The Notre-Dame Incident, April 9, 1950
Four young men sneaked through the back door into Notre-Dame Cathedral, in Paris, during Easter Mass. There they quickly divested a Dominican monk of his garments, and one of them--Michel Mourre, who until that point had been a novitiate, studying to be a Dominican himself--dressed in these, then stepped out into the pulpit before an internationally convened crowd of ten thousand people. He addressed them with this sermon:
Today Easter day of the holy year under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris--
I accuse the universal Catholic Church of lethal diversion of our living strength towar an empty Heaven.
I accuse the Catholic Church of swindling.
I accuse the Catholic Church of infecting the world with its funereal morality of being the running sore on the decomposed body of the West.
Verily I say unto you: GOD is dead. We vomit the agonizing insipidity of your prayers for your prayers have been the greasy smoke over the battlefields of our Europe.
Go forth then into the tragic and exalting desert of a world where God is dead and till this Earth anew with your bare hands, with your PROUD hands, with your UNPRAYING hands.
Today Easter day of the holy year, Here under the emblem Notre-Dame of Paris, we proclaim the death of the Christ-God, so that man may live at last.
The audience listened in dutiful stupor at first, but then realized what they were hearing and broke into a commotion. The cathedral's Swiss guards drew their swords and rushed to kill the interlopers--one had his face sliced open. His stolen habit soaked with his comrade's blood, Michel cheerfully blessed the screaming crowd as he and his friends escaped out of the cathedral and into crimethinker folklore forever.