Tragically for Europe, history has shown that indifference only succeeds in preparing the way for totalitarianism

The European Left’s War On Christianity

by Stephen Brown

It was an attack of unreasoning rage and unrelenting hatred on one of the world’s greatest symbols of love and peace, life and hope.

On Christmas Day in the heart of Catholic Christianity, St. Peter’s Square in Rome, the leftist radical and militant feminist group, Femen, staged another of its outrageous “happenings” against its favourite target, the Catholic Church. On one of Christianity’s holiest days, a Femen member, Iana Aleksandrovna Azhdanova, a Ukrainian citizen, invaded the square’s famous nativity scene and seized the statuette of the Baby Jesus. The scandalous act occurred shortly after Pope Francis had given his traditional Christmas greeting to the crowd of faithful when many people were still present on the square.

“Femen’s website says the woman was protesting as part of its anti-clerical ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ campaign contesting religions’ “maniacal desire to control women’s fertility’,” reported Reuters.

Femen originated in Ukraine in 2008 where it opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Orthodox Church, which it regards as Putin’s ally. The women’s rights group, international in membership, is perhaps most famously known for performing their protests, or “happenings,” as it calls them, bare-breasted.

Azhdanova was no exception. After removing her shirt, she appeared topless in the creche with the words “God is woman” written in English on her exposed chest. At other ‘happenings’, onlookers have been treated to such aggressive slogans as ‘my body is my weapon’, ‘religion is slavery’, ‘God is dead’, ‘f**k church’, and ‘women’s rights first’.

Fortunately, a Vatican policeman was able to stop Azhdanova and recover the statuette before she could carry it off. He led her away, covering her nakedness with his policeman’s cloak. Azhdanova was arrested by Vatican authorities and accused her of “vilification of religion, obscene acts in public and theft,” was later released freed.

“[The group has] intentionally, repeatedly and gravely violated the right of the faithful to see their legitimate religious convictions respected,” said Father Frederico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman.

While much attention has been paid to the danger creeping Islamisation presents to European societies, the threat militant secular humanism poses to Western civilization is sometimes overlooked. It is largely this leftist secularism, however, that is responsible for having pushed Christianity in Western Europe out of the public space and the marketplace of ideas to society’s fringes, by such measures as banning Christian symbols in the classrooms and nativity scenes in public buildings, among others.

This impulse to de-Christianise Europe is so strong and has enjoyed such success over the past decades that the European Union’s constitution does not even recognise the continent’s Christian roots. As a result, exposure to Christianity is now confined primarily to the churches, where, the left hopes, it will atrophy.

But even in its holy sanctuaries, Christianity is not safe from the radical left. Militant atheists are violating, even physically invading, churches and other sacred Christian places to erase Europe’s last ties to the religion that formed it. And the Femen are the best known storm troopers of this sacrilegious movement.

Nowhere in Europe has Femen conducted its anti-Catholic campaign more vigorously and “gravely and repeatedly violated” the rights and “legitimate religious convictions” of the Catholic faithful than in France, where it is now based. The reason for this is that there exists among the French left a greater tolerance than in other European countries for anti-Christian acts that dates back to the French Revolution. During that great upheaval, churches and cathedrals, such as Paris’s famous Notre Dame, were turned into ‘Temples of Reason’ to reflect the new atheistic thinking. And ceremonies celebrating the revolutionaries’ new goddess, Reason, replaced the traditional mass.

This long, two hundred-year history of anti-Catholicism and anti-clericalism is responsible for producing in France the current environment of intolerance towards Christianity. This intolerance, found especially among leftist and liberal political politicians and media elites, in turn, has been conducive to Femen’s anti-Christian activities.

......................

Read more: www.frontpagemag.com