Defiling Consecrated Ground

This year, 2025, marks 1,250 years of the German region of Westphalia, the place where a celebrated treaty was signed in 1648 which laid the legal foundations of the modern nation state. Ours is now an age of globalists, however, at least on the EU-governed continent of mainland Europe, where, at the behest of the little people’s political “betters,” all expressions of traditional national and civilizational identities are to be systematically dismantled from above—particularly that of Christianity.

This is how we ended up with a recent farcical display being staged within the (formerly) hallowed halls of Paderborn Cathedral. On May 15, a secular ceremony of thanksgiving was allowed by the area’s Catholic archbishop, Udo Markus Bentz, to be staged—seemingly without him having checked up on its content properly beforehand. While German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier stood at the pulpit and spoke of the need for “spatial and temporal orientation” in an age of profound spatial and temporal disorientation—which liberal politicians like him had helped unleash onto the world in the first place—it seems these words were insincere, at least to judge by what followed next.  

A German performance-artist group, Bodytalk, presented an extract from their musical Westphalia-Side Story, a piece of left-wing, environmentalist-related agitprop which, according to their website, bemoans how the rural portion of the region “sometimes seems like the home of the Hobbits from The Lord of the Rings” (i.e., white, conservative, German Christians). 

However, in the modern, globalist era of EU-facilitated mass immigration, demographic and cultural differences between conservatives, liberals, and immigrants will have to be ironed out somehow, which is why the musical possessed “the leitmotif of ‘Flowing Borders,’” aiming to get rural and urban areas to know one another better via the medium of song and dance. Far from being a bastion of stolid religious illiberalism, why not instead rebrand the countryside from a more “global perspective” as a potential hotbed of “animal welfare” and “sustainability,” whose farmers could shift away from their traditional role of creating food toward becoming a cadre of valuable educators in fields like “nutrition/ecology/climate change” instead?  

In practice, what this meant was two semi-naked topless men, in receipt of 79,500 Euros of public funding, together with one more-fully-clothed woman, prancing around the cathedral’s transept with scythes. Approaching the altar, which was fully laid with a cross and six candles, the trio produced not a holy chalice containing blessed wine or bread but a profane metal bowl from which they scooped out plucked chickens dressed in diapers. These poultry items were then juggled about in midair whilst Bodytalk sang the words “meat is meat” to the tune of Live Is Life, a 1984 hit single by the Austrian soft-rock giants Opus. As far as can be told, this was meant to discourage factory farming, or to promote veganism, or something. Who knows? 

Whatever its message actually was, President Steinmeier enthusiastically applauded it; but, once footage of the performance spread online, the ordinary Catholic population of Germany did not. A petition condemning the event as “disturbing, blasphemous and profane” has gained over 26,000 signatures, demanding Archbishop Bentz reconsecrate the cathedral and condemning him for just sitting there in silence and watching events unfold. After all, as the display appeared to be an inverted parody of the Eucharist (whether intentionally or not), wouldn’t this rather imply the archbishop had just willingly attended a form of Black Mass?

Bentz and the cathedral canons have since apologized, condemning the show as disrespectful. But the question still remains: even if their carelessness meant they didn’t know precisely what was going to unfold that day, why didn’t they try to stop it once proceedings had begun? Yes, it would have been exceedingly socially embarrassing for them to have done so, but you may have thought the continued sanctity of the cathedral’s interior would have been more important to them than considerations of personal humiliation. The sight of Archbishop Bentz marching up toward the altar and ordering the dancers to cease may actually have won him some public respect, at least from actual Catholics—who, let’s not forget, the building is really supposed to be for, not professional state-subsidized chicken-tossers.
Bentz and the cathedral canons have since apologized, but the question still remains: even if their carelessness meant they didn’t know precisely what was going to unfold that day, why didn’t they try to stop it once proceedings had begun?Tweet This

In the words of cathedral authorities’ eventual mea culpa: “The Metropolitan Chapter of Paderborn express their express regret that the performance hurt religious feelings. Such an effect was never intended and does not correspond to our claim to this place with its special religious, historical and cultural significance.”

The truly sad thing is that this statement may even have been made in all sincerity, not just with the aim of saving their own skin. There is a clear trend for facilitating unholy performances within churches across today’s West, like the time in 2023 when scantily-clad pop singer Sabrina Carpenter was allowed to parade up and down Blessed Virgin Mary Lithuanian Church in New York, acting somewhat less than a Blessed Virgin herself, cavorting amid a display of pastel-colored coffins bearing non-canonical messages like “RIP, BITCH!” on them.

As with this May’s scandal in Paderborn Cathedral, the Sabrina Carpenter debacle came about as a result of presiding church authorities failing to check out what the precise (or even vague) content of the routines scheduled to take place would be. Far worse are those times when churchmen possess full knowledge of what they will involve. 

To return to Germany itself, in response to 2018 revelations about children being abused by renegade priests in the country, the German Catholic Church decided it would be good to make amends for these crimes by publicly raping the altar of Frankfurt Cathedral. Another extremely dark performance-art piece, called Verantworch:Ich (“Responsible: I”), was staged there in 2023—in front of a large audience of clergymen. Dancers dressed as demons, representing morally fallen Catholic priests, ritually tied up young women in black bondage ribbons and sexually molested them. 

Once footage emerged, many devout believers criticized it as being “satanic,” but such critics rather missed the point. It was supposed to be satanic! Just as the pedophile priests had defiled the House of God symbolically, the Catholic custodians of Frankfurt Cathedral set out to defile it literally in revenge—in what amounted to an act of sympathetic magic (the old folk-medicine/witchcraft idea that “like cures like,” so you should temporarily hold a frog in your mouth to cure a croaky throat or suchlike).

From the Outright Satanic to the Merely Trivial

Throughout 2019, Anglican cathedrals in England drew controversy after engaging in a deluded program of attempting to entice young people back into pews by transforming such buildings into temporary funfair attractions. Rochester Cathedral, which dates back to the year 604, accepted sponsorship from a local charity, the Rochester Bridge Trust, to educate kids about their soon-to-be favorite new subject of bridges by creating a pop-up nine-hole crazy golf courseinside the cathedral nave in which every hole had a tenuous bridge-related theme.

How could Anglican authorities justify this? Extremely poorly. Bridges are great metaphors for how to live a Christian life, said Rev. Rachel Phillips, the cathedral’s Canon for Mission and Growth: “We hope that, while playing adventure golf, visitors will reflect on the bridges that need to be built in their own lives and in our world today.” 

Other British Christians disagreed, saying the “Fairway to Heaven,” as it mockingly became known, was patronizing and highly unlikely to work. Dr. Gavin Ashenden, an Episcopal bishop, called it “a really serious mistake, perhaps born of desperation,” bemoaning “the idea that people are so trivial that they can be almost tricked into a search for God by entertaining them with a golf course.” 

This same year, other Anglican cathedrals hosted such totally irrelevant attractions as giant models of the moon and animatronic dinosaurs. Norwich Cathedral, which dates back to 1096, installed a coffin-sized “Bible Box” painted with holy verses. Visitors could climb into the box “and be completely surrounded by the Word of God.” Isn’t that what a cathedral itself is supposed to be for?

Worse, Norwich Cathedral also installed a huge fifty-foot helter-skelter slide in the nave, supposedly designed “to enable people to get closer than ever before to the Cathedral’s medieval roof bosses which tell stories from the Bible.” Never heard of a ladder, then? Bishop Jonathan Meyrick slid halfway down the helter-skelter himself, stopping to deliver an actual sermon in which he honestly announced that “God is a tourist attraction” who wants people to attend His churches only to have fun. If that really is the case, Lambeth Palace should be relocated to Euro Disney immediately. 

To persons of this mindset, it seems to be impossible to conceive of ever possibly offending anyone by treating what is supposed to be a holy building in this totally irreverent fashion. To them, it isn’t really a holy building at all anymore; it’s just another neutral, postmodern entertainment space or stage, set to be exploited as and how those who hire it out for their own personal purposes see fit. 

You can see why secularist universalists like Germany’s President Steinmeier might think this way, but what are the actual priests’ and bishops’ excuses? Is a Christian cathedral still even the home of a true, living religion to these people, or is it just a giant and irrelevant dead letter written elaborately in stone?

Put it this way: They wouldn’t try and do any of this stuff inside a mosque, would they?