[France / Lourdes] - The Religious Self Covers the Abuser's Mosaic to Feed a Phantom of a Clean Sanctuary

Event Baseline: At the Lourdes shrine in France, mosaics created by a priest accused of sexual abuse were covered up. The priest is currently on trial.

The institution of belief is built on the illusion of purity. When the abuser's art is exposed, the institution does not tear down the building. It covers the image. The image is not the sin; the image is a reminder of the sin. The covering is an attempt to erase the memory. But memory is stored in the brain, not in the mosaic. The self that worships needs a clean symbol. It cannot face the fact that the symbol was made by a predator. This is the mechanical failure of thought: the symbol and the fact are separated. The word 'sacred' is used to hide the word 'rape'. The institution believes it can restore innocence by hiding the evidence. That belief is a phantom. No cloth can cover the conditioning that produced the predator. The predator is not an anomaly; he is the logical output of a system that divides the holy from the human. The only true covering is the end of the image of the holy.