Looking Forward From Notre Dame

For John, BLUF:  Not an explanation, but hope.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Grieving for Notre Dame? Turn to Nagasaki for comfort.

From The Washington Post, By Ms Meghan Kruger, Associate Opinion Editor at The Wash Post, 17 April 2019.

Here is the lede plus two:

How does one begin to dry the tears streaming down the ash-stained faces of Parisian Catholics?  To be sure, Notre Dame Cathedral is a treasure for the world, for people of all nations and creeds.  But it is first and foremost a Catholic church — where the sacraments have been celebrated for centuries, where the faithful labored more than a hundred years to erect a glorious monument to God.  To watch this sacred space burn during Holy Week — the most solemn of the Christian liturgical year — stings all the more.

Here’s one suggestion for where Paris’s grieving faithful might turn for comfort: eastward, to Nagasaki, Japan.

Nagasaki has been the heart of Catholic Japan almost since St. Francis Xavier arrived on the island of Kyushu in 1549.  By 1580, the country had an estimated 200,000 converts, many of them concentrated in the trading port that regularly welcomed their Portuguese co-religionists.

Hope is one of the three Theological Virtues.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Regards  —  Cliff