We’ll Never Have Paris

If you love history, art, beauty, romance, and God, you will appreciate the rare times in your life when all five converge. One such instance occurred to me more than thirty years ago in a little church in Dijon, France. And not even the hideous, satanic opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics last weekend can blemish the memory, only make it more precious.

I was staying with a girlfriend who was studying French at the Centre International d’études Françaises. Jenny was beautiful inside and out, hysterically funny, and wicked smart. One cold night just before Christmas, we went for a stroll around town with no destination in mind. As we neared a vintage chapel, we heard sublime classical violin music emanating from within — Michel Corrette’s Sinfonia I, A La Venue de Noël (In the Coming of Noël). Thoroughly enchanted, we went inside.

On stage sat four lovely young women playing string instruments and three young men on trumpets, conducted by an old priest. It was only a rehearsal, so the pews were empty. Jenny and I sat down and bonded. Everything gelled for me — the Christmas spirit, a gorgeous girl, and the wonderful music in a country that celebrated these blessings.

French capitulation jokes aside, I cherished France’s vital role in preserving Christianity and advancing artistic beauty. My favorite book of all time is still The Three Musketeers, the immortal tale of male camaraderie (“All for one and one for all”), romantic attraction versus sexual lust (the ultimate femme-fatale villainess, Milady de Winter), and the empiric alliance between Church (Cardinal Richelieu) and State (King Louis XIII). Affection for Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel led me further back into the history of France, to the decisive Christian victory over Islam at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD.

Having Islamicized much of Spain at the time, its Muslim conquerors expanded eastward into Frankish territory (pre-France until 987). A massive Arab army attacked the defending Frankish force commanded by Charles (later nicknamed Charles the Hammer — Martel) on the battlefield near Tours. According to the historic tome, the Chronicles of 754, “The northern people remained immobile like a wall, holding together like a glacier in the cold regions, and in the blink of an eye annihilated the Arabs with the sword.”

The great Christian triumph made France one of the great arsenals of Western Civilization for a thousand years with its mixture of spiritual and secular power. It birthed the heights of architecture culminating in the magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral, literature (Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, many others), painting (Monet, Cezanne, Matisse), music (Berlioz, Debussy, Bizet), philosophy (Descartes, Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau), and unbeatable military might. This lasted even past the fanatical bloodshed of the French Revolution and the fall of Napoleon all the way to World War I.

Yet even during World War II, in which the French Army was humiliated early on, the indominable spirit of France inspired the world through the 20th century. So much so that one scene in arguably the greatest movie ever made, Casablanca, continued to choke up audiences long after the cynical, countercultural 1960s. Of course, it’s the scene where Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), with the assent of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), drowns out a chorus of Nazi soldiers by leading a stirring rendition of La Marseillaise.

But you can’t beat something with nothing. Charles Martel defeated the Muslims at Tours in the name of Jesus Christ. In the 21st century, like most of Europe, France stopped believing in Christ. Its new gods were leftism, hedonism, narcissism, and big government, which have diminished America as well.

France ceased fighting Islamists and instead invited them in by the millions — outsiders hostile to Judeo-Christian Western values. And when the people of France voted in droves to stop them earlier this month, leftist parties united to thwart their own citizens and common sense. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Beauty’s Last Stand — TV Christmas Movies)

Five years ago, Notre Dame Cathedral burned. Whether a sign from God or another protest blow against Him hardly matters. For the cathedral inside was already mostly empty of believers, like the Catholic Church in France, reviled by socialist leaders such as President Macron and the mainstream intelligentsia.

Consequently, the demonic drag-queen freak show disparaging the Last Supper that opened the Paris Olympics on Saturday came as no surprise to us Christians, despite how badly the perpetrators hoped it would be. We’ll continue going to worship God while they damn themselves. In fact, the only shock was theirs — that enough of us disparaged them as gutless losers. And that some brave Olympic sponsors like C Spire withdrew advertising.

So, the Olympics organizers had to issue an apology. But we know that if they had any real courage, they would mock a religion that hates them and their perversions — Islam. Because if they ever did, there would soon be more headless French people than went under the guillotine in the Reign of Terror.

Jenny would have laughed at that joke. I kept in long-distance touch with her over the years. A thorough liberal who worked for PETA, she enjoyed my conservative shots at her side, even acknowledging the truth of some of them. She complimented my first two novels, Jake for Mayor and Paper Tigers, but didn’t get to read my third, The Christmas Spirit. She died of breast cancer, which broke my heart. But her sister Caroline told me that until the very end, she often spoke about that magic night we shared at the little church in Dijon. I’m sorry we’ll never have Paris.

*****

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