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Notre Dame Fire: A Sign For Our Time | The American Conservative.
Like James Poulos above, I cannot see this as anything other than a sign. The only church in all of Western civilization more important than Notre Dame de Paris is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The consuming fire is likely to have been started from a construction accident. I hope that is the case; if this was terrorism, then France is in for unimaginable spasms of violence. Nevertheless, if this was an accident, it still symbolizes what we in the West have allowed to happen to our religious and cultural patrimony. What happened in Paris today has been happening across our civilization.
It is surely worth noting that it happened at the start of Holy Week.
"have allowed to happen to our religious and cultural patrimony"?
ReplyDeleteOne must maintain buildings--slates or shingles fall off, supports weaken. In the best case one exercises caution, and the repairs fix more than they damage. But fires do start. A few years ago, somebody with a heat gun or a torch got careless while working on a library in Georgetown (the neighborhood, not the school), and the fire that followed caused a great deal of damage. Did that symbolize what we have allowed to happen to our cultural patrimony?
Building on what George said, it's worth noting (as I did in a blog post earlier today) that Notre-Dame was allowed to fall into ruin between the late Middle Ages and the 18th century. European Christians bombed the bejesus out of their own religious and cultural patrimony in the first half of the 20th century. By contrast, the French were in the process of preserving an important part of their religious and cultural patrimony when the fire, which appears to be accidental, broke out. Our age is not less respectful of these sites and what they mean; arguably, we're taking better care of them than people did in more religious eras.
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