Silence and Return of Paganism in Europe

Sixty years after Nostra Aetate, antisemitism resurfaces, Churches hesitate, and Jewish communities remain fragmented in the face of catastrophe

I knew Cardinal Jean-Marie (Aron) Lustiger well. Archbishop of Paris, son of Polish Jewish immigrants who became a Catholic priest, he was a man who could not be reduced to categories. He was French through and through, discreet, magnetic, prophetic, and sometimes unbearable. Above all, he carried within him a constant “fright” – a visceral fear that antisemitism in France, dormant for decades, could one day resurface in ways more violent and more dangerous than before.

I worked with him in Jewish–Christian initiatives, helping to develop groups of dialogue and prayers (Ananie, Les Haverim for Christians of Jewish backgrounds, French and Hebrew entities). This collaboration gave me unusual access to his anguish and his intensity. I often witnessed how deeply he wrestled with the wounds of history, and how fiercely he spoke when he felt betrayal or denial was in the air. His “fright” was not theoretical; it was embodied, raw, almost unbearable to share.

When the television series Holocaust was broadcast in France, Fr. Lustiger convoked me twice. For hours, he shouted, cried, raged. He saw in it not only the memory of destruction but the reminder of what he called “local treason”: the collaboration of neighbors, the betrayal of colleagues, the weakness of structures. For him, this was not a closed chapter of history. It was a living trauma, ready to reappear. He was certain that France, with all its universalist grandeur, still carried that fracture in its soul.

Paganism Reborn

On 19 September 1996, during a visit of Pope John Paul II to Reims, Archbishop Lustiger denounced the ideology of racial inequality. L’Humanité reported his words: “It is a magnificent resurgence of the most cynical paganism and probably the most dangerous for the moral conscience of a nation… We know for more than half a century that it can be deadly. It is no longer only a harmless theory; it leads to practical judgments and horrors.”

For Lustiger, antisemitism and racism were not just political aberrations. They were theological perversions, a return to pagan idolatry. Paganism, for him, was not about ancient myths but about worshiping false absolutes: race, nation, blood, power. It could cloak itself in honesty, culture, or even religious language, but it was always deadly.

That is why he was fierce, even merciless, toward attempts to domesticate Christianity into identity politics. He considered it his spiritual duty as Archbishop of Paris to say: no one has the right to manipulate Christian faith, rooted in the image of God in every human being, for exclusion or hatred.

The Ambiguity of France

Lustiger lived the paradox of France. He embraced it totally: the Republic, its humanist culture, its grandeur of spirit. He called himself “a Pole from the “Butte Montmartre” but never spoke Yiddish or Polish. Still, he was French with all his being. And yet he knew he was not fully accepted. His Jewish origins were always part of the question.

This ambiguity extended to the Church and the State. President Chirac’s 1995 speech acknowledging French responsibility in the Vel d’Hiv deportations somehow bore traces of Lustiger’s influence. It was a breakthrough moment. Yet, it was also, in Lustiger’s own sense, a form of “revenge” against the episcopacy who hesitated, or a sign of France’s tendency to recognize past crimes without facing present realities.

France, he knew, had never fully resolved its relationship to Jews. Ambiguity remained, and ambiguity is fertile ground for betrayal.

Catholic Hesitations, Orthodox Silences

This year marks sixty years since the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate. For the Catholics, it was a watershed: the rejection of anti-Judaism, the recognition of Jews – not Israel – as (“elder”!) brothers in faith. The text was cautious. It renounced the language of “deicide” but did not fully affirm the Jewish people’s ongoing prophetic vocation. Only the Latin Church voted for it; Eastern Catholic structures largely stood aside. Supersession – the quiet conviction that Christianity has permanently replaced Israel – remains deeply woven into Catholic life.

The Orthodox Churches have moved even less. Their theological position toward Judaism remains unchanged: the Septuagint in Greek is the authentic Scripture, rabbinic tradition is hardly relevant, Hebrew of some “lesser” importance. The French Orthodox theologian Jean-Claude Larchet expressed this clearly in his recent works, arguing that Judaism and Hebrew learning have nothing to contribute to Orthodoxy. His view is not marginal. It reflects a long-standing instinct in Byzantine Christianity.

Such an attitude is increasingly untenable in a world where Hebrew has been revived as a living language, where Jewish thought is renewed within a free State of Israel, and where rabbinic traditions continue to shape intellectual and spiritual life worldwide. To dismiss Hebrew is more than a theological choice: it risks becoming a new form of anti-Judaism, an erasure of Jewish reality itself.

October 7 and the Sorbonne

Nearly two decades after Lustiger’s death, his fright takes on chilling clarity. October 7, 2024 – the largest pogrom against Jewish existence since the Shoah – was unimaginable in his time, yet exactly in line with his intuition: antisemitism would return, not in the same form as in 1935–40, but more diffuse, more global, more lawless.

In France, the shock is not only the external war, but what happens inside its own institutions. At the Sorbonne, where Lustiger once served as chaplain to Catholic students, Jews are being excluded from organizations. This “Sorbonne coup” is not a marginal incident. It is a profound sign that antisemitism has broken into the heart of French intellectual life.

Lustiger would have called it by its true name: paganism disguised as morality in the context of political failure. He would have recognized in it the same betrayal he feared, the “local treason” reappearing under new banners.

The Silence of the Churches – and of Everyone Else

It would be easy to reduce today’s problem to ecclesial silence. And yes, churches across Europe are often muted, divided, or absorbed in identity battles of their own. But the paralysis is wider.

The generation that once listened to Lustiger – his admirers, disciples, “spiritual sons” – are aging, silent, or have inverted his legacy into a proud, identitarian Christianity. State structures in France and Europe are hesitant, fragmented, sometimes complicit in unlawful actions against Jews. The protests are insufficient. Meanwhile, antisemitism grows louder, more public, more tolerated.

This general indifference is what makes the situation insane. Lustiger’s voice is absent, and the vacuum is palpable.

Fracture Within Jewish Communities

The silence is not only external. Within Jewish communities in France and Europe, fragmentation and dispute deepen the paralysis. The catastrophe of October 7 and its aftermath did not lead to unity but to louder disagreements, rival organizations, and scattered responses.

A deeper paradox underlies these divisions. European Jews cannot find a common voice on the way Jewish values themselves are being tested by the conduct of the war in Gaza. It is not genocide, but there have been grave war crimes, committed by a specific political government. Many Jews feel torn between defending Israel’s existence after October 7 and acknowledging that the war is being conducted in a way that violates the very human dignity and ethical conscience that Judaism has always proclaimed.

This is a painful fracture. For some, to criticize Israel is a betrayal; for others, to remain silent about Gaza is unbearable. The result is paralysis. The inability to speak together is compounded by the fact that the antagonism itself is religious: Hamas declared war not only on Israel but on Jews as such, on Judaism as a people and a faith. It is not only politics but religion that fuels the hatred.

Msgr Lustiger himself embodied paradox. He was the secular, laïc Frenchman par excellence, yet he carried within himself an unshakable sense of Jewish destiny. He would have recognized how dangerous it is when Jewish voices fracture just as antisemitism resurfaces with renewed force.

A Prophetic Fright

Was Lustiger rational in his fright? Perhaps not. At times, it seemed irrational, obsessive, exhausting. But prophecy often looks like excess in its own time. What seemed exaggerated then is only too clear now.

Lustiger foresaw that Europe’s crisis of faith would not end in neutrality but in violence. He foresaw that paganism, once defeated, would come back in subtler, more deceptive forms. He foresaw that antisemitism in France would reemerge, not in the same slogans, but in expulsions, exclusions, denials. And he foresaw – though he did not name it so – that disunity within Jewish communities would make the danger more acute.

Time of Resistance

After Lustiger’s death in 2007, Le Pen dismissed him with characteristic cynicism, insisting that accusations of paganism were “in no way true.” The denial continues today, in softer words and harder realities.

What do we do with his fright now? We must hear it. It was the cry of a man who loved France, the Church, and humanity, and who refused to lie about their fractures.

We are again in the time of resistance. Resistance to paganism disguised as morality. Resistance to exclusion disguised as justice. Resistance to indifference – in churches, in states, and within Jewish communities themselves.

Lustiger is “out” of today’s landscape – absent, misunderstood, even inconvenient. But his prophetic fright has become our reality. And in that reality, silence is no longer an option.