I noted in my March 15 commentary that the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand was bound to have a galvanizing effect on Muslim jihadists. Sure enough:
As worshipers gathered on Sunday at Roman Catholic churches across Sri Lanka to celebrate Easter Mass, the culmination of Holy Week, a wave of explosions rocked the congregations. …
A senior presidential aide said it appeared that the attacks [which killed 290 people and injured nearly 500] had been carried out by suicide bombers.
The attacks also targeted high-end hotels in Colombo, the capital, including the Shangri-La, the Cinnamon Grand and the Kingsbury.
(The New York Times, April 21, 2019)
This puts last week’s accidental burning of Notre-Dame, which we all mourned as a 9/11-like tragedy, into perspective, no?
Of course, the greater tragedy is that similar terrorist attacks have become the norm in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Somalia, and Nigeria. And they don’t even register in our consciousness, let alone evoke sympathy.
To be fair, though, Yellow Vest protesters took to the streets of Paris again yesterday, vandalizing stores and setting vehicles alight, to put the burning of Notre-Dame into perspective:
[A]fter billionaires, companies and worshipers quickly pledged more than a billion euros for the cathedral’s reconstruction, protesters’ anger appeared to have been renewed.
Trade union leaders and Yellow Vest organizers denounced the flood of donations amid the battle over the country’s stark inequalities. They said the country’s elite needed to get back to reality and support low-income workers first.
(The New York Times, April 20, 2019)
In any event, we would do well to take this Easter Sunday of renewal to consecrate our lives to our shared humanity. This will make us more mindful of the suffering of the less fortunate. Moreover, it will make us more eager to help alleviate that suffering than we are to mourn the loss of iconic buildings.
Happy Easter? How can it be?
Related commentaries:
Notre-Dame…
Yellow Vest protests…