The Gargoyles of Notre Dame and the Islamic Celebration of Their Destruction
The Gargoyles of Notre Dame and the Islamic Celebration of Their Destruction
By Julio Severo
The Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, France, has suffered a massive destruction by fire on April 15, 2019.
Muslim immigrants in France celebrated its destruction. Because Islam has a tradition of destroying Christian temples, was the destruction of Notre Dame a Muslim attack? According to the CBN News, “The Paris prosecutors’ office ruled out arson and possible terror-related motives, and said it was treating it as an accident.”
The European problem is that whenever there is an Islamic terror attack, European authorities are swift to rule out terror-related motives.
From a cultural perspective, Notre Dame was a massive loss to the French civilization.
From a religious perspective, it was a massive loss to the Catholic Church.
In fact, the massive religious loss has other meanings too. Because the French have abandoned the Catholic Church in very large numbers, often there are no members to support old church buildings, which are eventually demolished or transformed in mosques. The French government and the Vatican do not want to spend their money to preserve such empty old buildings.
From a Christian perspective, Notre Dame represented no loss to real Christianity, because it is a cathedral consecrated to Notre Dame, a French name whose English meaning is “Our Lady.” The Apostles of Jesus would have seen as abomination a church dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus. They would have characterized it idolatry.
From a spiritual perspective, a place of idolatry was destroyed. And the destructive fire not only destroyed the idols of Mary and other men and women. It destroyed also Gargoyles — statues of demons. Notre Dames was filled of such demonic images.
From a cultural perspective, such statues could be interesting. But spiritually, why were there so many demonic images in a “Christian” church?
The use of demonic statues in Catholic building was questioned even by Catholic saints. St. Bernard of Clairvaux was famous for speaking out against gargoyles carved on the walls of his monastery’s cloister:
“What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters before the eyes of the brothers as they read? What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, these strange savage lions, and monsters? To what purpose are here placed these creatures, half beast, half man, or these spotted tigers? I see several bodies with one head and several heads with one body. Here is a quadruped with a serpent’s head, there a fish with a quadruped’s head, then again an animal half horse, half goat… Surely if we do not blush for such absurdities, we should at least regret what we have spent on them.”
Not only Notre Dame celebrated the mother of Jesus, but History shows that after thousands and thousands of Huguenots — Protestant men, women and children — were massacred in the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day (23–24 August 1572), the French king who ordered their massacre celebrated it in Notre Dame.
So Notre Dame was marked by idolatry and celebration of massacres of Christians. What else could result from a church building with so many demonic images?
In my view, the demonic images and other idolatry symbols, including its name, should be destroyed from the famous old Catholic cathedral, because when idolatry is not destroyed, it destroys, as shown by St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.
But the motivation of the Islamic celebration over the destruction of Notre Dame was not a concern for the spiritual purification of French Christianity, because most of France wants nothing to do with Catholicism. Their ambition is to destroy the French civilization.
The only salvation for the French civilization is to accept Jesus, who can deliver the French from the demons of Islam, religion, secularism and atheism.