On Christmas Day, as the 10 a.m. high Mass got underway in Germany’s Cologne Cathedral, a young woman in the front row stripped off her coat, exposing her naked body, rushed to the sanctuary and climbed atop the great altar. Painted across the screaming woman’s bare chest were the words “I AM GOD.”
Josephine Witt, the protestor, was a 20-year-old philosophy student and a member of the feminist anarchist group FEMEN. Before Cardinal Joachim Meisner could begin the prayers of the Mass, she was quickly apprehended by ushers and guards and by angry worshippers, and whisked away to a waiting police car.
There are two things which irritate me about the whole shameful event—besides the exhibitionist freak show itself.
First is that the media, obviously cued in advance about the FEMEN protest, were standing ready to capture the protest on film, but no one in the media offices had the personal fortitude to warn authorities or to take any action to prevent the sacrilege within Germany’s largest …More