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Prayers.

French Bishop Frustrated Over Church Desecrations [zenit.org]

likethethief:

Christ is in our midst!!

In the longer article, the bishop mentions that some of the desecrated churches belong to municipalities and that the Church has been told so. Well, if an entity other than the Church owns the building and the Church has no control over the security of it, then it seems to me that the Church should not leave sacred articles or the Blessed Sacrament there. The clergy need to carry their articles in for liturgical functions in the same way that the chaplains did at the secular university I attended. Before and after the Liturgy, there was no trace of anything linked to the Church or the liturgical actions that would be or were taken there.

There have been similar desecrations taken at churches in my area some years ago--and we're in the middle of nowhere--and very little was done when the people responsible were brought to court. It seems to be a fact of life that we live in an age when there is no sense of the sacred and no sense of shock at this thing called "desecration." In the case I mention, a fundamentalist minister actually testified in court that way too much was made out of the break-in and desecration of the Eucharist, claiming "Roman superstition" for all the upset over a collection of communion breads.

In Christ,

BOB

Lord have mercy!!!

We Christians are probably responsible for this lack of shock, since we do not raise our voices over any desecration in the news, in Europe or in the U.S.!!

We raise our voices over desecration of houses of worship and the such belonging to Islam and Judaism in solidarity with them, but forgetting the fact that no one of another faith speaks up in solidarity with us, we don't even do it for ourselves!!

...and in Bob's case, to think that a fellow Christian said such a thing in court is both lamentable and unacceptable. How would he have felt if a precious church Bible were desecrated or if his church were desecrated, and a Catholic priest dismissed it in court...Lord have mercy on us all.

I was going to say something about such people as the 'pastor' referenced above and the followers of such types, but it is Lent and I will keep my thoughts to myself.

I've seen commentary elsewhere that the Church owns almost no property in France, if any at all... it was all nationalized at some point.

In any case, that there is no general outcry is the real desecration.

A priest friend of mine who visited France last year in the company of a fellow priestmonk and a layman gave a rather dismal report of religious life in France.It seems that there is such hostility to the Catholic Church that priests remove their collars upon exiting the church building.The only time my friends spotted any serious activity around any church was a group of Poles who had come to France for a relative's wedding!

And we need more reasons to keep the Blessed Sacrament and other sacred items in private places rather than government-owned buildings?

I wouldn't be a bit surprized if there weren't some kind of satanic influence in these heartbreaking situations. Another reason to pray that "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle..." prayer, allegedly composed by Pope Leo XIII.