by Giulio Meotti
A photo of a sign indicating the presence of a “space of silence for Muslim prayer” in the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris has aroused the ire of Catholic faithful and conservative commentators. This is the second largest church in Paris after Notre Dame, but the most important for Catholic worship, where Dan Brown filmed “The Da Vinci Code” and which in March 2019 was set on fire.
To relaunch the controversy, Gilbert Collard, supporter of Eric Zemmour,wrote: “We await the opening in the Great Mosque of Paris of a space of prayer so that Christians can pray for their brothers persecuted in the East!”.
It was a meeting “around the figure of Mary”. There was also the recitation of the Fatiha, the opening sura of the Koran. Imams announced Mohammed. Even important personalities of the French Church made themselves heard, such as Mathieu Raffray, professor of Philosophy at St. Thomas in Rome: “Conclusion of the ‘Islamic-Christian’ meeting in Saint Sulpice: a dance with teenagers in niqabs in the choir. Sadness and incomprehension in the face of so much ridicule “.
I don’t understand this much masochism …
I don’t understand why, for the first time in 700 years, Islamic songs and suras had to resound in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence under Brunelleschi’s Dome.
I do not understand why, in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, the Koran was heard at the ceremony for Fr Jacques Hamel, killed by the ISIS terrorists whose trial is being held in these days in Paris, where they defend the Sharia law.
I don’t understand why Anglican bishops in England proposed that the coronation ceremony of the next king of England should open with the Koran.
I don’t understand why numerous mosques in France have received donations from Catholic dioceses (Tours, Auch and Bordeaux).
I don’t understand why the St Theodore Catholic Church in Cologne financed the Great Mosque.
I do not understand why, precisely in Saint-Étienne du Rouvray, Bishop Duval gave a piece of land bordering one of the churches in the city of Hamel to build the mosque there.
I don’t understand it, because if at the end of the 70s there were 200 mosques in France, today there are 2,500, a Muslim prayer hall opens every week at the rate of 50 per year and, on the contrary, the Catholic Church has only built 20 new churches in the past decade according to research by La Croix.
“Every two weeks in France a mosque is born and a church disappears,” said Edouard de Lamaze, president of the Observatoire du patrimoine religieux in Paris.
I do not understand this in the face of an Islamic world where, as in Hagia Sophia, Islamism is converting what were once great basilicas into mosques.
I do not understand it in the face of a black list of the countries that persecute Christians the most – and they are almost all Islamic countries – and of articles like the one just published in the New York Times and entitled “‘Now there is nobody’: the lament of one of the last Christians in a Syrian city”.
I do not understand this in the face of a series of attacks against Christian churches on French soil and elsewhere.
I do not understand this in the face of the killing, just four months ago, of an English Catholic parliamentarian inside a church by an Islamist.
I do not understand this in the face of Dalil Boubakeur, the imam of the Great Mosque of Paris, a “moderate”, who asked to transform empty churches into mosques.
If the alternative is this masochist of empty “dialogue” that I do not understand, go ahead with the iron battle of civilization of Eric Zemmour, the Jewish essayist independent candidate for the presidential elections. Guest of BFMTV, in front of Karim, a Frenchman of Muslim faith, Zemmour had the courage to defend the idea that his country remains that of churches rather than mosques, “for cultural reasons”.
He announced his intention to ban “mosques-cathedrals”, the large ones, so that “France remains a landscape of churches”. “In France I don’t want to hear the voice of the muezzin”, Zemmour said, because for “some Muslims” the great mosques mean “the conquest of French territory”.
I, a Catholic, stand with Jewish Zemmour and not with the Church.
With the voice of reason.