across Europe are converting empty churches to fit their faith – but some locals are worried about the threat of radicalism

Vierzon has six churches, and in order to balance the books, the diocese is selling one of them off. A Moroccan organization is in talks to convert the church of St. Eloi into a mosque, although a final decision has yet to be reached.

With a nave of 26 meters, it can accommodate 200 people and is up for sale for €170,000.

Alain Krauth, the pastor of Notre Dame de Vierzon, explained to weekly newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur, “We must keep the buildings; Vierzon has experienced a population decline in recent years, the Christian community is not as important as it used o be in the past.”

“The church is modern and easy to re-arrange – it will be easy to sell,” he added.

Father Krauth explained that questionnaires have been distributed to the community about the proposed sale. “Some of the faithful rejoice that the place will be bought by members of the Muslim community – by believers in moderate Islam – but others were offended and fear radical Islam,” the priest reflected.

With about six per cent of EU citizens today identifying as Muslim, and that number set to grow, more and more churches are set to become mosques.

Nearly 150 new mosques are currently under construction to house France’s nearly five million Muslims, who make up about 7.5 per cent of the country’s population. France is home to the EU’s largest national Muslim community.

Attempts by European governments to unite the diverse cultures and religious groups living side by side in the continent’s cities have not always been successful, with tensions remaining between the Muslim and Christian populations in many countries.

 

France: Catholic Church Prayer for Nation

Reuters:

The French Catholic Church will revive a centuries-old custom next week with an updated national “prayer for France” opposing the same-sex marriage and euthanasia reforms planned by the new Socialist government.

The prayer, to be read in all churches on Aug 15, echoes the defense of traditional marriage by Pope Benedict and Catholic leaders around the world as gay nuptials gain acceptance, especially in Europe and North America.

King Louis XIII decreed in 1638 that all churches would pray on Aug 15, the day Catholics believe the Virgin Mary was assumed bodily into Heaven, for the good of the country. The annual practice fell into disuse after World War Two.

In the text, Catholics will pray for newly elected officials “so that their sense of the common good will overcome special demands.” This would include support for traditional families “throughout their lives, especially in painful moments.”

Opposing gay adoption, it says children should “cease to be objects of the desires and conflicts of adults and fully benefit from the love of a father and a mother.”

The prayer is unusual for French bishops, who usually keep a low political profile. Church spokesman Monsignor Bernard Podvin said they wanted to “raise the consciousness of public opinion about grave social choices.”

Pope Benedict said in January that same-sex marriage threatened “the future of humanity itself.” In March, he denounced moves to legalize it in the United States, where President Barack Obama has since come out in its support.

Catholic Church leaders in England and Scotland have spoken out against gay marriage this year after Prime Minister David Cameron and the Scottish regional government both announced plans to legalize it.

FIRST PAGE OF THE BIBLE

Socialist President Francois Hollande pledged during the election campaign last spring to reform marriage laws and his government has said it would do so early next year. Opinion polls say about two-thirds of the French support gay marriage.

Defending the Church’s opposition, Lyon Cardinal Philippe Barbarin said marriage was defined at the very start of the Bible as created by God to join man and woman.

“Nobody should be surprised that we Catholics think the first page of the Bible is right, even more so than a parliament,” he told Europe 1 radio.

The Roman Catholic Church, which has 1.3 billion members worldwide, teaches respect for individual gays and lesbians but condemns homosexual acts as sinful.

Hollande has also expressed sympathy for euthanasia, which is not allowed in France, and named a commission to review whether the current law stressing palliative care for the dying needed to be expanded.

Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois discussed the issue with Hollande during their first official meeting in July. He did not oppose the review but said: “Just because one asks a question doesn’t mean one answers it positively.”

Same-sex marriage is legal in several European countries, including traditionally Catholic Spain and Portugal. It is also allowed in Canada as well as in six U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. Switzerland and the U.S. state of Oregon allow assisted suicide.

 

France’s Incredible Oak Chapel

France’s oldest tree, serves as the base for two chapels.

More here.

HT

 

Toulouse Shootings: Jewish Victims Buried In Israel

Jerusalem – A rabbi and three children gunned down at a Jewish school in France were buried Wednesday in a Jerusalem cemetery, with a bereaved mother and wife begging her slain loved ones to “come back home.”

The four were killed Monday in the French city of Toulouse when a man on a motorcycle opened fire with two handguns outside the school. Hundreds of French police descended on the suspect’s hideout in Toulouse on Wednesday, but by midday still hadn’t drawn him out after hours of gunbattles and negotiations.

The bodies of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 3, and 8-year-old Myriam Monsenego were flown to Israel early Wednesday. The families had asked for burial in Israel; the children held dual Israeli-French citizenship and the rabbi had lived in Israel for years.

At the funeral ceremony, Myriam’s eldest brother, Avishai, in his 20s, wailed and called to God to give his parents the strength “to endure the worst trial that can be endured.”

In the name of the four remaining Monsenego children, he urged his father and mother to “keep going, keep going, keep going.”

Hundreds of mourners, many of them sobbing, thronged around the bodies laid out on stretchers as eulogies were delivered. The slain members of the Sandler family had been wrapped in white prayer shawls while Myriam had been draped in black velvet.

Mourners then walked to the burial grounds. Men carried the bodies on stretchers and buried them, while women watched from behind a nearby fence.

Later, Eva Sandler, the widow of the slain rabbi, walked to the freshly covered graves of her sons and husband and laid her hands on them. “Come back home,” she cried out in French.

Israeli media reported that Eva Sandler is pregnant and had arrived in Israel with her remaining child, a toddler…

The above and more in the Huffington Post here.

In the meantime, French police have arrested the suspected jihadist shooter, one Mohamed Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin.

 

Rabbi Dead in Attack at Jewish School in France

UPDATE:  French police arrest jihadist in pre-dawn raid here.

Three young children and a rabbi were shot dead as parents dropped their children off at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, on Monday morning. The gunman managed to flee the scene on his scooter before police arrived.

Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, was on his way to drop off his kids at the Gan Rachi kindergarten, adjacent to the Ozar Hatorah school where he teaches, when he was gunned down along with his two sons Gavriel and Aryeh, 6 and 3 years old. Miriam Monstango, 8, the daughter of the head of Otzer Hatorah, was shot as well and died of her wounds shortly after.

French authorities have reason to believe that the gunman who attacked the Jewish school on Monday is the same gunman who shot and killed French uniformed paratroopers on Thursday, as well as another paratrooper four days earlier. Each of these attacks was carried out by a gunman traveling on a motorbike, and forensic analysis has determined that the same weapon has been used in all the shootings.

Source

 

The Quest for De-Baptism in France

In France, an elderly man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church. He’s taken the church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism, in a case that could have far-reaching effects.

Seventy-one-year-old Rene LeBouvier’s parents and his brother are buried in a churchyard in the tiny village of Fleury in northwest France. He himself was baptized in the Romanesque stone church and attended mass here as a boy.

LeBouvier says this rural area is still conservative and very Catholic, but nothing like it used to be. Back then, he says, you couldn’t even get credit at the bakery if you didn’t go to mass every Sunday.

LeBouvier grew up in that world and says his mother once hoped he’d become a priest. But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers. As he didn’t believe in God anymore, he thought it would be more honest to leave the church. So he wrote to his diocese and asked to be un-baptized.

“They sent me a copy of my records, and in the margins next to my name, they wrote that I had chosen to leave the church,” he says.

That was in the year 2000. A decade later, LeBouvier wanted to go further. In between were the pedophile scandals and the pope preaching against condoms in AIDS-racked Africa, a position that LeBouvier calls “criminal.” Again, he asked the church to strike him from baptismal records. When the priest told him it wasn’t possible, he took the church to court.

Last October, a judge in Normandy ruled in his favor. The diocese has since appealed, and the case is pending.

“One can’t be de-baptized,” says Rev. Robert Kaslyn, dean of the School of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America.

Kaslyn says baptism changes one permanently before the church and God.

“One could refuse the grace offered by God, the grace offered by the sacrament, refuse to participate,” he says, “but we would believe the individual has still been marked for God through the sacrament, and that individual at any point could return to the church.”

French law states that citizens have the right to leave organizations if they wish…

The above and rest here.

HT

 

Virgin Mary as Fashion Icon

In France:

 

Lyon, France — For 700 years Catholic faithful expressed their devotion to the Virgin Mary by creating an elaborate wardrobe for the mother and child, on display in a new exhibit in the French city of Lyon.

Playfully entitled “Fashion Icon”, the show explores how from the 12th to the 19th centuries, clothes were cut to adorn the Virgin, sometimes becoming objects of worship in their own right.

“When you clothe a statue you give it a powerful presence — and since the fabrics used were extremely precious, you also introduce a distance,” explained Maximilien Durand, director of the Lyon fabric museum and curator of the show, which runs until March 25.

“Clothes were cut for all kinds of statues — from great icons in sanctuaries and the mannequins used in religious processions, down to the tiny statues of Mary worshipped in convents and household chapels.”

The practice spread massively from the 13th to 15th centuries, but come the 16th century, with the Roman Catholic Church under attack from Protestant critics, the clergy started to worry the statues of Mary had become indecent.

“They were dressed like real women, like fashion icons, with real hair, wigs, even make-up,” Durand said.

In 1530, Catholic authorities ruled that the Virgin could be dressed — so long as the clothes were not too close-fitting — allowing the practice to thrive until the 19th century when the Church turned against it.

“The clothes people gave were always special, either precious or because they symbolised a key moment in their lives,” said Durand.

“Women would often donate their wedding dresses for the statues, symbolically a way of holding onto their own virginity.”

When Marie-Antoinette’s eldest daughter was born, the French queen asked her dressmaker to fashion a costume for the Virgin in Monflieres north of Paris, from one of her own dresses.

“Today it is the only surviving dress known to have belonged to Marie-Antoinette, since her entire wardrobe has since been lost,” said Durand.

 

‘Brainwashed Slave’ Suing Opus Dei

The Daily Mail:

Two members of the mysterious Catholic cult featured in film The Da Vinci Code, will go on trial today accused of holding a woman hostage as a ‘brainwashed slave’ for 16 years.

Catherine Tessier, 40, claims she was forced to work 100-hours-a-week for no wages by leaders of the Opus Dei society made famous in Dan Brown’s best-selling novel.

The woman maintains she was held captive by the ultra pious group – which is funded by the Vatican – after her parents sent her on a live-in catering course in north-east France.

But unknown to her, the so-called University and Technical Culture Association boarding school was thought to be a hotbed of right-wing belief run by Opus Dei.

Ms Tessier, now 40, is set to tell the court in Paris how she was treated as a ‘virtual slave’ after joining the college in 1985 at the age of 14. Instead of being taught catering skills, she claims she was made to work as a domestic servant for college staff.

She was allegedly made to take religious vows, followed by staff at all times, locked in her room at night and given mind-numbing sedatives…

‘They compelled me to take vows of obedience, poverty and chastity. I was then made to work 14-hour days, seven days a week, cleaning and serving.

‘The staff paid me a salary and then reclaimed money by making me sign blank cheques supposedly to pay my room and board.

‘Staff accompanied me everywhere, including on visits to the doctor when I was prescribed tranquilisers that left me senseless,’ she added…

Lawyers first took legal action that year alleging ‘mental manipulation’ and other charges, but the case had been delayed by years of legal wrangling with Opus Dei.

The Rome-based society with 90,000 members around the world has denied it ran the catering school.

It said in a statement: ‘We are not involved in the charges being brought and have nothing to be guilty about.’…

The woman is now suing Opus Dei for damages in the country’s first ever trial directly targeting the organisation, which claims not to be secretive but refuses to ever give names of its members.

The whole thing is here.

Car Knocks Over Two Tour de France Cyclists

I saw this yesterday as I while visiting my folks: The car swerved to avoid a tree and took out two contestants:

From Canada’s National Post…

Spaniard Juan Antonio Flecha crashed to the ground while Dutchman Johnny Hoogerland went flying into a barbed-wire fence.

“He was lying in the barbed wire, completely in it, in the barbs, his pants were completely off, he was completely naked,” said Michale Cornelisse, the sports director of Hoogerland’s Vacansoleil team after rescuing his rider from a ditch.

“I just saw him flying through the air. He has deep cuts in his legs, he was going at 60 kph, it was unbelievable.”

Flecha was treated on his bike for an injured elbow while Hoogerland, with his legs bloodied, crossed the line 17 minutes after the stage winner…

Not cool. But I must say, I take my hat off to Johnny Hoogerland, who carried on despite the pain. What guts and determination!