Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris was built out of stone and wood and glass without electricity or computers. It was not built by committee, or consultants or according to state regulations. It was built by a culture superior to our own. And we know it.A bold essay on what it will take to rebuild.
While you are there, read about the Fire Brigade Chaplain who went into the fire and saved the Crown of Thorns.
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One could argue that it was sort of built by committee- it took about a century to complete from ground breaking, and of course has been repaired and modified several times over the course of it's lifespan. One example- only one of the three great rose windows is all original.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the outpouring of faith in the light of this catastrophe, people gathering to sing hymns and to kneel and pray together in the streets. Many young people as well. It has been beautiful and hopeful even as awful as that long night was watching her burn and smolder.
I thought, and have heard others express the thought that perhaps, as people, particularly the French, think about their gut reactions at seeing it burn, that it might ignite in them the spirit and make them wonder why it had such a great impact. That perhaps it might point them to the cross- standing there at the altar unbroken even in that terrible inferno- and bring them to (or back to) the mother church.
We can hope and pray. I know it moved me to say a rosary for the first time in quite a while the next day.
The desire to cling to a world wide religion in times of fear, as the Catholic Herald so honestly reprises, is not necessarily a good thing.
Faith also leads to this. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/nuns-as-sex-slaves/
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