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Three Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of Tours now stand violated, their sanctuaries entered and their vessels overturned in the latest of seven such assaults within two years. The desecrators move with purpose, targeting the altars where the faithful have offered the ancient sacrifice for centuries.
These acts do not arise from random malice. They spring from the same revolutionary spirit that once sought to erase the baptism of France, the spirit that turned cathedrals into temples of reason during the Terror of 1793 and 1794.
The pattern continues because the governing powers of the present age treat the inheritance of Western Christendom as an obstacle rather than a treasure. They permit the profanation while claiming to defend tolerance, revealing that their tolerance extends only to the erosion of the old order.
The Church has always held that the house of God stands apart from common ground. The creeds affirmed by the undivided Church declare one holy, catholic, and apostolic body whose worship demands reverence for the places set apart for the mysteries.
Scripture records the judgment upon those who defile the sanctuary, from the desecration of the Temple to the warnings against those who would profane what God has consecrated. The Augustinian distinction between the City of God and the City of Man makes plain that every attack upon the visible signs of the heavenly city serves the earthly city and its disordered loves.
France once stood as the eldest daughter of the Church, its kings crowned at Reims under the sign of the Holy Spirit. The repeated violation of her parish churches measures how far the nation has fallen from that consecration and how little the present rulers value the heritage that formed their people.
The faithful remnant must therefore cease to regard these desecrations as mere crimes to be reported to indifferent authorities. They must recover the duty to guard the sanctuaries with their own presence, their own vigilance, and their own willingness to rebuild what the Desecrator seeks to destroy.
The time arrives when passive lament gives way to active defense of the household of faith. Those who love the altars of their fathers will either reclaim the ground or watch the last stones of Christian France be cast down.
