Two massive gatherings took place recently in France: an 800,000-strong Mass on September 26 hosted by Pope Leo XIV at Place de la Concorde and a nationwide student protest on October 6 over school funding that drew roughly 256,000 people across France and 56,000 in Paris.
The latter gathering escalated to violence in some areas.
“Schools set on fire. Teachers, principals attacked. Around 2,000 arrests in Marseille. Reports say the flags were in the streets. They were Algeria, Hamas’, Palestinian,” Glenn Beck says.
“One crowd, almost a million people come out to kneel. The other crowd comes to burn the buildings where children learn to read. France is not having a bad week. France doesn’t exist anymore,” he declares.
“I think there’s two Frances, and they’ve been fighting over the same house for more than 200 years,” Glenn continues.
He recounts the way the nation split after King Louis XVI was executed in 1793 during the French Revolution.
“Across the front of Notre Dame stands a row of 28 stone kings with crowns on their head. The revolution orders them down. … So the workmen haul them off the cathedral with ropes and then smash their heads off in the square. … But those kings were not kings of France. They were kings of Judah, the ancestors of Christ,” Glenn says.
Meanwhile, the revolutionaries turned Notre Dame into a “Temple of Reason”; an opera singer was put on a constructed altar as the Goddess of Reason, standing in for the Christian worship they had just banned.
“They’re having sex on the altar. It’s horrific what is happening there. … After that falls apart, the cathedral is used as a storehouse. That’s one France,” Glenn says.
The other France, he says, was “watching.”
“Somebody gathered up those broken stone heads, the faces smashed, the noses gone, and they buried them under a courtyard across town. No speech, no protest. We don’t even know who did it,” Glenn recounts.
Eight years after the Festival of Reason, Napoleon cut a deal with Pope Pius VII that allowed priests back into the churches and restored public Catholic worship.
“The most powerful man in Europe looked at his country and conceded, ‘We need God.’ You can smash the statues, but you can’t smash what people bury to keep,” Glenn summarizes.
“That’s what showed up last week [in France]. … Every expert had declared Christianity and Catholicism in France dead. I’m not sure. I think it was buried underground, waiting.”
But the statue-smashers are back with their guillotines, too, he warns.
“Many of the kids in the street have no idea what they’re tearing down any more than the mob did in 1793,” he says. “They didn’t know whose faces they were breaking, but whoever is organizing them knows exactly whose faces those are.”
For too long, France has kept its Christian roots quiet, he says. It’s why “Islam is so active over there.”
“You cannot just leave a vacuum. … It doesn’t stay empty. Whatever you refuse to pass down, somebody else will gladly pick it up. In Marseille last week, somebody did. And he was waving a different flag,” Glenn warns.
To hear his take on how America is facing the same predicament, watch the video above.
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Catholicism, France, Glenn beck, Palestinian, Pope leo xiv, Student protest, Blazetv show
