Religion
NYTimes Columnist Throws Down Stunning Tribute To Slain French Priest
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New York Times columnist Ross Douthat offer a moving tribute Tuesday to Fr. Jacques Hamel, an 86 year old French priest slain in a brutal ISIS-inspired knife attack.
Fr. Hamel was saying mass at a Catholic church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen, France when two Islamists stormed the altar armed with knives to deliver a hateful tirade before savagely beheading the aging cleric. Another worshipper, a nun, was taken to a nearby hospital and remains in critical condition. French authorities shot the Islamists dead when they emerged from the church.
Douthat’s elegy animated the convulsive serpentines of modern French history, which led led Fr. Hamel through the Second Vatican Council and decolonization to his death at the hands of jihadi fanaticism in a quiet country church.
2/ Father Hamel was ordained a priest in 1958, the flood tide of post-war Catholic optimism, four years before the Second Vatican Council.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 26, 2016
6/ The French church was embattled as ever but thriving, thick w/the theological ferment ("la nouvelle theologie") that fed into Vatican II.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 26, 2016
7/ That was fifty years ago, the world of Father Hamel's youth. Imagine returning to that landscape with news of today.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 26, 2016
8/ "Father, you will grow old in a France and a Europe that have shed their empires, in a W. European church that has all-but-collapsed …"
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 26, 2016
10/ "In retirement you will assist a pastor of Congolese descent. And you will be murdered at mass by jihadists, in Rouen in the year 2016."
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 26, 2016
11/ What a strange thing history can be. What a strange thing the future is likely to be. What a strange path to a martyr's crown.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 26, 2016
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