"The Catholicism of today builds nothing so gorgeous as Notre-Dame in part because it has no 21st-century version of that grand synthesis to offer."
And in part because, as urged by the current pope (whose leadership Douthat has so often lamented), the Church in many places chooses to direct its resources to aiding those who have least, those at the margins, rather than to constructing gorgeous buildings. Douthat still hasn't come to terms with that annoying Vatican II tendency to insist on the Church's identity as the "pilgrim people of God."
I'm in San Miguel Allende, Mexico for Easter Week. If the Catholic Church needs a model conservative, compassionate community of practicing Catholic-style Christianity it has one here. Why has no one noticed? It is vibrant. The Catholic Church I know in the U.S. is hollowed out, battered and morally schizophrenic.
San Miguel, Mexico is alive with spirit, family, good intentions and a plethora of artistic-minded veneration that oozes from the pours of its earthly churches and places of worship and contemplation. Life is more than material.
It's true that the burning of Notre Dame makes even disenfranchised Catholics think of Catholicism, and calls to mind an age before Republicans saw using abortion as a wedge issue to divide the the party of Kennedy. Maybe this will help bring them back to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, showing mercy to immigrants, providing health care (as did the Good Samaritan) and the rest of Christ's teachings....
6
Today, of ALL days ? You, Sir, take the proverbial Cake.
SAD.
4
In 1995, I first stood in wonder at Notre Dame in Paris. Its soaring architecture is a testament to those who have religious faith as well as a testament to human toil for hundreds of years—something worthy of reverence, particularly in its time of despair. Instead of lamenting the loss of this place for whatever significance it has to him, religious or cultural, somehow your opinion columnist Ross Douthat has managed to not only suggest the fire was somehow a rebuke to a divided church, but he embraces the theory that the sexual revolution was part of the cause of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
Using Notre Dame as a foil for his distasteful piece is an affront to all those whose spirits have ever been lifted by any wonder built by man, and unworthy of publication by the New York Times.
7
I'd go further and say that the hurt generated by the fire is unrelated to religion or even western civilization. It's mostly about the spirit of man.
4
As a Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor, I lament what has happened to Notre Dame. That being said, I believe that the cultural blaze that has left us in a post-Christendom era will be used by God to build a more faithful church: One that is not allied with power, but the powerless; a faith that is more willing to speak truth to power because it has nothing left to lose -- and only love to share. As the French-born Reformer John Calvin rightly said 500 years ago, "it is vain to seek a church free of every spot." The demise of Christendom is sad, but needed. By Grace, a freer, more faithful, more loving church will rise.
3
It is my fervent hope that there will be no religion at all long before 3019 arrives. The Catholic church, divided or undivided, will no longer exist, along with all other religions. They do nothing but give us all reasons to hate each other.
5
"And it is impossible...to be writing...while the Cathedral of Notre-Dame is literally burning on Holy Week and not feel that everyone engaged in Catholicism’s civil wars is being judged, and found wanting, and given a harrowing lesson in what is actually asked of us."
Although I have since become some sort of eclectic Hindu, I spent much of my wayward youth wandering about central Mexico, occasionally stopping in local churches to sit and observe. There I saw among the towering Spanish Baroque clutter small side shrines devoted to the indigenous saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, where amidst the flickering candles older peasant women sat silently praying. It was the only spark of spiritual life in an otherwise cold and empty building.
Monday morning during my meditation I suddenly saw a great conflagration. Due to my propensities, I took it to be a glimpse of the Divine Mother Kali in her destructive aspect -- consuming the old so the that new can be born. Then I went downstairs to be greeted by the live TV feed of Notre-Dame burning.
A few observations. Everything is interconnected. But in our relentless pursuit of individualistic egotism, we smugly focus on our special sense of separation. No progress will be made until we consciously attempt to reconnect to one another and to the common source, however imagined.
There is no political solution to the problems of the Catholic church. Only reestablishing direct contact with the experience of holiness can bring renewal.
2
The 'morality' of John Paul, Benedict …
(Both of these guys knowingly and willingly ran cover for a 'secret army' of pedophile priests for decades).
“Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year.”
― Sam Harris
7
Au contraire, Ross Douthat. The Church doesn’t have “almost two Popes.” Benedict quit. He abandoned ship. He abdicated responsibility. Why? We never got a satisfactory explanation. He suddenly flounced off with his collection of red Prada shoes and his movie-star handsome “assistant” to live out his final years in the lap of Vatican luxury. Now he thinks he can snipe from the sidelines at his successor? And he chooses the sexual revolution, of all things, to bellyache about?
Mon Dieu! Nope.
14
I find it suspect that the article was in the can before the fire.
So what is the point I ask?
4
In the steady flow of mostly useless Notre-Dame coverage issuing the past two days from both French and English-speaking TV & print media, Ross Douthat, once again, provides analysis that's deep and clear, and does so in a pinch, a moment of crisis, when clarity and depth are most needed and least easy to find. He says he’s a conservative Christian, and I am neither; I just find that he's one of the better-informed and more judicious columnists around, and one of the reasons I turn to the Times at times like this.
3
Laughing. Laughing. LAUGHING at "a museum full of docents who hate each other". If an article about clerical scandals and a medieval cathedral burning-- written by a Catholic-- can still have a well placed joke, there is hope for the church yet. Bravo Ross.
I love how all the Americans are taking this chance to make their political point. Stop it. I lived 15 minutes from Notre-Dame for 12 years. I passed it thousands of times in my life and entered it dozens and dozens of times. It’s more than a building and it’s definitely more than your political opinion. It never failed to make me look at it in wonder each time I passed by. It’s a symbol that extends beyond Catholicism and the petty intrigues of a few men. It’s the best of humanity expressed in splendor. It reminds us that we humans are more than just unconscious animals, that we seek truth and beauty in this strange reality we woke up in.
10
Sad and wistful after learning of the fire that ravaged the majestic Notre-Dame de Paris, a legacy for humanity. However remember also that three African American churches were criminally set on fire in St Landry Parish Louisiana. The same outpouring of regret, concern is also needed to support those communities. These churches were not towering monuments to nine centuries of European history, but they are giant emblems of the challenges that our young democracy faces daily. Please send your support and your encouragement to those St Landry community to revive their spirits and encourage rebuilding. They have a GoFundMe page.
9
" .. .especially given how often conservative Catholicism is in thrall to orthodoxies that are political rather than theological, ..."
As a Progressive, I have been waiting decades to hear a Conservative say this. Thank you! If only your fellow conservative Catholics would listen!
2
Those who see the burning of Notre-Dame as some sign, metaphor, or parable for the loss of Catholic culture, an icon of a lost era, have forgotten the central mystery of Christian faith—the death and resurrection of Christ. During Holy Week, we remember that love enters into the darkest of spaces, those spaces seemingly most desolate, and bears new life. The body of Christ dies on Good Friday. Not metaphorically but really, entirely, totally:
http://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/04/16/the-notre-dame-cathedral-fire-isnt-a-sign/
3
I read Joseph Ratzinger's letter and found it amazing. Pages after pages without even one word of self-criticism. And that from the man who always found time to discipline unorthodox theologians and priests in Latin America. Mind you, that's a former pope we're talking about.
7
Dear Brother Ross,
We collectively and globally celebrated Tenebrae last night as the fires of Notre Dame were extinguished. The womb of Our Lady is undergoing the baptism of fire. Much that is good, in a Good Friday sense, can come of this.
The crisis over power in the Church and the World is rooted in how males have ruled with binary notions of gender, sexuality and gender roles. Women and sexual minorities are denied the honor of a seat at the table and over half the population is excluded from genuine dialogue.
In contrast, Jesus listened to women and "transgender" LGBTQ persons, or "eunuchs" as they were called in Jesus' time.
In your other writings, Brother Ross, you perpetuate as facts notions about Jesus that are misleading or perhaps total lies, such as that Jesus was celibate during his decades on the planet and therefore celibacy is a somehow a higher calling.
You perpetuate ideas that Jesus somehow endorsed an elite, all-male priesthood, like the one that existed in his day. Our readings this Holy Week attest to how the teachings of Jesus infuriated the all-male religious authorities of his day, so much so that they wanted Jesus executed.
Males alone decided that God is the triune Father, Son and Spirit. This is not wrong but rather incomplete. Open your eyes this Friday as Jesus reveals the fullness of God in her suffering and glory: "Behold your Mother."
Notre Dame burns on earth as in heaven to remind us the proper pronoun for God is not he, but they.
9
If your willing to bring God into this catastrophe, along with political and religious symbolic references, I think you might be leaving out the most obvious one. God is trying to show us that the old ways of Christianity with it's patriarchal, gilded and protected surfaces must be destroyed in order to bring about a new, modern form of worship. One where sex is not feared, where all are welcome and Christ's teachings are paramount, apply to all and are not interpreted in a way that forgives sexual deviance, foments secrecy or forges a narrative that can include racism, misogyny, homophobia and Trump. Whether your bete noire is Benedict or Francis it isn't a single person or event that has left the Catholic religion in ashes, it is the arrogance, the authoritarianism and the intellectual dishonesty that keeps the church in the dark ages, without a plan to deal with a future that could include women priests, married priests or a sprinkler system.
4
Anyone who has much knowledge of sexual abuse understands that it is fundamentally an abuse of social power and authority by people who think that they can violate others persons with impunity. To stop it all that needs to be done is remove such people from all the social power and authority that they were granted, permanently. For some reason, church hierarchies think that the church and priests must be considered God’s surrogates and thus infallible and without fault, or the entire institution will collapse and be lost.
2
I wonder if Steve Bannon is laughing? He's been attacking the Pope because the Pope is rightly blaming Bannon's "hard-right" cabal for all the international violence and hate.
I do not support any organized religion, particularly the catholic church because they are trying to take away a woman's right to choose what she does with her own body, but love the history of Notre Dame.
It is owned by the French government, just as all the French previous "castles" are. The Louvre is made up of residences of the wealthiest crooks that were taken over by the government after the French People's Revolution. They were very smart to preserve the structures instead of destroy them in anger.
I had the good fortune to visit Paris, and Notre Dame, a few years ago and am heartsick about the fire. Fortunatley the courageous people of France will rebuild it.
4
Another only vaguely interesting account of Mr. Douthat's personal spiritual journey.
Hang in there, Mr. Douthat. I still think you have a chance to find rationality!
5
Another example of magical thinking. The fire in Notre Dame however regrettable does not reflect the state of the Catholic Church, the larger society of which it is a part, nor the state of the western world. It does reflect a medieval structure built of wood and stone whose vulnerability to fire has long been known. Does the Catholic Church have issues, arguments and factions? Yes, surprise, it is a fallible human institution. It can also be repaired just like the cathedral, after all the cathedral was already undergoing long needed repairs reflecting multiple deficiencies, funny, but no one read doom into that fact. What we need now is not a soothsayer “reading the bones or the entrails” but rather your clear statement about what you think the church needs to make it relevant both to the present and to the future. This is what we expect from a 21st century journalist.
5
The child abuse scandals are the result of sick priests
and the knowledge that they will be protected. Bad
people do bad things. The Catholic religion is so messed
up that every Catholic must decide for himself how to practice it and what to believe. Keeping in mind that most of the
"rules" were created by individuals, not by Christ or God.
The "Catholic Synthesis" of the Middle Ages was founded, far more than Catholic children are ever taught, on the church's power, and extreme willingness, to coerce belief, or at least speech. Read Norman Cohn's masterful work "The Pursuit of the Millennium." The last time the church executed a heretic was in the 1820s, in Spain. Since then, it's been all downhill.
2
Is it possible that the "sex abuse crisis" of the current Catholic Church is not due, as Douthat implies, to the growing sexual freedoms of the 1960's and 70's, but to the openess of society to discussion, then and now. Perhaps the sexual predatory actions of priest against their younger colleagues and students was always there, just not openly discussed? The new evil may not be so evil after all!
4
The Catholic Church burning like the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral is spot on. Most of the base of the building still stands, stained by collateral damage. Much like all the good people in the pews on Sunday and laypeople who actually do the good work of Christ. Of course two towers survive; Pope Benedict and Pope Francis right? It is sad, we are relieved that building has merely been damaged, not destroyed. One can hope the same goes for the Church.
Still Mr. Douthat, as always, you wish to move the church on from the crisis of the pedophile priests. You promote the idea that the 60's love-fests caused priests to sexually abuse children. Enough is enough.
Let me ask. How would the priests in the church even know about what went on during the 60's secular world? Through confessions? Nope. I can't imagine a hippie, a Howard Hefner, a cheating wife or husband confessing such love sins. All I can remember back then is my oldest brother being banned from ever celebrating a holiday with his siblings because he was gay, then dying alone in NYC of aids in the summer of 1998.
Pope Benedict's nonsense for the Church's failings shows that there is still a conflagration going on. Fewer fire companies are responding to douse it though. Notre Dame is beloved because that building never intentionally hurt anyone, even yesterday when it burned. No reason for it to apologize, the wood is 800 years old, and we can save it! The church? Why bother?
5
As a church historian I find the claims about historical patterns of abuse to be dubious. How can we ever know what the actual data is given that we have no idea about the rate of reporting in the past. Anyone who thinks that abuse spiked in the 60s should examine the history of church operated residential schools in Canada.
56
The Roman Catholic Church has been sick, sick, sick for a very long time. Selling indulgences from time to time as a form of fund raising was a minor heresy by the ordained compared to the brutality of burnings and ex-communication, mutilations and torture. And it's a nice device to argue that sex abuse by the clergy blossomed in the 60s but that hides the fact of its historical presence. Priests, as well as popes, begat many offspring Ross. You're an intelligent man but way off base sometimes. The power over life and death in the hands of your precious church has been continually abused for centuries. paul in bessemer
2
The church is a museum.
2
Sorry Ross but "Religion does three things quite effectively: divides people, controls people, deludes people."~ Carlespie Mary Alice McKinney. It is a well-known fact and has been going on for hundreds, no, thousands of years.
1
Maybe it was just a tragic fire, and not a sign from God meaning whatever one wants it to mean.
30
@Joe The timing is the essence of a miracle. You are free to ignore it or ascribe it to a "coincidence." This indeed is how Catholics are trained: to be insensate to the moves of God in the world and to venerate an evil and corrupt Vatican leadership.
1
The data and history? Are you serious? The chart starts at 1960 !! Oy vey.
So the same popes running the indulgences scam 500 years ago were also tracking and recording reports of pedophilia?
Benedict/Ratzinger belongs in jail for covering for an army pederastic priests, bishops, cardinals for decades. I don't care what he thinks, his credibility was shot decades ago,
2
I think we’ve already been told what comes next,
Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous* will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’
And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
3
Are any billionaires funding the reconstruction of those burnt-out black churches?
4
No, because they’re not symbols of the best of Western civilization nor do they contain priceless artifacts, exquisite stained glass, or 800 year old gothic architecture of unparalleled ingenuity. Napoleon was not crowned in those churches, they did not contain pieces of saints and kings and emperors. Have some historical perspective.
1
Sexual abuse crosses all religions, all societies, all humanity, so pinning it one side of the sociopolitical mores spectrum is ludicrous.
1
I keep thinking about reading "Our Lady of Medjugorje" years ago and the predictions made.
1
Well said.Amen.
Catholics of 3019? I doubt that there will be humans then. And god won't care.
1
@Martin Cohen
When there are no humans, there is no God.
1
Ross,
Your Roman Catholic Church even with Pope Francis’ 2015 Laudio Si has let us down.
If we continue destroying our planet, we humans will not be here in 3019 A.D.
This is our present reality: We are alone. We are moving toward self-imposed extermination. We need to change course now. If not, there will be no intelligent life left on our planet. No Roman Catholic Church either.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
3
Once again Douthat shows his willful detachment from reality, supported by cherry-picked facts and falsehoods. In the sixties it became more acceptable to talk about such things as sexual predation by priests. Right wing commenters always confound more openess with more actions because it fits their dishonest narrative. And his statement about the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral that “its spire fell in one of the most dreadful live images since Sept. 11, 2001“, comparing the deaths of thousands in a terror atack with the loss of a replaceable piece of architecture that happens to be Catholic is a display of sociopathic egocentrism and chauvinism.
One has to wonder what horrors were visited on Douthat as a child that he has grown up to be so needy of personal and societal repression, whether of sex or unpleasant facts, that he feels compelled to spin alternate, self-soothing realities on a weekly basis.
4
"the most dreadful live images since Sept. 11, 2001"? Seriously? How about the destruction of the ancient monuments of Iraq, Syria, or Yemen?
2
I say don't spend a dime on rebuilding Notre Dame.
Instead the catholic church should spend it's billions on rebuilding the lives of it's sexual abuse victims.
1
Mr. Dauthat, I think you should have done an Abe Lincoln and left this column in a desk drawer for a respectable aount of time.
2
Well, for once, some nation or dominion might be better served by following the US model for inclusion and diversity...
Said differently, ordain a couple of priests that look like AOC and Ilhan – and elect them to some diverse episcopates, within the year...
Literally...
And that sound like them, too...
Metaphorically – or literally – as you like...
After all – no one more adept than American Catholics, in knowing which is which...
Bravo!
1
I just read the Times picks. It's hard enough being a reformist Catholic like me these days, or a conservative one for that matter. We and our children have been betrayed. But, no I'm not leaving .But what I wrote to say is this: when the burning of a cathedral becomes the occasion of yet more Catholic baiting and bashing and, what's more, when it is abetted by the editors, I need to admit to myself what I think I've known for a while. I have either to hand over my liberal Democratic, NYTs reading credentials, or my faith. Good bye.
1
Notre-Dame may well embody a grand medieval synthesis, but it stands above all as a monument to an age of total belief. The same era that saw the rise of magnificent cathedrals throughout Europe also witnessed the Crusades, heresy trials, massacres of infidels and burnings at the stake, along with assorted punitive mutilations. Hell wasn’t a figurative notion but a real alternative destination, vividly present to the imagination. Heaven was harder to imagine, with death, decay and suffering all around, but the builders of the Paris cathedral were plainly striving upwards. Today such all-consuming devotion to the otherworldly and fear of the afterlife are all but non-existent in the West. Most of us would consider that progress. But there are seldom gains without losses. Notre-Dame will be rebuilt, but the spirit that conceived it and brought it into being cannot be recovered. Mr. Douthat's church will continue to suffer the woes endemic to any earthbound institution.
3
A fire at an old church that's as much a tourist spot as it if s a relic of a blessedly dead past is not -- cannot be -- "one of the most dreadful live images since Sept. 11, 2001." Not when mass shootings at schools and contemporary temples, churches and mosques and office buildings are covered live. And certainly not when live images show desperate refugees being gassed back into the nightmares from which they just escaped, or when coroners show up to carry a drowned toddler off the beach onto which his limp corpse washed up. A burning church, even one as elegant and historic as Notre Dame, is just an old building. Maybe it's time to grieve for people.
4
Affixing the tragedy that is the ND fire to your own bizarre take on the sexual revolution of the 1960s is almost worthy of your hero, the Liar-In-Chief. You cite statistics of increasing sexual abuse, missing the obvious point that it could be the reporting, not the deeds that increased. And that alternative interpretation fits a lot of what happened in the 1960s. In the Catholic Church, as elsewhere, the husband had the right to demand what he wished from the wife, who had the duty to obey. This changed. I really hope that you would not want to go back to that, but I am not sure.
1
Yeah, as a symbol, Notre Dam burning on Easter Week is pretty powerful.
But I doubt the symbolism will do anything to change the misogyny,pederasty, greed, and conceited pride at the heart of catholicism.
1
Your well written article is most welcome during these conflicted times. All the more so during holi-days in which historical events are narrated. People, places and outcomes are noted. Interacting memory, as an Identity process, and its outcomes for faith and daily living are created. A THEN, reviewed NOW, in an enabled toxic WE-THEY culture and violating world offers options for TOMORROW. ”Causation” is clearly noted.The Holy Father notes, with certitude, his “causes;” associating them with specific years.There is no “associated with.” Nor “we do not understand WHY.” Nor is there a place for ongoing “legitimate questions,” with their inherent “quests” for viable understanding and not just information.Enabling going beyond semantic description.Acknowledging that no word can ever actually BE what it was created and transmitted to answer. Question. Explain. Just as no map = the territory it describes. Consider: Reality’s dynamic, generic, basic dimensions, ever-present and interacting to their own rhythm, and cadence, are usefully consensualized as being (1) uncertainty, (2) unpredictability, (3)randomness, and (3)lack of total control, whatever our timely efforts. Some choose to include outlier-state.AI introduces multidimensionality and nonlinearity. In your formulation a binary, either/or reality is offered. Reality is better served when related to as ranges. In addition is the reality of: known; currently unknown, and unknowables.Enabled by shameless “unaccountables!”
1
A church who protects criminals is rotten. And child abuse happened long before the 1970ties. Nobody took notice. The church supported the beating of children. Rotten to the core. But telling women how to behave.
2
I was Catholic before Vatican II. During Holy n
week it is worth remembering that on Good Friday we prayed for "perfidious Jews." Before Vatican II, some Catholic philosophers defended the Divine Right of kings. Vatican II was the high point of a Catholic renaissance led by the likes of Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, the Reverend John Courtney Murray--and Cardinal Ratzinger.
And, Some years after Notre Dame was built, Catholicisim had two popes. This division into liberal and conservative is so 21st century
1
Nobody was using it. It wasn't a church. It was a kitschy tourist ripoff. God reclaimed the space. Blessed be God, who forbids moneychangers to take possession of what once was holy.
Douthat's column today reminds me of something . . . let's see. Oh, yes, this:
“I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen.”—Jerry Falwell claiming that God allowed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the deadliest ever on US soil, to show his displeasure with liberals
A cathedral partially burned down yesterday in Paris. Nobody died. It was probably an accident. It was definitely not an expression of the Wrath of God.
Why do conservatives think this way?
6
I think that an attack on the Catholic Church, at THIS moment, is in extremely poor taste.
3
Oh no, not secular sneers.
1
It is not “Pope Francis’s style” that is “destabilizing”. It is the demagogues who have run the Catholic Religion with all the hypocrisy and evil that has destabilized the Roman Catholic Church. From keeping women down by telling them it is a sin to use birth control, to the rabid sexual abuse of children, from the looting of the Vatican Bank to selling off Church property-paid for by mostly poor parishioners, instead of converting it to housing for the poor and homeless. The heartless cover up of the sexual abuse that caused many a suicide, the non-welcoming of gays and lesbians, the considerable pressure put on women to stay with abusive spouses while granting Annulments of marriages to those who could afford to pay for them.
The destructive fire of the beautiful Norte Dame Cathedral to me is a sad symbol of the destruction of the Catholic Church from within. And like Notre Dame Cathedral, it will take a long time before it’s structure will be rebuilt.
2
The conflagration at Notre Dame conjures up the music and image of the final moments of Mozart's Don Giovanni when the Don, the iconic representative of immorality veiled in aristocratic garb, is consumed by the flames for refusing to repent his innumerable sex crimes.
Although the core of the edifice has been damaged, it will be rebuilt.
2
Dietrich von Choltitz was a German General who served in the German Army during World War II. He is chiefly remembered for his role as the last commander of Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944, when he disobeyed Adolf Hitler's orders to level the city. He has been called the "Saviour of Paris" for preventing its destruction.
1
"I am a conservative of some sort, who fears that liberal Christianities usually end up resembling a post-inferno cathedral, with the still-grand exterior concealing emptiness within."
Douthat is a Steve Bannon-style "believer". They & their ilk would have feared Jesus himself as being "too liberal".
It is outrageous that Douthat is exploiting the N.D. fire here, as a cheap vehicle to inflame his righteous followers.
2
Benedict makes an outrageous claim that in 1968 "pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate".
He follows that with a canon law argument why the Church had to let the rapists keep raping.
If the Catholic Church has clerics who believe that, "secular sneers" is the least of your problems.
3
For millions of us who have studied history and literature, or just hung out in Paris a goodly bit, Notre Dame will always be a symbol of the most noble aspirations of man and woman kind, the building of a place of assembly meant to reach the soul and glorify it through beauty. That is why there is a universal sense of loss in this fire. Drouthat is making this a symbol of something infinitely more petty. Most people, let alone non-catholics, will be pretty unmoved by his semi-defense of Benedict, who seems to be inventing some scenario where sex abuse by priests against children, especially male children, is the fault of someone other than the abusive perverts getting away with this behavior on a grand scale, thanks to the creepy machinations of a corrupt and powerful institution. Dear God, spare us from this tormented, fake devout, power seeking, Opus Dei nonsense.
4
There will be no Catholics in 3019. There may be no homo sapiens in 3019.
1
"As Jesus was leaving the Temple, one of his followers said to him, “Look, Teacher! How beautiful the buildings are! How big the stones are!”
Jesus said, “Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone will be left on another. Every stone will be thrown down to the ground.”
Later, as Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, opposite the Temple, he was alone with Peter, James, John, and Andrew. They asked Jesus, “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are going to happen?”
Jesus began to answer them, “Be careful that no one fools you. Many people will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the One,’ and they will fool many people. When you hear about wars and stories of wars that are coming, don’t be afraid. These things must happen before the end comes. Nations will fight against other nations, and kingdoms against other kingdoms. There will be earthquakes in different places, and there will be times when there is no food for people to eat. These things are like the first pains when something new is about to be born."
1
How can you talk about the sexual abuse and predation in the church in any way other than total disgust? How can you call yourself a follower of Christ and have any respect for the hierarchy of a church that hurts people so badly and is so blatantly hypocritical?
It looks to me like you are mesmerized by edifices of varying kinds, rather than in truth and morality.
2
I like David Leonhardt's thoughts much better:
"The cathedral connects humankind across the centuries. It also connects families, including those, like mine, who will never worship inside of it."
Most of all, I like the WaPo's Alexandra Petri's soaring prose:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/16/burning-great-stone-book/?utm_term=.446d73a3acef&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1
Yours, otoh, Mr. Douthat, are paltry and petty.
1
"...since 9/11." Time to get out the book of Deuteronomy again and beat folks with it.
1
Could Notre Dame's (Our Lady) burning be a warning that the smoldering anger of she and all women at what has been done to them and their children has now burst into flames and can no longer be ignored in any corner of the church?
1
The values of those of us who welcomed the sexual revolution never included abuse.
1
Oh please, Mr Douthat. I think your cut and paste of this tragedy to your moralistic tract was uncalled for.
'Go ask the Catholics of 3019 A.D. It’s for them to know, and us, if God wills it, to find out.' Yes, Deus vult, with all the baggage that that crusades era phrase embodies.
1
The sex abuse scandal has gone on for centuries. This is nothing new. Stop whitewashing it. The Cathedral is a terrible loss. But for the entire church to rebuild it will have to confront its sordid past including agreeing with Nazis during WWII.
The history of Christianity is a history of division, beginning with the division between Jewish followers of Jesus (led by Peter and James) and the Gentile followers of Jesus (led by Paul), the former one might call "conservative" because Jesus and His Disciples were observant Jews. The difference today, fortunately, is that heretics are not burned at the stake. Make no mistake: by equating homosexuality with pedophilia, Benedict is identifying homosexuals as heretics. Humans are social animals, the need for human touch essential to a healthy life. The Eastern Church understand this, and has encouraged young men entering the priesthood to marry before receiving their vows; indeed, the Eastern Church views a priest's family, his wife and children, as a model for the laity. No, it's not all about sex; it's about appreciating the human need for human touch. It's time for the Roman Catholic Church to acknowledge that Priests are human, and humans must have human touch to be a model for the laity.
1
Around 1960, I was repeatedly sexually abused by a man who, in public, casually and conspicuously, invoqued God (le bon Dieu) in front of me. Being a child, I took it as a way to pass to me that what he was doing to me could not be bad, and I kept my mouth shut. A few years later, as I struggled repeatedly with the obsession of killing myself, the sexual liberation began to free another kind of speech. I heard some men talk about their homosexuality as something normal. I began to heal. Catholic discourse had almost killed me, the cultural revolutionaries of the sixties saved my life.
44
If we could sum up the social crisis of the late 20th to earl 21st centuries, it would probably be "identity". Not just "who am I" and "what do the group(s) i belong to mean" but down even to who gets to decide those the answer to those questions. Maybe even what the questions are. Pope emeritus Benedict boldly confused cause and effect when he tagged the western cultural revolution as the cause of the sex abuse crisis. It was not a revolution as such but an awareness that something had changed. We all have been trying to work out what that means by trial and error. The failures exposed were pre-existing conditions.
Notre Dame burning reminds us that, embrace or dismiss them, we still have these icons of the past very much in common. And this is something we can build upon, that common sense of loss. St. Francis was told: "Francis, Francis, go and repair My house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins." That need behind that call is timeless.
"Go ask the Catholics of 3019 A.D."
Hopefully, there will be none. The issues Ross raises appear to me as the death-throes of a long-since outdated set of superstitions and practices.
To me the metaphor of Notre Dame is more like... Those of us outside the church can see the flames, and recognize that a beautiful old artifact of a bygone time is burning. Those inside the church probably won't realize it until the flaming timbers fall on their heads.
3
"I am a conservative of some sort, who fears that liberal Christianities usually end up resembling a post-inferno cathedral, with the still-grand exterior concealing emptiness within." This is what is always so galling, Ross. It's not empty. It's just open. And within that new openness is always a chance to rebuild a structure for today. Which makes it just like the old church, the living church. It burns and is rebuilt, starting the day after.
5
We are all agnostics. To know is to lie. To be untrustworthy. To hurt others. To discriminate against women. To value the material over the meekness of of all the prophets who ever taught. All of these things are sins, even crimes. Higher values must supersede as we move into the future.
I value Notre Dame's innate sense of gratitude for life on earth. I love its French-ness. Its beauty is a good thing. I value the hard work, devotion, craftsmanship, patience, and artistry that went into its creation. The old growth timbers cannot be replaced. The rebuild will be a facsimile of what is now in ashes. All old materials hold a power. It won't feel the same. I weep for this loss.
I wish for Notre Dame to be a place where every single person on earth can come and reflect on the beauty of life without being judged. All are not truly welcome. The place was built for catholics. As an agnostic, I know I can't be welcome, and in turn do not wish to be welcome. I love what is good about all religions. May we all come together there some day - in this good - without the anachronistic dogma, materialism, sexism, and perverse crimes against humanity that engulf the Catholic Church today - and have for centuries. Better perhaps to keep the sacred buildings, but start from the beginning on what is good and true...
2
"...the abuse problem dramatically worsened during the sexual revolution." Have you ever thought that maybe the statistics reveal that only AFTER the sexual revolution people had the courage to come forward and accuse the abusive priests that were hidden in the past? It probably does not mean that there were fewer cases and it may mean that there were relatively MORE cases. I recommend the reading of the classic "The Crime of Father Amaro", by the Portuguese author Eça de Queiroz, that shows the impunity that abounded before.
3
For conservative Catholicism, the earth was the center of the universe and the good news of salvation was its central story. We now have a much better idea how big and old the universe is, and how much we do not know about God.
If there is intelligent life in other solar systems or other galaxies, we do not know about their salvation. Do these creatures have no path to salvation, as Socrates and Buddha did not because they lived too early? Is God impatiently waiting for us to discover the secrets of interstellar and intergalactic travel so we can bring the good news of salvation to them? Or does God arrange to die once on each planet with intelligent life so the inhabitants there can have a chance of sacraments and salvation?
If the Church is what its conservative members think it is, it should know the answer to these questions. But since it doesnt and is not trying to find out, it cannot be what its conservative members think it is. God and the universe are both much too big; Galileo's realization that we were not the center of things began the destruction of the conservative vision. We have no idea what the good news is for the salvation of all intelligent creatures. God's eye is on the sparrow, but we have no idea how much else there is that he watches. That God, the God for whom our salvation was a center of his story, is dead.
Conservatives are trying to revive a corpse.
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I am not a conservative Christian, but I believe your understanding of them is a strawman argument. They believe (or at least should believe) not that everything is delimited, but that there is information that has been shared with us and the limit of that information is intentional. Regarding aliens and space travel, there is a third way (and really the only way) in admitting that we have no clue and no certainty what might actualize, so spending time making a coherent philosophy of the hypotheticals with the concrete (current dogma) in sake of thoroughness is absurd (in the comedic sense), since you spend time on what may and forget about what is. In this way, it makes since that limits of information have been shared so that we can focus on what is important.
12
I enjoyed every sentence until the last two. I agree that there is no reason to limit God to earthlings. Every galaxy could have at least one intelligent species made in His image; why not?
Conversely, I neither understand nor share your confidence that God is dead and it is the conservatives who are misled about that.
2
@sdavidc9
Re "We now have a much better idea ... how much we do not know about God."
Presumably starting with, Does such a thing — a god or gods — exist? Followed by: Can it?
Given that, statements about where God's purported eye is turned seem a bit premature.
3
I'm a gay agnostic who has lived and seen firsthand the sadism of the Church's homophobia & misogyny. The cultural revolution of the 60's that Douthat loathes likely saved my life, and the lives of thousands of gay people & women who would otherwise have been martyred to the society's ridiculous lies about sexuality and biology.
At the same time I am something of a cultural conservative, who would rather, say, burn the Museum of Modern Art & all its wonderful holdings to the ground than lose one of the gothic cathedrals of France.
The blindness shared by today's cultural warriors, left & right, is to the fact that there is no purity or utopia, either in past, present, or future. The Church that built Notre Dame and inspired Giotto is the Church that slaughtered Muslims, enriched despots, & tortured heretics. The reformers who made my life possible are happy participants in a society that lives on violence as entertainment, earth-destroying consumerism, and (of course) slaughtering Muslims. The modern world of media spectacle & political manipulation is not one in which introspection or the spiritual are relevant. Every society in history has been, like our own, founded on lies & barbarism. If there is a better future, it lies in being honest about ourselves, not superficially superior to others.
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@Martin Spot on. Possibly the most intelligent comment I have read in the NY Times in quite a while.
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@Martin
Where's your weekly column? I'd read it. What a thoughtful comment.
30
@Martin
How well said. Brilliant and spot on.
12
Why make up a vast, tragic, and supernatural metaphor when the facts are sad enough on their own?
The world lost an amazing architectural monument; the French lost a centuries-old cultural centre; the congregation lost a place of worship; millions of hours of human labor were lost. Historical artefacts and tourist attraction lost.
We don’t need a grand narrative of divine symbolism to explain a fire most likely started by (re)construction workers.
We need to deal with the fact of children being abused, with rot within organized religion generally, and also with the effects on Paris of the loss.
We need reality, not superstitious signs and symbols.
1
Ross, in your musings on Notre Dame, it seems as if you are describing a Catholic Church that time has passed by -- a largely empty relic that conveys little meaning beyond what true believers, who are rapidly dwindling in numbers, embrace. The fire at Notre Dame elicited worldwide sympathy for its historical, not spiritual, value -- for what it represents about the past, not for what it tells us about today or tomorrow. The Church remains a symbol of great import as we peer back in time. But it is not something that is likely to guide current and future generations.
5
I have visited Notre Dame and attended mass there. I am also a "recovering Catholic" who is still trying to get used to the idea of not going to church on Easter Sunday even though it has been about 6 years now. I would so welcome a Notre Dame rebuilt for the next 1000 years and based on love.
4
@PJM, there's much joy to be found in going to church on Easter Sunday - no need to deny yourself that joy, even though you are a "recovering Catholic."
I would highly recommend a Jesuit parish, where you will find all are welcome, and where the Reason and Faith flourish together in harmony.
1
I understand that believers who enjoy the avenue Christianity offers for redemption from the hardships of life appreciate and depend on the confabulated logic that one can put his/her mistakes and fears on another to carry away guilt, confusion and fear. Easter is a celebration of scapegoating. Scapegoating has been part of our human thinking long before Christianity used it as a spring board to mass appeal by making it personal.
He died for YOU (not a tribe or a clan) - who could resist? . But as a foundation story to live in it is, scapegoating is itself immoral. And it distracts our attention from where we all could get some help and understanding, each other. Our religions, generally, need better stories and better gods if we are to give our existence a better place to negotiate its hardships.
2
Rene Girard actually wrote that Christianity exposed the scape goat mechanism for what it is. Jesus’s life, passion, death, and resurrection was meant to liberate humanity from the violence and sin of the scape goat mechanism.
I don't know if anyone, raised as I was, could be a total apostate Roman Catholic. I could say a Mass, but I'm a woman, so that's out of the question; also, like the comedian John Mulaney, I felt total bafflement when the rest of the congregation responded "and with your spirit" instead of "and also with you," at a Mass I attended after a long absence. No, I don't like the way everyone holds their hands up in prayer. And kneel down after Communion, darn it! I am the conservative. I like the old ways, the old hymns, and the dark, candlelit pews and Italianesque statuary. So I read you, Mr. Douhat, because I do understand you. And I love Salve Regina. It's unfortunate that the church tried to hide the scandal as long as they did. But that doesn't mean you can't still have your own personal faith, like devout members my family. And it doesn't mean I can't be a devout soldier of Christ, however I might differ on what "Christ" means, outside the Catholic Church. Vive la France! Vive Le Cathedral de Notre Dame!
2
@Anne, there are Catholic parishes that still celebrate the Latin Mass and many other traditional ways.
1
For us who grew up in the 50's and 60's, Vatican Two gave us hope. Finally, we would be somewhat freed from arbitrary and harsh man made rules which had no basis in the actual life and words of Christ. But alas conservative and patriarchal ideologies once again began to infect the Church. The hope we had over 50 years ago is all but gone as we witness and experience the sins and evil actions within the hierarchy itself.
Notre-Dame can be saved. Its iconic beauty will once again be restored. It is France, sustaining years of triumphs, struggles, wars, and even revolutions. But I have doubts about Catholicism being saved from itself. As of now, it lacks the strong leadership and self-awareness required to be rebuilt. And rebuilt it must be. As Notre-Dame lived through the Renaissance and Enlightenment, so must the Church be reborn and enlightened.
4
Notre Dame Cathedral is historic, iconic, and a work of art. While I am not Catholic nor a religious person, to visit it is a spiritual experience. To witness its near destruction was incredibly sad. Perhaps it is emblematic of the Catholic Church. Today, the outer structure is still standing, but much of the interior stands in ruins or is badly damaged.
The Catholic Church instead of facing its problems with pedophilia instead chose to obfuscate the truth and protect the guilty. That was the ruination of the very heart of the Church. It has an edifice, but its very meaning has been damaged. The problem did not start in the 1960's nor the 1970's. It was a slowly smoldering fire for generations. Perhaps, as some have commented, it was the liberation of those years which finally led to freeing victims to expose the truth to light and air, and the smoldering fire became an inferno.
Rebuilding the Church, just as with Notre Dame, will start with a damaged foundation. How each will be rebuilt will require a discussion of what of the old should be restored or what should be discarded in favor of more substantive, better materials. Patchwork fixes and failing to address structural problems will only lead to further weakening of the foundations of both. For both, "what is past is prologue", but the lessons of history should be heeded.
2
Amen Ross...though not Catholic, it's my "significant other religion" as a rabbi friend refers to those beautiful religions other than our own root one that have a strong resonance.
And as a student of Ken Wilber's for 25 years I so appreciate your potent attempts at integral thinking. Don't know if you know Father Richard Rohr's work... I somehow think he might be heading toward the beautiful synthesis you are pointing to.
Loving blessings for a Holy Week filled with the reflection and transformation you know is trying to get birthed.
This piece is both stunningly beautiful and an exemplification of the genuine pain its author feels. It was a privilege to read such wonderful writing. And, to the degree it matters, I am a nonbeliever with no roots in the Catholic church.
One of the several problems with this thesis is the utter lack of acknowledgement of the Romish church’s proprietary relationship to Christ. The Roman Church does not believe it belongs to Christ; it believes that Christ belongs to it — exclusively. This is evident in the church’s behaviors surrounding the sacraments: baptism isn’t into the body of Christ, rather into the Romish church (which considers itself the sole body of Christ); the Eucharistic feast is not regarded as belonging to Christ, but rather to the church — those not baptized into the One True Faith (See above) are explicitly unwelcome at the feast.
Of course that level of arrogance, hardened and metastasized at the very top, is going to lead to all sorts of abuse of the least among us, regardless of the beauty of spirit of a great many individual practitioners of the Romish faith. That it intersected with a particular moment of extreme license in the culture writ large, merely caused a flare in a fire that had long been burning.
1
I am sad to see that Douthat is politicizing the Notre Dame fire. The unified church he yearns for has never really existed for many Catholics. Faith is personal, and the faith that led hundreds of untutored laborers to build this cathedral was not rooted in the precepts of Thomas Aquinas, but in their simple acceptance of the life of Christ and His teachings, and their hope for redemption. The institutional church will always be flawed and searching for answers because it is led by imperfect humans. Joan of Arc, whose statue stood inside Notre Dame, was burned at the stake by members of the clergy. Clearly, there has been division in the church before. What makes Notre Dame iconic is faith in Christ and the simple message of the gospels -- to love God and one's neighbor. That faith, not the assurance of doctrinal cohesion, is what prompted the people of Paris to sing and pray last night.
4
@Celia Wexler, Amen! I wish this were a NY Times Pick.
"...the abuse problem dramatically worsened during the sexual revolution (a boring empirical fact if you spend any time with the data or the history..."
I am not buying that specious argument Ross.
Prior to the 1960's Catholics, and primarily its children, were intimidated by the church ("You will burn in hell!") and wouldn't dare to question the action of its priests. Only with the freedoms that the 1960's brought were authoritarians like the church leaders' behavior questioned. That would explain the uptick in accusations against the clergy a lot better than Douthat's "correlation equals causation" argument. Being an avowed conservative it is no surprise that Douthat would not understand what the 60's were all about.
6
@USS Johnston, conservative Catholics like Douthat just love to blame Vatican II and the 60s for everything.
It's a convenient way to shift the blame from where it really belongs - on the clergy who exploited the respect and even awe in which they were held - and on the Church hierarchy who put covering up the truth ahead of the victims. All of which had been taking place long before the 60s or even the 20th century.
Continuing to spread this LIE instead of admitting the truth is a sin - it's called bearing false witness.
1
I managed to grow up in the 60's and 70's without raping altar boys or nuns.
I expect nothing less from the the catholic church or the priests it continues to defend.
4
Blaming the Sexual Revolution for Church hierarchy enabling and hiding child rape? Seriously? I think the Times needs to reconsider what’s fit to print (or post).
3
Liberals do not condone the rape of children, and the abuse was going on long before the sixties.
81
@Wanda Explain Woody Allen and Roman Polanski Please. I mean they get awards and Standing Os
4
The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris burns during Holy Week. I believe this event is what T.S. Eliot in another context called an "objective correlative".
Hundreds of millions dollars (perhaps more) will be used for its restoration, money that is generated by an economic system and cultural norms that implicitly if not openly ignore Christian teachings.
Is this an ironic form of social justice or a harbinger of the chaos to come?
2
Ross is convinced that available data demonstrate an increase of priestly sexual abuse of children during the "sexual revolution" of the 1960's and 1970's.
The John Jay report he references does document an increase in reported abuse events many years after they occurred.
I do not think it can be taken as strongly suggesting a causal connection between sexual liberation and child abuse.
Perhaps the subsequent collapse in reported abuse can be attributed to our well acknowledged rediscovery of traditional sexual morality?
2
"Especially," writes Douthat, "given how often conservative Catholicism is in thrall to orthodoxies that are political rather than theological . . . " The Conversion of Constantine exposed the institutional Chuch to the three linked temptations of state coercion, material wealth, and respectability, to which it rapidly succumbed. For most of its history, deep into the 20th century, it has willingly traded support for the existing distribution of political power and property in return for state support for its moral authority. While the Church has had to come to terms with liberal democracy after the embarassments of the fascist era, it remains an intrinsically authoritarian and anti-liberal institution and would be more than content to return to the good old days of state patronage for the moral order.
1
Oh, Ross, the only reason you think that the abuse crisis worsened during the so-called sexual revolution is that past generations of victims were silenced. If you read Frank McCourt's books Angela's Ashes or Teacher Man (can't remember which one he mentions the issue), you'll see that a young lad born in the US and repatriating himself to the US after a long time away in Ireland, was the object of desire of what you would call a conservative priest. McCourt maintains his humor in the retelling of the incident, but truly it is disgusting. As for today's victims who are speaking out, why do you insist on this narrative of "both sides"? It's really harmful to sexual abuse victims.
5
It's a fire folks, in an 800 year-old building that has a lot of old wood in its interior. And while tragic, it has no deeper meaning.
Get over yourselves.
3
As someone on the BBC wittier than I put it:
"I don't know with any certainty if your God exists, but I know for sure that gay people do."
Since the 1960's a rock has been turned over, and we now see what's been hiding under it for centuries.
6
Bravo. You state my conservative liberal RC internal battle as I am unable to do. The symbolism of this burning during Holy Week should not be lost on us. It’s time to be quiet and pray.
Not all Christians are Catholic. Some Christians are members of traditions whose founders fled for their lives from French Catholics and sought refuge in Switzerland. I will quote from one of those migrants. But first, the division in the Catholic Church between liberal and conservative Catholics historically is not new, just different actors. From its inception, the two significant Apostles, Peter and Paul, disagreed about welcoming Gentiles into the Church. Paul literally got in Peter's face arguing for Gentiles to become Christian without becoming Jews first. Church history is filled with other divisions. The refugee I cite is John Calvin. From his "Institutes" he writes," The church is holy, then, in the sense that it is daily advancing and not yet perfect: it makes progress from day to day but has not reached its goal of holiness..." The only entry into the church, God's Realm, John Calvin wrote is by forgiveness; "Without forgiveness of sins there is no bond with God." This the repentant slave trader lamenting in poetry and song, "Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me." This grace, celebrated by Christians especially during Holy Week, unites all Christians together and makes void all our divisions.
1
So Francis blames the church's sex abuse crisis on society--the cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s. Ross is in full agreement but throws in a few grudging criticisms of the church's cover-ups.
Well, I blame the crisis on the many adult priests--depraved monsters--who performed horrific crimes on defenseless children. These men should all have been put in prison, instead of being protected and hidden by the church.
To me, this is the crux of why this is dragging on and on. The church is STILL looking for excuses and rationalizations, instead of looking directly at the unspeakable crimes and the predators who committed them. This is cowardly and will never solve the problem.
4
@Madeline Conant
It is not Francis, the current Pope, but Benedict, his predecessor, who blames the Church’s abuse scandal on the sexual and cultural revolution of the 60’s and 70’s.
2
@Ronald Sprague
Thank you for correcting me.
If I look back over the past 1000 years at the accomplishments of humanity that have been useful to me, the contributions of the Catholic Church rank very low. I suspect that people in 3019 will feel the same way.
And blaming liberals for the failings of the church sounds absolutely trumpist. At least Trump knows his rantings are just for show.
4
A big step forward would be the church's recognition and acknowledgement and embracing and blessing of human sexuality in all its various flowerings, and focusing on Jesus's admonition, as the first commandment, to love one another. Pining for a conservative, repressive past that is justifiably dying is taking away the wrong message from this great tragedy. A loving, chastened, enlightened Catholic Phoenix could rise out of the ashes of this tragedy if it is viewed as symbolic of the necessary purging of blind ignorance and dark festering evil, that has long been hidden beneath the unspeakably beautiful facade of The Church as reflected in its architecture and art and ritual and mystery... which symbolically represent the Church as it is MEANT to be...a temple of God's love for ALL mankind. Our beautiful Cathedral of Notre Dame (for it belongs to us all) WILL be rebuilt; it is now up to flawed and imperfect humanity to ensure that the faith that it houses will be worthy of its incomparably magnificent edifice.
1
It would be doubly tragic if the burning of Notre Dame were to become used as a metaphor for any ingrained point of view that one wished to make of it.
2
And it is impossible, as a Catholic, to be writing about this subject while the Cathedral of Notre-Dame is literally burning on Holy Week and not feel that everyone engaged in Catholicism’s civil wars is being judged, and found wanting, and given a harrowing lesson in what is actually asked of us.
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I knew it was only a matter of time before some Catholic such as Douthat saw the cathedral fire as the Skydaddy's judgment on this or that--on Catholic "civil war," as Douthat has it. At least that seems the implication of the weasley passive voice in "Catholicism’s civil wars is [sic] being judged, and found wanting, and given a harrowing lesson." Oh, please.
2
Benedict’s argument is a joke and just another example of how the Church refuses to take responsibility for its actions. His argument is also why the Catholic Church in the West is dying.
Notre Dame will he rebuilt because it’s a huge tourist attraction in France that pumps a huge amount of money into the French economy.
The Catholic Church, on the hand, is in a state of terminal decline. No one wants to be part of organization that protects child molesters.
Douhat and Benedict can find all the rationalizations they want. But that the fact the Church never did the right thing and always protected the abusers will never change.
1
The sex abuse scandal would be better dealt with if it were handled for what it is: a rampant crime. All this dithering about the schisms and societal cross currents affecting Catholocism detracts from the issue at hand, and risks becoming another debate about angels dancing on the head of a pin.
These are crimes. Investigate, charge and punish if guilty. The Church doesn't get to investigate itself, nor keep its secrets, anymore than we let the Mafia audit its own taxes. Save the theological arguments for the seminary.
Benedict's argument that the abuse scandal stems from the sexual revolution is luidicrous. Horribly, the sexual abuse of children has always been with us - look at the photos of Victorian era child prostitutes. Do you think for one minute the Church, which was then much more powerful and secret, was immune?
2
Douthat's bias to conservative Catholicism needs to be viewed through the lens of who is one of its most prominent supporters - none other than one Steve Bannon, who helped bring pretender trump into the White House.
I noticed no reference to the Sermon on the Mount in Douthat's column; it's also far from the thoughts of Bannon and his fellow conservative Catholics and, of course, their authoritarian hero in the White House.
10:45 EDT, 4/16
2
I know that Ross would like to return to the world of black and white morality. That makes life so simple for people like him. But, there are legitimate reasons for abortion (and birth control) for rape, incest, and clearly a fetus that will not survive to birth while endangering the mother. There are good reasons for divorce. When we are young we make some stupid decisions. If one of them happens to be an abusive spouse, it is important to be able to recognize that and move on without being condemned by the church. As for homosexuality, I am with those who believe that God created them that way. Why should they spend lives denying who they really are.
As for the church today, they need to walk the walk with their congregations and make a full and open confession of their sins in matter of child abuse. If they ask congregants to repent and acknowledge their sins, they should do the same. How refreshing that would be. Then, remove any who were involved in any coverup from their positions because the coverup is worse than the sin in that it let these abuses continue.
1
If reason and decency prevail, there won't be a Catholic Church in 3019, or 2119.
3
You lay a troubled finger, Mr. Douthat, on the divisions within your Church. Symbolized by the dreadful flames engulfing Notre Dame.
We are moved, actuated by symbols, are we not? Flags fluttering over a beleaguered fort. Saint Paul's of London, standing there unmoved, unshaken during the Blitz.
Here's one. A symbol supplied, courtesy of the Almighty Himself. You alluded to it--once.
The veil of the Temple torn from top to bottom.
THAT, Mr. Douthat, is the crucial symbol of the Christian faith. It takes the breath away! It does mine.
"Behold the Lamb of God That taketh away the sins of the world!"
That veil (as you remember) was torn the moment Jesus Christ expired on the Cross. "It is finished."
It was indeed. The "sins of the world"--dealt with! Permanently. Irrevocably. The barrier--the "veil"--between God and man--torn. Done away with.
It takes the breath away.
Is not THAT, Mr. Douthat, the fundamental message of the Christian faith?
Oh yes--I do acknowledge these tragic divisions. The muddled thinking--the shaky morality. Sex abuse in the Church--ANY church? Tragic! Horrifying! Institutional complacency? A problem! Requiring drastic surgery! Oh yes! Absolutely!
BUT--
--the Incarnation. The Atonement. The Resurrection.
Satan himself cannot lay a finger on the power of these divine, all-important FACTS.
So take heart, Mr. Douthat.
Even now.
Amid the ashes of Notre Dame.
3
1. The Church doesn't have two popes.
2. The "ain't it awful" protestations of Benedict exemplify the increasing tendency today to ignore/negate nuance, an approach that never curates or repairs any circumstance, but rather divides and divides and divides.
3. Benedict and his ilk (including his popular media predecessor--now a saint?--c'mon) would have us blame those who live together outside of marriage, those who divorce (unless, of course they can pay for annulment), those who are gay, those who practice birth control, women who want to be seen as full persons--all the so-called libertines. Blame everything but the fact that a ritual or an institution isn't "holy" just because its leaders demand one believe it is.
Many, many of us, one at a time, over many years have been turned away in our greatest time of need. You're lucky if you can get a hospital visit from a priest if you can't afford to give 10% of your income to the church. (Of course, they do keep records of that.)
4. The unbelievable assertion that pedophilia among these "holy men" has accelerated since the 60s is delusional--at best. (Read Voltaire.) And the continued effort by some of these "holy fathers" to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia is evil.
3
Ross,
Absolutely one of your best columns. Thank you.
1
What does the church need? It needs to go into one of its strictness orders (there are a number of them), grab a young
priest, make him Pope and tell him to clean house--cardinals,bishops, religious orders). They've done this before.
Get rid of all the red cassocks in the Vatican---gay or straight.
Ross, you're probably a very nice person, and there is much about your conservatism that I admire. But blaming hippies and Vatican II for the crisis in the church is just daft. I fled Roman Catholicism years ago precisely because of the officious and rotting clericalism that leaves a once-great institution gasping for air. I have found there are many ways to feed the hungry, serve the poor, and welcome the stranger.
105
@Arthur indeed there are many ways to feed the hungry, serve the poor, and welcome the stranger. But there is only one way to participate in the Eucharist, what the Vatican II council called "source and summit" of our faith.
I understand your disillusionment due to the clericalism. But I hope that one day you'll find your way back, discovering that clericalism is not always and everywhere present.
Funny, I think of Notre Dame de Paris as an architectural treasure first and a house of worship, second. In the middle ages, architectural marvels and churches were synonymous, because only monarchs and churches had enough money to build such glorious buildings.
So I think from purely an archaeological/historical perspective, preserving and rebuilding this symbol of man made wonder is imperative, regardless of how one feels about Catholic politics. Many of us, myself included, who are not Catholic are saddened by such a huge loss of beauty and engineering (for its time) ingenuity.
It's true the Catholic church has to get its house in order on the sex abuse scandals that never seem to abate. But using the rebuilding of Notre Dame as a referendum on this subject would be like using the rebuilding of the World Trade Center as a referendum on Wall St. reform. It's both overly optimistic and practically unattainable.
2
"... to build anew, to leave something behind that could stand a thousand years and still have men and women singing “Salve Regina.” Indeed, Mr. Douthat, we have before us the ultimate challenge and opportunity to do just that. But not by rebuilding a damaged edifice - or the far more damaged religion it represents. The Church you literally and metaphorically extols has the opportunity to lead and join in saving what is truly "God/god's" greatest creation. And that is this very earthly environment which is now evidencing the smoldering, virtual inevitability of a cataclysmic conflagration likely to leave few if any voices to join in praising much of anything, let alone Mother Church, in 3019.
2
When Martin Luther, a young Augustinian monk, journeyed to Rome on business his companion gushed over the building of St. Peter's Bascilica much as the disciples of Jesus acclaimed the wonder of Herod's temple. But young Martin was unimpressed. Too often monuments are idols. They give tribute to the monarch, bishop, ruler, or engineer who built them.
I'm ambivalent about the rebuilding of Notre Dame. It means so much to the French people, but its original symbolic meaning left the minds and hearts of most of the world long ago. My only hope is that someday its grandeur as the House of God will be reclaimed.
3019 is a full millennium away. The most recent climate change data and models seriously question our survival, at least in any form that resembles the lives that we currently live, even one century from now. Barring the prospect of drastic preventive action, pondering what Catholics, or anybody else might see things in 3019 seems inconsequential.
What is of immediate consequence is the unprecedented dominance of me-first thinking which pervades all levels of society, from individuals to families, from corporations to governments, and from nations to the globe. Until we begin seriously to consider and attempt to accommodate the perspectives, values, and needs of others into our core thinking, we never will be able to form the common purpose necessary to see 3019.
It is sad to lose such a cultural icon. Seen by more tourists than the Louvre. However, the church has more than enough money in the Vatican's coffers to pay for the restoration. Did you know that that the church owns all hotel rooms in Rome and do not pay tax on these to the Italian government?I really do not want to see anyone snookered into giving yet more money to a corrupt organization. Does the EU have a version of the RICO act?
1
"I am a conservative of some sort, who fears that liberal Christianities usually end up resembling a post-inferno cathedral, with the still-grand exterior concealing emptiness within."
Mr. Douthat, as a liberal Christian I take exception to your characterization. The church community of which I'm a part is far from empty by any measure you might choose. Individually and collectively we try our best to live out Christ's gospel as fully as possible, and as part of that endeavor we welcome all and try to resist passing such sweeping judgments as your remark suggests. We would welcome you, and you might be surprised by the warmth and the intellectual and spiritual depth you'd find.
@M.W. Hilliard I'm a pretty conservative Christian. It's clear that you and I are members of the same faith community.
Notre Dame is more than Catholic. She is a monument to a Higher Power, a loving mother, civilization and culture. A magnificent structure to art, history, and spirituality.
1
As a non-Christian, I have always viewed Notre Dame as an architectural wonder. I first visited it in 1975, then again in 1990. I am always amazed at the ability of those in the Middle Ages to build such a monument.
As an artist who had to study art history, I understand the architecture, the complicated building and the religious intent that created such beautiful monuments to a God I don't believe in. I am always struck by this. I have stood in the Nave and climbed the steps to the top of the towers. I have been amazed and humbled by the multicolored light flowing from the rose windows. The effect is a religious
experience as it touches our inner most being.
The last time I was in Notre Dame, the Cathedral Choir was rehearsing a Monteverdi Mass. It was one of the loveliest hours I have ever spent in Paris.
I hope Notre Dame will be rebuilt to serve a history of a multi-culturalism, not just as a monument to Catholicism.
4
Mr. Doubthat's article is a hopeful call for Catholics to build something new to match our times and challenges. The article does not grapple wth the external attacks upon the Catholic Church which are many and sometimes vicious. They too stem in part from the sexual revolution of the 60s which crystalized into the value that sexual acts between consenting adults in private cannot be penalized by the law. It is ironic that "don't ask--don't tell" seems to be giving way to "shut up about your moral views on sexuality and your questions about its nature(s)". President Obama decided to decide some of these issues himself with his policy and dicta which astounded many Americans resulting in joy in some and outrage in others. This is not going away anytime soon---not in the Church and not in society. Perhaps one way forward is for both sides to stop calling the other side pejorative names and instead to treat each other's views with respect, with the acceptance that the law disallows unequal treatment in the public sphere based on sexual or gender preference.People may think their thoughts and express their thoughts without heat-seeking missiles.
Do not rebuild Notre Dame. Rebuild the relationship between Jesus Christ and those who depend upon their Catholic faith to endure. It is tempting to generate metaphors "explaining" the correlation between the sex abuse crisis, Holy Week and the immolation of this magnificent building, but correlation is not causation. This was just something that happened and now we have an opportunity to respond in a way consistent with our understanding of the meaning of Jesus' life.
Would Jesus demand this cathedral be rebuilt? There is no way you could read the Gospels and argue rebuilding Notre Dame would be His priority. He would probably prefer the resources needed to restore this church be used to help the poor. He certainly would prefer that this loss be perceived as a call to treat each other better.
The people of Paris stood outside Notre Dame, as the firefighters wrestled with destruction and loss, and they sang Salve Regina and other parts of the Catholic liturgy -- how beautiful is that? They did not need walls and a roof, but they did need to be there; they did need each other in that moment. No, this could be the beginning of something, but it must begin as something else ends, because that is an important truth of life.
There are too many churches and cathedrals anyway. There is not enough love.
3
I must be in the less than 1 percent who visited the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris for its many layers of beauty - the majestic stained glass, the tremendously precious sculptures, the architecture of the building, the hundreds of gargoyles, and even viewing the only statue of St. Denis which I have ever found.
Everyone of these works of art and beauty is a result from the inspiration and guidance of God. I never associated any one particular religion to this cathedral because in the end, it all points back to God, our creator.
Every time I walked through the cathedral as well as up the many well worn stone steps up to the Belfry and around the exterior of the towers, I was always at odds as who to give more praise and admiration to for these many, many works of art - God or man. In the end, I was usually uttered speechless because I could not begin to imagine who such magnificent feats were accomplished in the first place.
I found peace, serenity and a deep level of appreciation every time I visited the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. I never existed the building without a profound awareness of God's love which was extended to the many, many individuals who helped achieve such a blessing for Paris.
3
I think some are missing Ross' comparison between Notre Dame and 9/11. Yes, there have been other tragedies, but both of these involve buildings on a grand scale. The WTC was, for some little while at least, the tallest building in the world. A testament to modern commerce as Notre Dame is to the spiritual. And given the building resources available, I think Notre Dame the more significant accomplishment.
What to read of Catholicism as a whole from the tragedy is akin to looking into the fire as one looks at tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. Seeking to divine patterns from unrelated things is all too human a tendency. But life is holistic, not neatly segmented, our spiritual informs our secular, and as Ross points out with the polarization of competing factions, the secular clearly informs the spiritual as well.
He invokes the cross, "...two infinite lines converging and combining." In many ways we are at a crossroads. Do we go Right, or Left, forward or retreat? Do we find a larger meaning in a spirituality that is truly "Catholic," i.e,, "universal" no matter the form, or do we cling tenaciously to various fundamentalisms, whether religious or political, each proclaiming themselves the sole voice of "Truth?" Notre Dame will be rebuilt, as the Freedom Tower now stands where the WTC once was. We can all come together for the greater good, or watch it all burn as did that stalwart edifice.
1
@Patrick
I guess what I most disagree and despise with the comparison of Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris and the events of 9/11 is that 2,753 people died as a result of the towers collapsing due to hate and terrorism. From all account thus far, the Notre-Dame fire was an accident and only two police officers and one firefighter were injured. One act was accidental, the other intentional.
The only common thread was the slight of the towers falling and the spire breaking apart and falling through the blazing red sky, on fire.
4
I love Benedict’s theology and am used to read it quite a bit. So, I quickly read his reflection (4/12) having been mentioned in the column. In the part in which Benedict discusses on the sexual revolution, I was shocked to encounter the passage that states the fact of pedophile as if affirmed was a part of the revolution’s physiognomy (my paraphrase). Overall, though, the former pope’s thesis is as beautiful as usual, and particularly in this one, he points out the difficulty, if not impossibility, of the reconciliation between moral theology and Biblical theology, applicable to the society as immediately viable. To me also, yes, martyrdom proves the faith, but individuals can and should pursue each one’s happiness individually in the belief in God according to me.
Ross should put this column in a time capsule to be opened in 100 years. My guess is that it will be read with some amusement and curiosity by students of comparative religious studies at the three or four schools that will be offering such lines of inquiry. That a "retired" supreme pontiff has taken issue with the fruits of modernity should not be surprising especially since he projects so much of the authoritarianism (and fashion sense?) of a bygone age that can no longer leverage believers to butts into pews.
Ross, the fundamental problem is that we can draw a straight line from doctrinal enforcement of clerical celibacy (which you know is NOT biblical in origin) to the historically documented cascade of abuses against women, children, adolescents and gay people that has besmirched your church for at least the last millennium.
I have no doubt that Notre Dame de Paris will be rebuilt but your pre-Vatican II nostalgia and certitude will not, I suspect, be widely shared or much remembered in 2119. Orate fratres!
1
The Christ I glean from the Bible seems mostly concerned with people and how they treat each other. With respect, with love, with generosity, we are to meet our fellow man and treat them the way we ourselves wish to be treated. That you take this message and manipulate it into some liberal/conservative paradigm seems sacrilegious. The manipulation in and of itself distorts and confuses the message and places it in a context where it was never meant to go.
I understand one reads the Bible and interprets it the way that fits most their world view with room to aspire while knowing that aspiration will never be achieved. The modern cathedral seems to be that aspiration made physical - spaces of wonder and art and deeds of noble men and sacrifice and order and structure and ritual and recognition of divinity. This, however, was not Christ's goal as our lives were to be that aspiration.
Funny that the current pope seems more in tune with this sense but has been rejected by the conservatives of that faith. For years they spoke of how the faithful should follow the leader of the church as he is Christ's representative on Earth, but now reject the current Pope as some liberal fantasist. They can easily deny his authority because Conservative ideology has replaced the Bible as the foundation of their faith.
I ask myself at the end of every Douthat column "what kind of world does Ross want?" I never feel it is a world in which I would like to live.
3
I am disappointed that you would write "... the abuse problem dramatically worsened during the sexual revolution ..." when we are talking about crimes that were simply never spoken about in generations past. How many 19th Century orphans took the history of their treatment in Catholic orphanages to their grave is unknowable; we cannot take this absence of evidence to be evidence of absence. What we can say for certain is that the celibacy was always there, the seal of priest-to-priest confession was always there, the self-interest of the church hierarchy was always there, and the power of the church over the lives of its parishioners )and wouldbe accusers) was far greater.
7
For many religion is still relevant. Whether one is a conservative or liberal Catholic we all worship in the same Church. Some follow the more traditional tenets while others have become more modern. Pope Benedict would be considered today a more conservative pope while Pope Francis is taking the Church in a more modern direction.
What will become of the Catholic Church of tomorrow is anyone's guess. This much is for certain. The Catholic Church which has existed for over 2000 years will not die or fade away. It still is a flourishing faith with over one billion members around the world and continues to gain members all the time. Easter is the time in which many are received into the Catholic Church. It is still very relevant in a turbulent world. It offers peace and joy that are missing in today's world.
2
At the rate we’re going, what with climate change and race and ethnic divisions and strife around the world, we may be lucky if there is even an earth where Catholics can be pondering their purpose in 2100 A.D. But I digress. Mr. Douthat grieves the chasm within the modern Catholic Church but fails to acknowledge some of the main reasons the church is losing adherents in the developed, Western world. Like many others, I left the Church of my youth because it no longer met my spiritual needs. The sexual abuse scandal, whatever its causes, was but one factor that led to my decision. It put in full display the hypocrisy of a church leadership that while condemning the sins in others turned a blind eye to its own misdeeds. And while it does better than many evangelical churches in following Jesus’ teachings about the poor and persecuted, its leadership and many adherents, at least here in the US, have been quick to identify with and support politicians who are followers of Jesus in name only. Finally, its demonization of LGBT people and its irrational opposition to birth control in the face of the horrible suffering of millions of poor children soured me to a church where I found so much joy while growing up.
4
The Roman Catholic Church will have to figure out by itself how it wants to "modernize" and how it wants to "stay the same." That's up to Catholics of all persuasions to pursue. But make no mistake, the survival of mankind into a distant future, certainly to the year 3019 and well beyond, will depend on a secular world order. That means "not linked to any religion." This was a basic tenet of the Enlightenment in Europe and then the American Constitution in the newly formed United States in the latter half of the 18th century. I think that Douthat knows and believes in the secular order as well.
Reading this column was like reading a history book written by a self-identified conservative who believed that the antebellum South was, all in all, a pretty nice place and that Manifest Destiny was honestly the will of God.
At the time Notre Dame de Paris was built, the Catholic Church was burning witches and heretics. It had virtually every European under its massive thumb and wanted to keep them there. The services were conducted entirely in Latin, which virtually none of the congregants could understand. That's the world to which conservative Catholics would like to return.
I'm not now, have never been, and will never be, a Catholic, but I love the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, and have already donated money to its rebuilding. It is a wonderful symbol, not of what has been, but what might be.
13
It’s truly a great loss that we all wish did not happen, generating expressions of lots and lots of gooey sentiments, but how many of those whose eyes are moistening by the thought of the damage have considered what is just, at the end of the day, a building owned by the state, or experienced the crass commercialism inside, selling for a few euros special access to the “crown of thorns”, or the history of how it was built with what we would certainly call today near-slave labor, at a time when rood screens were common, just one symbol of how little the imperial hierarchy thought of its congregants?
Mr. Douthat:
I am rather puzzled by your endorsement of Pope Benedict's position and your statement "... that the abuse problem dramatically worsened during the sexual revolution (a boring empirical fact if you spend any time with the data or the history)". Since you claim the increase to be an empirical fact - which could be true - how did you distinguish between a mere correlation of those events occurring at the same time, versus a causal link? Was any consideration given to the fact that perhaps by the sixties victims were more willing to speak up against an institution that up to that moment no one would dare speak against.
I encourage you to read victim statements where the families pressured the victims to be quiet and not bring dishonor on the "Church". You may also wish to read the recently published roster of known pedophile priests that places many as far back as the 1930's. Add the reluctance to come forward, family pressure and the aura of a millennial institution and your theory and misuse of data appears shaky, at best.
13
I believe the premise that "...the abuse problem dramatically worsened during the sexual revolution (a boring empirical fact if you spend any time with the data or the history)... is fundamentally flawed. Just because "the data" shows an uptick of incidents from the 60's & 70's it does not reflect the true rate of occurrence. It merely reflects an uptick in reporting of such incidents. Do you really believe the incidence of rape and incest was lower in the decades preceding the sexual revolution? No, the difference is that society is more accepting of reports of these kind of crimes. I was blessed with 16 years of Catholic education. In elementary school in the late 50's and early 60's we were taught that the priest was Christ's earthly representative. When a priest entered and exited a classroom, the good sister would snap her fingers and we would immediately kneel in front of the good father. It made it a bit prohibitive to report sexual abuse crimes. The evolution is the freedom of victims to report such crimes today. I would posit that society's willingness to hear victims voices in the reason for the change in reporting. Just as the crimes of rape and incest were under reported in the past, so were the crimes of sexual abuse in the Church.
9
It's possible to read into this fire a deep symbolism reflecting the current modern-traditional divide in the Church, but I find it distasteful to suggest that an eventual triumph by either side will reduce the Church to a burnt-out shell, as Mr. Douthat does here. Is it not possible, just once, to step away from the daily political 'take' and simply reflect on what the fire means in the long view? What is the Cathedral to the Catholic?
While watching the fire engulf Notre Dame, the last thing on my mind was the palace intrigue of the 'two pope' Vatican (which it seems only conservative Catholics seem to sense and cling to) or the debate between liberalism and clericalism. In fact it is mostly a debate that occurs between Catholic intelligentsia in weekly columns and detached from the quotidian spiritual needs of the faithful - I am certain that those Parisians singing Salve Regina as Notre Dame burned were not analyzing Benedict's letter through the light of the fire. Instead, I though of the priest's dicturn on Ash Wednesday: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
6
I often read this column, but generally don't agree. But this is one of those apolitical things, even spiritual. I am Muslim but even I cried seeing such a towering, historic House of God on fire. (Notre Dame was one of our must-see on our first visit to Paris, not just to marvel at it's architecture but see a physical manifestation of praise to God).
Also, I feel that way about my own religion right now - I think in general we're leaving the godly out of religion.
Anyhow, very well written column. Happy Easter
3
I can't believe that you would suggest the problem with modern Catholicism is that we need to go back to look at what our ancestors did and imagine what it would be like to do that again.
When Notre Dame was built the Catholic Church was essentially omnipotent in Europe. It literally decided who would be the Kings and Queens. Popes of this era and into the Renaissance were placed in their seats by the wealthiest families of Europe who used the papacy and the Church for their own accumulation of wealth. The Popes at the time fathered children, owned vast tracks of land, had armies and lived very well in comparison to the Catholic population that lived in squalid conditions at the time.
There were numerous excesses in the church all meant to accumulate wealth and power. The Protestant Reformation happened because of the church's excesses in those periods. One excess in particular was the selling of indulgences. Literally you could buy your way out of a sin.
Anyone who studies history will see that the Catholic Church, like most other institutions was dependent on the accumulation of power and wealth.
To suggest that Catholics reflect back on what it was like to in those times with a sense of romanticism is both unbelievably naive and ignorant of history.
12
The absolute power of the 12th century catholic church, that Ross longs for, will never be rebuilt. Thank god. Just like the "good old days" of the 1950s that trumpists long for.
10
The man can write. Still, for all his attempts to find an overarching theme, Ross ignores the one fact that makes the church irrelevant today. The middle ages took place at a time when the tidy universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy could still exist: the sun went around the earth, all the objects in the heavens were embedded in neat moving crystal spheres surrounding us who were in the center, and God and his angels could conceivably still live behind the clouds. That universe was essential to the Hebraic-Christian story, and it is broken and gone. However many times Ross dismisses this fact as a liberal sneer, modern science has made that story of God so unlikely that it has led to the ongoing dying off of tidy belief among billions of educated people. A regeneration where large masses of the educated believe the old story again is as likely as a fervent revival of the religion of Zeus, Hera and the other gods of Mount Olympus.
3
Speaking as a Protestant, Pope Francis is not perfect, but he is at least proclaiming the message of Jesus more than the message of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
It is painful to see such a beautiful symbol of faith like Notre Dame, survivor of so many wars, fall to a fire likely tied to the renovation. People of all faiths are saddened by its destruction.
12
I share Mr. Douthat's sadness about the damage to Notre Dame. However, his article overlooks the fact that great cathedrals like Notre Dame were not undertaken in a spirit of triumphalism. Rather, they were gifts of surpassing generosity, selflessly bestowed upon future generations. Which is precisely why people of all faiths and none feel this loss so deeply.
How daring was it for generations of designers, laborers, artists, rulers to commit unconditionally to building cathedrals that they would never live to see completed? Only love can inspire such boldness. Love that hopes for neither profit nor reward in this life.
Mr Douthat's columns often criticize liberalism. He does so again here. Let me remind him that another meaning of the word liberal is generous. The world is now ruled by financiers who focus obsessively on quarterly returns. They undertake no cathedrals to edify the masses.
Except that there has been an outpouring of financial support for Notre Dame forthcoming from some of France's riches people. Perhaps this loss and the determination to rebuild has the potential to unite society again around a higher purpose. One hopes so.
And perhaps while we're at it, we might give a thought to our burning planet, whose sadly diminished glory we bequeath to generations we will never know.
12
I doubt there can be a rebuilding of Catholicism of a magnitude comparable to that of the one which occurred when Notre-Dame was first erected. But the same aspirational symbolism of the need for rebirth can be applied to the whole of human civilization.
Yesterday's "Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" brilliantly emphasized that civilizations have to be rebuilt incessantly - a fresh improvement on the melancholy 1919 Paul Valéry's: "We civilizations now know ourselves mortal."
The burning of Notre-Dame touches on the deep insecurity permeating our sense of human civilization in this age of globalization and ominous symptoms of a wavering of the Western (Judeo-Christian) leadership within it. Neglected for centuries (it served as a wine warehouse during the French Revolution), Notre-Dame was reborn as a universal symbol of civilization when one deeply Republican poet, Victor Hugo, published in 1831 "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame".
3
Does Mr. Douthat really believe there will still be a human race, let alone Catholics, in 3019 AD? His inability to frame the theological conflict within the Catholic Church in the broader context of the world's actual problems - that affect all of humanity, regardless of faith - exposes the weakness and limitation of Catholicism (and other organized religions).
4
All religions are complicated puzzles wrapped in sacred enigmas. Loaded-down with difficult to understand dogma and mountainous lists of life-living rules to follow or else. All designed to add the aura and the mystery. Obedience to authority required. Piety helps if you're seeking advancement. It's about power and control.
It's hard to believe.
Seeing the cathedral burn, I was also thinking about what it says about our nonstop bickering between "left" and "right," liberal and conservative, Francis and Benedict. What I decided is that there's nothing left to say. We've all said our piece. Now we either show up and rebuild or we don't. The Church belongs to us and we are responsible for it just like we are responsible for our families. The constant predictable arguments have a place, but you would never let a political disagreement destroy your family (I hope). You show up when you're needed and leave your opinions at the door. And what goes for Notre-Dame goes for the Church as whole. It's more important than our opinions, and will be there for us long after our opinions are forgotten.
Brittle, judgmental conservatives and preening, dismissive liberals... don't worry or complain about what people you disagree with are doing. That's not your job. Your job is to show up and set an example, which is in the end the only way anyone can hope to change anyone else's mind.
6
As someone who has personally witnessed the iconic, spellbinding grandeur of Notre Dame, on many occasions, it’s ultimate present power is not as a Catholic monument but as an embodiment of French political and social civic history. Owned by the state for centuries, it’s restoration will be expertly performed by an assemblage of world-class architects, engineers, contractors, artisans, etc., funded largely by private secular sources. Although understandable, the columnist chooses not to highlight this fundamental reason why the Cathedral is so beloved today by the French and the citizenry of the world.
2
Notre Dame was built by the rich as a cover for their crimes against the poor. The 1 percent are already stepping up to the plate to the tune of hundreds of millions. They need these relics to help them sleep at night. The Napoleons of the world need these piles garish of rocks, the faithful do not. Meanwhile, the real church is growing by leaps and bounds among the wretched of the earth in developing nations without the Pope and these ridiculous piles of medieval rocks.
27
@shreir The building is owned by the French Ministry of Culture, not the Roman Catholic Church. It can be appreciated for its design, artwork and importance to so many events in French history, including the Revolution. You are right to say that the clergy sided with the aristocrats to plunder the poor and middle class, leading as it happens their richly-deserved setbacks in the Revolution. Still, I for one am happy the building exists and seems in good enough shape for reconstruction.
12
One could also make the case that beyond the fact that the rich paid for it, and the corruption of the powerful, medieval cathedrals contain the whole knowledge of an epoch. The knowledge of carpenters and the trees that would stand for centuries, the knowledge of masons and how to cut the rocks, the knowledge of luthiers that constructed the organs and thought about the acoustics, of sculptors, in short the whole knowledge of a particular society. Don't dismiss it as piles of rock. True buildings can be and are used as instruments of opression. But a building such as this is much more than the corrupt institutions of power that own it. To know a little bit of history would be useful, even more for the "real" church, as you call it.
19
Throughout the history of the church, there have been those who pretend they have a direct access to god, that they don’t need the meddling, mediating influence of art. These iconoclasts have, in the name of their purely spiritual god, destroyed the handiwork of those lesser mortals who need the stepladder of art to raise themselves to heavenly heights. I always thought Christ became man because he wanted to redeem nature, not obliterate it. I’m sorry, but such lose talk of Notre Dame as a pile of rocks is bad theology.
6
The conservative’s lament: if only we could live in the past and do “what our ancestors did and imagine what it would mean to do that again.” If only…if only…if only…
Yes, let’s return to 1163 when the construction of Notre Dame was begun. Let’s assume a medieval worldview and politics. Pathetic.
Today in the real world, in real time France is more secular than religious. Religion is no longer the social glue it once was. Notre Dame is now a French national monument and will be rebuilt with state funding (the church’s coffers are empty due to sex abuse lawsuits). But the materials used in its reconstruction will be new, the technology will be new – it will mimic the old, but it will be new.
Nothing lasts forever – a lesson conservatives can’t seem to learn. And the lesson for America is that the conservative vision, grounded in the past, is no match for modern reality.
Reality – what a concept.
5
Where are the facts to prove that clerical abuse erupted in the “ libertine” 1960s? What a ridiculous statement. Victims were silenced. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence. Ross’s columns lack clarity and generally require several readings to make sense of them.
4
Maybe the Third Fatima message should be revealed.
1
Before asking Catholics a thousand years from now about what lies ahead of "stalemates and scandal," be mindful of what happened in France exactly 500yrs ago in 2 weeks. One of our greatest-ever Catholics, Leonardo da Vinci, died in the arms of ANOTHER Francis, albeit the then King of France. And yet the Holy See STILL can't see why wanting the "Mona Lisa" BACK was never THEIRS whence MOVING FORWARD could've optimally merged "synthesis and integration" in the crossroads of reversing our Edenic expulsion.
Hell no. Like Galileo, Leonardo was queer. And that he skipped any chance that bail would ever return for him a Tiger Woods-like comeback-MAJOR -- indeed prompting an exile from motherland Italy -- had set up a Martha Stewart-like ankle bracelet for Galileo's house arrest as the Holy See's about to seesaw itself into a holey oblivion.
When Notre Dame's rebuilt, the Mona Lisa should be its new Madonna. As the off-centered piety of the Vatican's Pieta repents in pity.
You cannot separate the this Notre Dame and her sisters across Europe from the economics of the Middle Ages or the power the Catholic Church exerted over the population. Those construction of those cathedrals kept people working and fed even as the Church wielded the fear of hell as a cattle prod to keep the masses in line. The central portal of the cathedral depicts the horrors of the damned. The Church will never be able to build such a structure again because it no longer wields that power. Secularism will rebuild it because it is a monument to what humans can achieve when united in common purpose, this time without the threat of eternal damnation.
3
We weep for a building but not the poor, the hungry, the oppressed? Maybe the the hand of God is in this fire to remind us of the true teachings of Christ.
80
@Kenny Privat False equivalence. I can weep for both and give to both. I give to local charities to feed and house the hungry but I will also give my little check to help restore this magnificent piece of history. God had nothing to do with this. It was an accident caused by a welder or a blown out fan.
23
@Kenny Privat, no reason why we can't do both. Why do those who are hostile to the Catholic Church always bring up this either/or argument?
The Catholic Church and individual Catholics do a tremendous amount of good for the poor, hungry, and oppressed throughout the world - both through their contributions and through volunteering and charitable missions.
Like Jennifer, I will continue my support for programs benefiting the poor, hungry, and homeless - and will also send what I can toward re-building Notre Dame.
14
Thanks, @Jennifer. You're so right.
5
"I am a conservative of some sort, who fears that liberal Christianities usually end up resembling a post-inferno cathedral, with the still-grand exterior concealing emptiness within."
Better that than claiming a retrograde "faction" which, in its intentional cruelty toward women, children, and gay people, makes of its followers "whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." Matthew 23:27.
7
As both a Catholic by birth and former citoyen de Paris, the Church has not been placed in crisis by the tragic burn of a building, albeit the most important and beautiful building of its kind. It has been destroyed by its sexual abuse of small children, and the Vatican's offer of sanctuary to Bernard Cardinal Law, a pedophile in name if not by action.
The kindness and compassion of Christ is towards people, not architecture, and the nicest people I have ever known are French: the stallkeepers of Clingnancourt, and the shopkeepers of Contrescarpe. Rebuild Notre Dame. Mais reconstruit aussie liberte, egalite et fraternite. The world needs what Notre Dame represents, far more than Notre Dame itself.
78
notre dame is a monument, a stunning reminder of what human beings can achieve. as for Catholicism, let it burn.
5
Perhaps Mary herself set Notre Dame on fire out of disgust.
Its not the form, or the doctrine which needs to be worshipped or reformed. Let alone debates about/between the priests/bishops/Pope on obscure theological matters.
The voices of women are absent in the Church. This is the great flaw. Ave Maria indeed, but what about her daughters?
5
Ross, did it ever occur to you that the correlation between the increased incidences of reported clerical sexual abuse and the cultural revolution of the 1960s was not due to a dramatic worsening of the abuse because the openness of the era promoted more libertine ways of abusers but instead made the abused feel more free to report the abuse? Unlike the children abused on his watch, Benedict should be seen and not heard.
As for the tragic fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris serving as metaphor for the Roman Catholic Church, we can only hope this fire is one that like a forest fire in the Western United States, clears the deadwood your darling clerical conservatives have strewn about the nave of Christendom to make way for a return of new life where the Church does not merely intone the name of Jesus Christ, but follows his example of inclusiveness and love.
151
Russ seems to long for those pre sexual revolution days when abuse wasn’t reported. It was a more perfect world.
12
@G James
An elegant rebuke to predictable sanctimonious and opportunistic cant. The following seemed particularly out of key:
“The Catholicism of today builds nothing so gorgeous as Notre-Dame.”
Needless to say nothing of today builds anything so gorgeous as Notre-Dame.
9
@G James
A beautiful comment until I read "darling clerical conservatives".
For most Liberals, a modest and conservative tack in life is hard to square with your worldview. As a conservative, neither tempted by predation of young boys nor the myriad horrors to which you allude, I would say that you might leaven your own stature by seeing that the "truth" lies somewhere between us.
I think it is best first to confess my own sinfulness before turning my critique on others, liberal or conservative.
And, yes, we are all sinners. Look up the derivation of the term. And, as post-modernists push their way to the front of the barricades, it will be a heavy burden for each of them to describe and effect the future they believe to be so easily within reach and so pathetically "botched" by the faithful.
Benedict's vapid explanation blaming the culture of the 60s for the sexual abuse of children by the catholic clergy is false.
The agreement presumes there was none or little abuse in the 50s or earlier. That has to be false knowing what we know now how pervasive that abuse was when it was finally investigated. Conveniently most priests perpetrators and victims from that era are dead..
But the proof of the fallacy of the argument lies in Ireland. The sexual liberation of the US in the 60s was brought about in large part by oral contraceptives which were not available in Holy Ireland until much later and then only to married women. Yet sexual abuse was pervasive in Ireland during the 60s
Notre -Dame was built over the course of a century a thousand years ago when most people could not read, the church had great secular powers, 'heretics' were burned to death and the rich were convinced by the church that they could buy their way into heaven by giving money to the church to build such edifices.
Having read Douthat's column over the years I can see why he would like to return to those good old days.
7
You owe your readers an explanation for this statement: "...the abuse problem dramatically worsened during the sexual revolution (a boring empirical fact if you spend any time with the data or the history)." What seems much more likely is that *reporting* of sexual abuse increased during and after the sexual revolution.
14
What a relentlessly downbeat piece. While others are using this tragic event as a rallying call, Douthat has managed to extract the worst from a few recent events and make them still worse.
2
"...something commensurate to the symbolism of one of Catholicism’s greatest monuments burning on Holy Week, a day before Benedict’s own birthday, on the day after Catholics listened to a gospel in which the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom." Oh, my, now I see what Douthat's conversion has done for him: feed his grandiosity and sanctimony. Preach, Ross, preach!
2
Notre Dame de Paris has been in pitiful, poorly maintained shape for a long, long time. Very symbolic of Catholicism in general?
1
"that the abuse problem dramatically worsened during the sexual revolution (a boring empirical fact if you spend any time with the data or the history)"
Evidence for this self serving assertion? Martin Luther and others denounced this centuries ago, the root cause of which is the unhealthy institution of a caste of celibate priests existing in society, amongst whom child sex abuse is statistically exponentially greater than in other milieux, like for example conservative Protestant cultures where while sex outside marriage is condemned, all adult males are expected to be married in the ordinary course of things.
1
Mr. Douthat you nailed it!
“Notre-Dame de Paris is a monument to a particularly triumphant moment of Catholic synthesis — the culture of the high Middle Ages, a renaissance before the Renaissance, at once Roman and Germanic but both transformed by Christianity, a new hybrid civilization embodied in the cathedral’s brooding, complicated, gorgeous sprawl.”
What is the synthesis, Ross?
Seek no further than the message of Jesus Christ. A message that the Church of Rome, after Constantine's conversion, sought to suppress in the name of consolidating its power.
1. Seek and find your Inner Light
2. Let that Light speak.
3. Help the less fortunate.
4. Heaven is here on earth. Open your eyes.
Christ consorted with criminals, courtesans, and the marginalized. Not the Elite. He was a true Revolutionary.
3
As a non-Christian and hence outside looking in, I'm distressed at how Mr. Douthat undermines his own truth. Since I first gazed upon it exactly 60 years ago a great admirer of Notre Dame, and in close touch with French friends who just today wrote me of "Notre Dame de Paris qui restera dans le cœur de l’Humanité," I wish Mr. D had not pulled his punches here. These two popes each represent a reaction to their predecessors, and hence represent the poles of the tensions RD correctly discerns at the root of the institution's intramural centrifugalism. But one is no longer pope and yet at 92 just couldn't hold it in any longer.
Change is necessary yet for a new synthesis the right must give ground--as it did in the past. The problem is not the forces of change or the incumbent's pejoratively dubbed "destabilizing style," but those that preserve stasis and its ugly results.
Or is this just a 92 year old conducting BAU--Vatican business as usual--by leaning hard on the internal process that'll determine the _next_ papal succession? If so, what a shame, when Rome Is Burning.
1
To consider tragic human error in the accidental fire of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris symbolic of the church’s partisan approach to an indefensible scandal, endless criminal activity and cover-up is, no pun intended, beyond belief. To point to modernity, the 1960’s, a Hendrix and Joplin??? the mini-skirt, the hula-hoop, no less, is beyond the pale. How does one reach an “integrated alternative”? to deal with what? – the abusing of children? Is this even possible to say out loud, to consider without recoil? Douthat’s search for some sort of “feeling of grand Gothicity” to apply to his present-day church and its inexcusable acts is not to be found in tragic accident. The only symbolic read the Catholic Church should reap from this is in its own spiritual destruction within. The material architecture can be rebuilt without issue – while the Church’s necessary spiritual rebuild remains in question – its complicity in endless and criminal scandal a crucible to any true reform and, yes, on Easter week, resurrection.
3
The ability of hacks with an agenda like Douthat to attach meaning to an accidental fire in an iconic building (is he suggesting it was an act of god?) is both risible and mildly appalling. No Mr Douthat the Catholic Church has problems because of criminal acts committed and covered up within its institution. This has nothing to do with the fire probably started by an electrical short or some other prosaic cause in what is both a religious shrine and magnificent work of art.
4
One reads in the French press that the number of non-practicing Roman Catholics steadily increases. Those are probably neither Sedevacantists, nor atheists or agnostics, but people influenced by the computerized style of life.
On the restoration of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame: someone in France should quickly act to establish in the US a IRS-recognized charitable fund, to which the Usans could make tax-deductible donations.
Being wholly irreligious in the conventional sense of this word (I believe in the dualistic Eternal Struggle of Good and Evil), I shall wholeheartedly contribute to such a restoration fund.
1
The burning of Notre-Dame is a very good image of todays catholicism: implosion.
2
Ross,
The burning of Notre-Dame was a metaphor for a present reality: We are alone in the Universe. We are alone on this planet. We are moving toward self-imposed extermination. We need to change course now.
And that includes change in the political, philosophical, religious and economic presuppositions we have believed to be inherent truths we are now discovering were built on geo- ecological flaws.
Your Roman Catholic Church even with Pope Francis’ 2015 Laudio Si has let us down.
If we continue destroying our planet, we will not be here In 3019 A.D.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
2
How conveniently you blame the sexual revolution, siting the "data" for a problem which in all likelihood goes back well before the time of the building of Notre Dame. Keep in mind that the winners write the history and the Catholic Church was one of histories biggest winners. Not so today. We do not even understand the depth of the perversion...yet! It was the Conservative side of the church which kept this hidden. Don't worry, the children can take it, so to speak! I am heartbroken that the fabulous museum, Notre Dame has fallen and with it...?
I think the people of the United States should, in the spirit of the Statue of Liberty, gifted to us by the people of France, rebuild the Museum of Notre Dame.
1
Perhaps Mr. Douthat has read the letter sent earlier to the New York Times from a French priest who has served as missionary for many years in Angola. His mention of excess and lack of restraint when it comes to vilifying holy men has struck a chord with a friend in Paris. Forwarding Mr. Douthat's rebuke of a divided Catholic Church her way, and perhaps it will be received as food for the soul and a source of solace.
The church does not have a sex scandal. Its clergy seems to really, really enjoy raping children, and the church should stop existing based on its betrayal of trust and monstrous crimes. It is hard to fathom someone framing it as a 'sex' problem that began in the 60s with a change in sexual mores. Child rape in the church is systemic, and endless, and had been happening for many hundreds of years before the 1960s. Stop being so disingenuous, Ross, and you might be taken seriously one day.
2
My extremely devout Catholic mother would not even consider a divorce from my violent, abusive, alcoholic father. Due to her faith, and peer pressure from her Catholic brothers and sisters (she had 10 siblings) and Mother, she stuck it out in a miserable marriage for 40 years.
In my teens, a priest was transferred to our parish. He was a serial sexual abuser; the Saint Louis archdiocese simply transferred him down the road whenever his actions caught up with him. He abused, sexually, at least three of my 12 year old friends.
You might think of Catholicism as a beautiful, useful, nurturing and saving faith, Douthat. All I think of is hypocrisy, abuse, superstition, and the type of people that shamed my Mother into staying in an unfulfilling and violent marriage.
1
Please Mr. Douthat do not sully the sad story of Notre Dame Cathedral's destruction by fire with any comparisons to the sex abuse scandal. As usual Former Pope Benedict does not do the Church any favors when he issues his long winded opinion pieces but please leave him out of the tragic story Parisians are facing this morning. The sex scandal has little to do with changing cultural norms and much to do with the misogynistic practices of the Catholic Church. When women are treated as equals in the Church sex scandals will disappear. Priests of both sexes who can marry and who have children will not cover up the sexual sins of their peers. The traditional reason this has not been allowed has nothing to do with spirituality or theology and everything to do with the Church's greed for money and property.
1
RD, I greatly admire the sincerity of your soul-searching. It is an inspiring example of what exists at the heart of specifically Roman Catholic Christianity that deserves validation, regardless of how many wrongs or even outright atrocities have ever been committed by flawed human beings, abusing their positions, in the name of the Holy See.
I particularly agree with the 4th & 5th paragraph of this article. These are difficult subjects to process; the closest thing to definitive objectivity is the ability to discern that definitive objectivity remains elusive, precisely because individual suffering is always, like the iris of an eye, circumscribed by the uniqueness of the person. Sometimes, it is a great deal already just to have someone of advanced years, having once been thrust into a position of spiritual primacy, to give us their best public summation of their private thoughts.
I like both B16 & F, my fellow Argentine. I value their best efforts to tackle an affliction whose roots stretch back many millennia, into barbaric, prehistoric times. 'Might makes right' is an old, old lie. It cannot be put right immediately, except by God: but were such instant healing possible, would people actually learn the lesson?
Unhappy childhoods begin in wrong-headed marriages. Wrong-headed marriages are tainted by ego, by emotional withholding, by obsessions with punishment & control. Yet, as the loss of a cathedral shows, Some is better than None. Grow Love. Rebuild. Start over.
"A general inability, Catholic and secular, to recognize that both the “conservative” and “liberal” accounts of the sex abuse crisis are partially correct"
Um... it isnt a "conservative" or "liberal" account. The problems the Catholic church has had is sexual abuse by priests, usually involving young boys. That is a crime, no other way to look at it. In addition, my guess it has been going on for a LONG time. No need to drag in the 1960s and 1970s and the *cultural revolution* to tut tut about.
The problem is the church and the hierarchy that has been more than willing to look the other way. It is sad that Nortre Dame burned, but this isnt the first time it has happened and it has been rebuilt in the past. Lets see if the same is true of the church leadership - it's burning now also.
Former Pope Benedict's "reflection" last week was itself a scandal - the ex-Pope's former intellectual gifts now sadly faded, echoing the voices of militant conservatives in the Church who blame the sex abuse scandals on the 60s sexual revolution, Vatican II, contraception, gay people - all their favorite scapegoats.
If we didn't know better, one would think sex abuse, pedophilia, and the Church hierarchy's cover-ups only began sometime in the late 1960s shortly after Vatican II.
But we do know better: the Pennsylvania report that came out last year revealed sex abuse cases going back 70 years - to the 1940s. That's just one example.
Nice try at deflection, though - trying to take attention away from the FACT that much of the abuse, cover-ups, and promotion to high Church office of predators such McCarrick all took place during the reigns of those favorite Popes of the Catholic right, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
If you listen to some of the Catholic conservatives, you might almost believe sex was invented in the 1960s, or that everything and everyone were perfect in the 1950s. Yes, I guess it was "perfect" back when sex was a taboo subject that no one talked about - perfect way to keep abuse victims silent.
Benedict's statement is itself a scandal: inappropriate, ill-timed, divisive - and lacking truth.
2
"What is the synthesis that could make that possible? What lies beyond the stalemates and scandal and anger of our strange two-pope era?"
Ross, you know I disagree with your conservative theology which I don't think serves the Catholic church in this turbulent era.
Pope Benedict was wrong to usurp the papal platform of Francis, the new and only pope the church voted in as a result of his predecessor's unprecedented resignation.
And he was doubly wrong to blame the church's sex crisis on the libertine 60's, and homosexuality in general.
Come on, man--priestly sex abuse of all stripes has been infesting Mother church for centuries.
If you insist on finding the symbolism of Notre Dame burning as God's frowning on modernity, why not conclude the opposite, that God is telling man His church is rotten to the core and needs rebirth?
Who are you--or I-- to insist only one Pope can be "right" when the real truth is, we can only have one Pope, and Francis is it?
4
Synthesis?
What are the odds that the burning of Notre-Dame Cathedral is the work of arson?
1
"The church has always depended on synthesis and integration."
Really? The Church is a haven for old ladies and the ignorant huddled masses, and preists seem drawn to the biggest closet in which to self-hate themselves with other self-haters in peace and with the explicit acquiescense of the church leadership.
Don't twist yourself too badly trying to square the circle here: an old building burning down is just that, not a miracle of rejuvenation. Way nice building. Super anacronism of a faith though.
1
Stop criticizing Pope Francis, the greatest pope our church has had in all 76 years of my life!
1
The Notre Dame fire was a breathtaking loss. All people, not only Catholics, felt sorrow watching it. But the retired Pope's musings on the correlation between the sexual revolution of the sixties and a supposed rise in priestly pedophilia are not based on fact. There have always been predators among the priests, and the main difference in modern times is very likely that the incidents of abuse were actually reported, perhaps because of liberalizing culture. Then there was the shameful and illegal cover-up by the church hierarchy. This sordid history is neither conservative not liberal. It is what happened. Would that the former Pope could return to his former stance of maintaining his silence.
1
Detailed 14th century records of the inquisition in southern France revel priestly sexual abuse of both men and women.
This is not new. What is new is that ever since the American Revolution, humans have been reaching for individual power instead of submitting to the institutional power of religion, of kings, of aristocracies. White males fought for self- power in 1776. Humans of conscience fought slavery in l860-65. Black humans have been reaching for self-power since then. And female humans have been working for empowerment since Abigail Adams wrote "Don't forget the ladies" to John.
The Catholic church was once a humble vessel for human faith in God. But, since Constantine, the church has allied itself with power: using governmental power to control the faithful. It's no accident that the Constitution of the United States specified no state religion. Our forefathers knew history: they knew about the religious wars in Europe..
Now the Catholic Church must be a true church, without civil power. Christ told Satan: my kingdom is not of this world.
Catholics of faith can persevere without earthly power But only if they recognize that their power is spiritual and stop trying to recreate a world in which their blessing supported kings.
1
Douthat is consumed by a past that simply never existed. His Catholic church embraced the systematic extermination of Muslims and Jews. It blessed the enslavement of Native Americans and Africans. It justified systemic murder as "Baptism by Blood".
Does he not know that Notre Dame itself was built on the backs of an enslaved (serfs and feudal system) people subject to the whims of a despotic "nobility"? Does he not realize how the vast majority of Europeans lived and died in brutal circumstances while the Church gathered a vast hoard of gold, silver and art? Is he unaware of the excesses and scandals that have plagued the Church through the centuries?
Does he really believe that the workhouse and Irish Mother's homes were far superior to society support of unmarried mothers to raise their own child without shame? Or is shame and judgement his heart and soul of Catholicism?
Jesus would not recognize the "Christianity" that has grown from his teaching.
2
Mark 9:42: “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck." I do not believe that there is anything here or elsewhere in the New Testament to the effect that if there is a sexual revolution, then it won't be as bad as a millstone. Nor should anyone guilty of molesting a child expect to arrive at the Gates of Heaven and plead guilty with an explanation. I am Jesuit-educated, though a non-Catholic; but I cannot see how there can be two views on the rape of children. What the Church might have considered upon discovering this criminal behavior was to remember the millstone, and to render under Caesar that which was Caesar's.
1
you keep equating the 60's with the sexual revolution - for the purpose of blaming the sexual abuse of children on priests. well, correlation is not causation. you might as well blame the space race, Medicare, the civil Rights movement or color TV.
2
"Remember you are dust and to dust you will return."
1
It's funny how Catholic conservatives have suddenly discovered their inner "cafeteria Catholic." No one who professes to be Catholic should ever use such a glib atrocity of an expression as "Francis partisans."
1
How do you write a long column about decay in the Church without mentioning the teachings of Christ? That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? The principal purpose of the building is not to admire it—although that is one purpose. The principal purpose is to use the building to further God’s work here on Earth. Without employing our resources to carry out the hard work Christ demands of us—feeding the poor, clothing the naked, healing the sick, visiting the prisoner—Notre Dame is simply another Versailles.
1
The idea that sexual abuse worsened during the sexual revolution
is just not true. Your data and history are flawed. Sexual abuse has gone on for thousands of years at the same rate. Exposing it is fairly new.
1
Regarding the sexual abuse and assault of children, the synthesis is quite simple:
It doesn't matter which movement gave it birth. It only matters that it stops immediately and never happens again.
In terms of whether the Catholic church should yield to a conservative or liberal trajectory, I would suggest following the example of Christ: speak truth to power; don't be consumed by the power itself; self sacrifice for a higher ideal, because that is the core of Christ's love.
As some of the comments to this article note, for many the sexual revolution of the '60s and '70s was a liberating – even life-saving – cultural shift. But for Mr. Douthat, this liberation – not the medieval celibacy of a benighted institution – contributed to the channeling of priests' libido towards the sexual abuse of children. It seems Mr. Douthat just can't get enough of the Middle Ages. He also writes: “Notre-Dame de Paris is a monument to a particularly triumphant moment of Catholic synthesis — the culture of the high Middle Ages, a renaissance before the Renaissance . . . .”
A “renaissance before the Renaissance”? Some would beg to differ. For example, Jews. The Notre Dame cathedral was constructed from 1163 to 1345. This period corresponds to the Crusades. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the Crusades and the Jews: “In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France suffered especially. Philip Augustus treated them with exceptional severity during the Third Crusade (1188). The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. … . [T]he perpetrators mostly escaped legal punishment.”
Some renaissance.
I also take exception to this startling sentence from Mr. Douthat's column: “[F]lames engulfed the Cathedral of Notre-Dame [and] its spire fell in one of the most dreadful live images since Sept. 11, 2001. “ Ross. It's a roof. A roof burned. You can rebuild a roof. On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of people burned.
4
If you look in the comments from the first NYT article about the fire, I predicted the politicization of this issue by Church conservatives within 24 hours.
We’ve got this essay, we’ve got Donahue spreading conspiracy theories ok TV, par for the course.
1
Is the Notre Dame fire God's response to Benedict's cowardly craven apologetic for Catholic corruption that blames the sex abuse scandals on the sexual mores of the 1960s?
This is such a brazen act of passing the buck and blaming the victim that proves without any doubt that the Catholic Church has lost all touch with reality and no longer serves society at all.
Billy Graham and countless other evangelical ministries took off during the 1960s without the tawdry scandals that dog the Catholics. And they make no excuses when they fail either.
See Luke 13.35 and Matthew 23.38:
"Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."
What about Jesus, Messianic visions and actions, etc.? Isn't that what Christianity (including Catholicism) about?
What do we call it when a powerful male has his way with and impregnates a girl without her consent? ...
Some believers call it divine.
Is the behavior of and abuse by priests an anomaly or what they feel is condoned by their understanding of how a deity behaves.
If Zeus were the deity in question, one wonders what behavior his priests could rationalize based on his exploits in the mortal world.
1
Thank you Ross. I rarely agree with your columns, but this is dead on.
The challenge you offer, while particularly true of Catholics, is also true for much of the world's Christians. It might look different in the various Protestant denominations, but revisioning the church is an especially interesting and difficult task.
The Anglican communion, which is more democratic and more progressive, is nonetheless a mess. I hope we can all learn from each other, and I hope the world, especially the west, can find room for faith and belief.
This fire made me think of the countless fires that Christianity spread around the world. It also made me think of France’s colonial empire and the fires they brought to Africa, Indochina, and North America. Interesting.
3
Well, let's see. The Medieval church saw witch burning, things like the Albegensian Crusade, the Crusades themselves, a virtual union of Church and State, rampant corruption and cruelty, and of course a whole lot of the kind of sexual misconduct Benedict attributes to the evil '60's. The Renaissance just brought the corruption out into the open, and the Church to whom Christ promised he would be "with you all days" split.
Benedict himself, and all the autocrats, libertines, and sexual predators then and now were "chosen by the Holy Spirit" (who had his chance at reform with (H)adrian VI but let him die after only a little over a year).
From a scientific, objective point of view, this evidence seems indicate that the Church is nothing more than another totally human institution claiming without justification to speak for God.
7
The symbolism is obvious to the religious person, and I think that Ross Douhat could see the fires of hell burning yesterday. But I don't see these fires as burning Catholicism alone, I see it as a symbol and foreboding to the entire world's population. Notre Dame, the young woman, not the building, in the Catholic religion is referred to as the "Queen of Peace". My thoughts yesterday as Notre Dame's spire burned, and fell, was this is how the whole world, with all of it's people and treasures would look like if we engaged in nuclear war. Think about it for awhile, and if you can, use this symbolism and opportunity to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
2
Russ,
Here's an old phrase Catholics over the years, perhaps over the centuries, have said when at each others throats: "Remember we're all one at the rail," meaning, we are one, when we receive Holy Communion together. With this in mind, I would like to offer a short list as an object for meditation upon what has been lost, at least for now. It is the Sunday worship schedule at Notre Dame:
8:30AM: Mass
9:30AM, Lauds service (morning hymns service)
10AM: Gregorian Mass
11:30AM: International Mass
12:45PM: Mass
5:45PM: Vespers
6:30PM: Mass generally presided over by the archbishop of Paris, an important moment for any Catholics visiting Paris.
The cover up, which made possible 1000s rather than dozens by a single priest, is purely the result of clericalism NOT liberalism. Excuses, excuses...but no atonement. The new crime against the victims.
The accidental burning of Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral in France yesterday mirrored the schisms in the Catholic Church, and the divisions that have fractured countries on Earth. This is Holy Week in France and around the world. President Macron of France promised to rebuild Notre Dame -- a renaissance -- but a renovated cathedral won't replace the beloved old heart of Paris.
Notre Dame's catastrophic fire showed us that life turns on a dime. Divisions abound everywhere in our world today. Divided countries, divided peoples. Korea, Israel, the U.S. under poor leadership, Europe besieged, the split between climate-hoax believers like our president and the undeniable proof of climate change on Planet Earth.
During this Holy Week in April round the world, during the celebrations of Easter and Passover and Ramadan to come, we remember a young wise man in his 30s, Jesus of Nazareth, and his words, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." upon which a religion and a church were built. Love and hope can change our lives.
52
It troubles but doesn't surprise me that Benedict has resorted to something that institutional religion, particularly the Catholic Church, trades on all too freely: apportioning guilt and finger- pointing, in this case outside of the Church itself.
Benedict is certainly allowed to express his view, but a bit more introspection and honesty on his part would go a long way, or at least some distance, toward reconciling the Church's hierarchy with its own long and sordid history vis a vis sexual abuse and its associated coverup, all of which began long before the 60s and endured well beyond them.
The Church, as he implicitly postulates, isn't a child of the 60s. It's also more than its buildings, as tragic and shocking as yesterday's Notre Dame fire certainly is. As great as the temptation may be for some to discern a message of rebuke from the fire, that would be a mistake of conflation, when simply and consistently rooting out misdeeds by its very human and very fallible leadership would be far more helpful and appropriate.
3
The author misses on a couple of points.
First, he misses the mark on the sexual revolution, in its entirety. Yes, it was a rejection of a tired version of "morality" that viewed sexuality as something dirty, but it was also about openness, regarding sex. The facts surrounding the child abuse case are contrary to this concept. The church expended seemingly endless efforts and money in trying to keep the facts under covers. The fact that they were the self-appointed guardians of the "old morality," aside.
Secondly to consider the era of the catheral's construction a "renaissance before the renaissance" or renaissance of any kind is not only delusional, but hypocritical. This was a time when being non-catholic was a capital crime, and would continue to be so, for 2-300 years. Longer, still, before it was safe to be a non-christian. "Learning" was rigidly and, in most cases, wrongly, based on the teachings of the church. Actual scientific inquiry was, yet, frowned upon, when not punishable by death. Witch hunts and the inquisition were the rule. Not much of a rebirth of anything aside from authoritarianism, judgement and superstition.
2
The Catholic Church has an extensive history. Blaming the 60's for its current travails is a bit dangerous. It certainly fails to explain Caravaggio's numerous portraits of young effeminate boys commissioned by Cardinal del Monte for example. The problem with some aspects of conservative thinking is the tendency to point back to some perceived golden age that never quite holds up to closer scrutiny.
That being said, I do miss the pre Vatican II mass. The high drama and mystery created by these rites always filled me with a greater sense of spirituality. The Kumbaya liturgy just can't hold a candle to Mozart's Requiem for an in your face reckoning with mortality.
The ashes of Notre-Dame Cathedral may "rebuke" the currently divided (and divisive) Roman Catholic Church. However, it would be good for all, especially now, to recall -- and celebrate -- the fact that this breathtaking structure stands for all Christians: indeed, for all humanity.
2
The most beautiful column in this morning's Times about the Notre Dame fire is by Pamela Druckerman -- please read it if you haven't already. Here is a little of what stood out for me:
"The French don’t spend much time in churches. Though most of the population is nominally Catholic, France is one of the least religious countries in Europe. Urbane, intellectual Parisians often dismiss religion as archaic and unenlightened.
"And yet, the fire at Notre-Dame feels as if it has struck everyone here. It’s partly that, at 856 years old, Notre-Dame has witnessed much of French history. It’s where Henry VI was crowned, and Napoleon became emperor.
"Though most Parisians don’t visit often — and some never do — Notre-Dame is more than just a tourist attraction or a historic monument. It sits in the middle of the city, walking distance from practically everywhere, on the bank of the river that divides the city. Residents might not have fully realized it until Monday, but I think it reassured them to know that at the heart of their highly planned city was someplace entirely non-rational and non-Cartesian. Notre-Dame’s hulking, Gothic presence has long suggested that there is something mysterious and unknowable at the center of it all."
That last line of hers really says it.
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I'm a gay pediatrician, celebrating 30 years married (well, it would be 30, had it not taken 17 to get our marriage legal, over the kicking/screaming of Catholics like Benedict). I also spent 13 years as a Franciscan friar, before leaving for love.
As a pediatrician, I think the Church didn't really handle sex abuse worse than secular society. MD's weren't even trained to see sex abuse until the 80's. Even now, Americans want to believe that the sex abuse monster is "out there": Catholic priests, paroled sex offenders, Michael Jackson and such. But most sex abuse is by people known to the child, often family. The sex abuse monster is in the mirror! The difference is deep pockets and lawyers; no one sues the penniless abusers of children in families.
Ross, the reason that sex abuse in the Church correlates with the secular sexual revolution is not that the revolution was bad, but that traditional formation programs of priests with regard to sexuality was just to "stuff it": don't ask, pretend it doesn't exist, take cold showers. The end result were priests so psychosexually immature that they had no clue about their sexuality (gay or straight) and were at the mercy of sex when it broke into the cloister.
As for Benedict, it was stunning that a man of such towering intellect would go on a witch hunt against gay people when the sex abuse crisis demanded all of his attention. But "the lady doth protest too much, me thinks" and that might have been a reason for his homophobia.
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This fire was apparently an accident.
That an adherent to a faith that stands as a monument to idolatry including " sacred" artifacts, saints and demons discerns a "sign" of the divine is not surprising.
Mother Nature has no faith. And those alleged to have been created in their God's image are terrified and troubled by their innate mortality and immorality.
Jesus Christ gave the " Keys to the Kingdom" to the flawed disciple he deemed the rock upon which to build his new testament faith. His name was not Ross.
" God created man in his own image. And man returned the favor" George Bernard Shaw
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"The real challenge for Catholics, in this age of general post-Christian cultural exhaustion, is to look at what our ancestors did and imagine what it would mean to do that again, to build anew, to leave something behind that could stand a thousand years..."
I am not a Christian, I am a Jew. But I am also a musician, a classical violinist. My orchestra (and chorus) just presented Bach's B Minor Mass this past Saturday. That work, too, can be described as a "brooding, complicated, gorgeous sprawl." But both the B Minor Mass and Notre Dame, though separated by hundreds of years, were created during an age of faith. At least, that is how I see it in my uneducated imagination. A time when, as I imagine it, belief in God was a given, whatever, and however many were the polarizing issues of their day. How could J.S Bach have created so many extraordinary works, and how could not only Notre Dame but the other great cathedrals of that era have been built, except that underlying these monumental efforts was an unquestioned belief that the work was for the sake of Him in whose name the efforts were undertaken?
"The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world."
Dona Nobis Pacem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8yOP9EUIY8
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@David Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this lovely reflection, including both the poetry and music (to which I am listening as I write). It is the gifts of the heart that unite us, and nothing else really does. I wept at the fire, so far beyond current controversies. Blessings to you, and to all of us.
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@David Thank you, but I must note that you are far more humble than you are "uneducated".
1
Ross. Compare the teaching and practice of Christ to the excesses of the Catholic Church. The complete alteration from the actions of a simple carpenter who shared what he had with all around him directly contradicts your most exalted glorification of an entity that may have caused more pain and suffering (Crusades, Inquisition, Doctrine of Indulgence, cold sexual abuse which preceded the liberalism of the 60s and 70s thank you very much ) than any other organization.
I mourn the loss of Notre Dame, but I find your other arguments about the Church disingenuous.
1
The loss of a great piece of architecture is extremely sad.
However, our country is now run by the religious right and fanatical catholic force-birthers. It is the cruelest, most incompetent and least democratic government of my lifetime. This is to be expected. The least educated and poorest states in our country are the most religious.
It is time to stop assuming that any piece of architecture or thought with a religious purpose or undertone should occupy a special place in our history or our hearts.
Notre Dame should probably be rebuilt, though that is a decision for the people of France. But let us never call it a sacred building. As with most things religious, it represents ignorance and cruelly inflicted power.
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"What is the synthesis that could make that possible? What lies beyond the stalemates and scandal and anger of our strange two-pope era?"
The two popes are men. Never a woman pope. For a rebirth to take hold, for grand reconstruction to shine inside and out -- women should have a formal seat in power: women priests, bishops, cardinals and popes. Anything short of that keeps it burning, abandoned, ashes, a relic of the past.
2
Thanks for sharing your ambivalence.
The role of the laity is to enjoy the sacraments. It is up to theologians to waste words creating and bandaging the divisions in people's souls.
1
Maybe Ross and Retired Pope Benedict should watch the mini-series about the Borgia Popes. Sex scandals and abuse of power in the Church are not new. And much of the cover up of current scandals have happened under the rule of Pope Benedict.
A Church divided can not stand.
Many Catholics are rightly upset with the abuse and cover up by the clergy. The answer is to address the causes and to make amends. And the answer is not some new Augustianism - trying to deny sexuality only to see it manifested in destructive ways.
Add to the abuse and cover up by the clergy, a Retired Pope being pushed by conservatives to challenge ever so discreetly the current Pope. And you have a recipe for destruction of the Catholic Church. And unlike Notre Dame, it is unlikely to rise from the flames.
If the hierarchy can’t speak with one spiritual and rational voice, then we are at Martin Luther inflection point. That didn’t work out so well for Catholics.
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It is a shame that Mr. Douthat didn't do more research about the nature of sexual predation. While one might conceivably tie an increase in homosexual behavior, which I don't, to the so-called sexual revolution, it is an unimaginable leap to assert that the sexual revolution is related to pedophilia among the Catholic clergy. The reign of sexual terror created by the predatory Catholic clergy was aided and abetted by the shameful attempts to protect the predators rather help the victims. This criminal behavior was born in the centuries-old hubris and grandiosity of the church. The sexual revolution didn't create criminal conspiracy and a church culture that valued the reputation of the church higher than the lives of the parishioners. Shame. Shame. The institutional Catholic Church cannot deal with sexual predation until it recognizes the bone-deep hypocrisy that is the toxic venom that threatens to destroy the soul of the institution.
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Pope Benedict’s divisive letter shows that it may be better if popes wither away in their position until they die. That way, the fiction can be maintained that each is the chosen messenger of God and that the church falls in unison behind them. The current situation reveals a split just as stark and divisive as so many others we see in our political and cultural spheres, showing the church to be nothing more than a factionalized entity built by flawed people.
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I am glad you scrapped the first try at your column because there is no supporting Benedict's statements or his opinions, child abuse cannot be whitewashed as an offshoot of the 60's & 70's.
Any explanation of this other than it is the actions of monsters, both those who did the act and those who continue to protect them is unacceptable. Their actions cannot be addressed by the Church other than to hand them over to the Authorities and prepare for the reparations.
And, by the way, please stop suggesting Francis is in any way liberal in his policy. He is not. Much of this is similar to the fervor surrounding the then new pope John-Paul II. As time has proven, he, like those before and those after, toe the line as defined by the old-school conservatives within the church.
And that is where the poisonous roots lie.
I may be too simple-minded, like a 12th century stonemason, but I ignore the conservative and the liberal who are probably too intellectual for me, and focus on the life that led to the cross, but didn't stop there.
1
You could stop patriarchal imaginations. I really think this great re-imagining is what could be anew but you refuse. Neither pope is willing to do this.
That's not a shallow concession to liberalism the way plinky guitars is. That's a true change that could last. And in all these conservative fights it is the one is most refused and fought against it.
We learn here that those who refuse to blame at least half the Catholic church's institutional child abuse on the wanton secular 1960s are sneering and reductive -- lacking Mr. Douthat's encompassing compassionate vision.
In a word, it's all the fault of the hippies!
But all the beutiful philosophising, conservative or progressive ford not change the fact that the foundational story is simply that - a fictional account by people about things that never happened. No one walked on water, no one was impregnated by anyone other than a fellow human, there was no wandering in the desert and so on, and no, a holy voice in a cardinal's head is not telling him which of those are a metaphor and which should be taken literally. How can anyone believe all that or call themselves Catholic without believing it?
1
Those Catholics who care about these 'controversies' are in the minority....
Most of us struggle with our faith, with what we believe, and how we live....
There is no 'one-size-fits-all' Catholicism.... to act as though there is strips the Faith of its defining, democratizing humanity....
Let it go, Ross. Be humble, and Love.
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"the Cathedral of Notre-Dame is literally burning on Holy Week"
Just a coincidence. Would anyone feel better about this accident if it happened during the Tour de France? Bastille Day? Halloween? This isn't "Holy Week" for the world's rational people. The fire isn't a mystical message from beyond, a harbinger of doom for a "greedy" humanity that has lost its irrational way. It's just a fire inside a structure which represented, in the very bad old days, the absolute dominance of a social institution over the lives of millions of powerless, poor, sick and starving human beings.
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A lot of fancy words to describe why there is no one in the pews and a vanishing clergy. The Catholic Church has a leadership problem and it's not going to get solved by tossing the words Conservative and Liberal around as if they define everything. No one is pure conservative or liberal on all issues. We have to stop with this non-sense of framing everything as such.
Mr Douthat
Thank you for this article - and for your many articles on your view on Catholicism. I so appreciate your balanced view on the conservative/liberal “war”. And I’m so very appreciative that the NYT gives your voice the important place it deserves. I’m sure you get lots of dissent letters, so please file this with your supportive readers and know how much I look forward to your insights.
I’m a cradle Catholic that left the Church for two decades only to come back with a passion to help hurting fallen-away Catholics. Your comments help give me ideas for my conversations - with both Catholics and non-Catholics.
Thanks again.
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Maybe there is more meaning to be drawn from the fact that the purely elective and aesthetic effort to renovate Notre Dame resulted in great damage that now absolutely requires the elimination of dangerously rotten core ingredients.
Ironically, the burning of Notre Dame de Paris during the week that celebrates renewal and resurrection is symbolic of the sad current state of the Roman Catholic Church. After all the endless sex abuse scandals, it has lost whatever moral authority it had left. It's out-dated male patriarchy also needs to be torn, if not burnt, down. It must stop its use of political wedge issues like its relentless attack against a woman's "right to choose" and the LGTBQ community and re-embrace Jesus' message of true universal tolerance and the dignity of all human beings not just some. In other words, it's time for a second reformation that the Church seems incapable of embracing and enacting. Notre Dame will be rebuilt as a symbol of humankind's universal spirituality, but it remains doubtful that the Roman Catholic Church can cast aside its bigotry and corruption and become a spiritual beacon for all.
A moving lament, but badly missing the central word. Anyone who thinks that the God of Jesus speaks to his people by burning down a Cathedral is very much mistaken. The return that will make a difference is the return to Jesus through his word and Spirit, not the return to some medieval flavored Christian culture. "Do not let your heart be troubled. You are trusting in God, trust in me as well. In my Father's house there are many mansions; if that were not true I would have told you. I am going to prepare such a place for you. And if I am going to prepare your place, I am also returning to take you with me so that where I am you also may be." (John 14)
I thought it was a tragic fire. Good thing ol' Ross is here to proclaim it a great metaphor.
4
That's quite the picture! It depicts two monuments to human aspiration, both alight. One cold and sterile, the other ablaze. What an opportunity to meditate on the symbolic significance!
The full spectrum of the human response is reflected in the readers' comments. What a privilege to have them shared so openly.
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It is possible to incorporate a 21st century architectural beauty within what is left of Notre Dame.
It is possible for the Catholic church to survive but only if it stops treating women as second class believers. It needs to also understand that it's positions on human sexuality only lead to secrecy, hypocrisy, and sexual abuse.
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@Valerie Elverton Dixon It occurs to me that my Catholic church really should not have a position on human sexuality. The ten commandments prohibit adultery and civil law prohibits pedophilia. But beyond that, I am not aware of any good basis for church dicta on human sexuality.
3
your fears "that liberal Christianities usually end up resembling a post-inferno cathedral, with the still-grand exterior concealing emptiness within" might be worth some reflection from wihting the walls of a ruined cathedral (any faith or demonination will serve). there are still a number, world wide, and as soon as it cools, maybe notre dame itself.
guarantee: you will find, not emptiness but a persistent spirit, the persistent spirit that protects faith from foible, belief from the challenges of propaganda and petty, worldly, expolitations (and their factions) that threaten it.
Let us hope in the rebuild they don't turn Notre Dame into the cathedral of France rather than of Our Lady. Such is Westminster Abbey- the temple of England.
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Perhaps the resurgence of Benedict(aka “God’s Rottweiler”) and the right wing ideologue Steve Bannon, proclaiming a vendetta against Francis for being too critical of populism across Europe, will ignite a conflagration like the horror witnessed yesterday in Paris.
While Benedict is 92, Bannon, who will be holed up in a refurbished monastery outside of Rome, expects a decades long battle against the authority of the Pope to speak out on temporal issues. Bannon’s reach into Europe’s surging anti immigrant, nationalist uprisings and seems to take Benedict’s schism in a new direction.
What is God's perspective on Notre Dame? That is the only question that needs answered. As a structure it is insignificant. As an icon it's distracting. As a souvenir it's degrading. Only as a place that refocuses the mind on the actions of Christ is it edifying. So, perhaps a thesis for rebuilding both the structure and the idea is to get back to glorifying Christ, not man.
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God couldn't even come up with 15,000 votes in the Midwest during the last presidential election, much less stoke the Notre Dame fire.
4
It is just like a Catholic to believe God is trying to send a message.
(And why I left)
No such a thing is happening.
it is a fire. Only that.
2
So in the end, Ross, it is all about you. That's what most of your column was about, and what it usually is about. That is scant fare for the rest of us. We hunger for community and support, not for scolding (again).
1
I don’t share the parallels between Notre Dame and 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. In the two latter events, people and their symbols were attacked by enemies.
Notre Dame has apparently been partly destroyed from within, one factor being aging rot. That’s a more apt parallel with the current state of the Catholic Church.
7
The Church, not the fire, emptied itself. When the Church allowed the same hands that defiled children to then defile the Eucharist, it abandoned itself and everyone in it. It was not a horde of liberal atheists that did this to the Church. It was this Great Profanity, one that the Church itself promulgated.
And so it appeared not a cathedral burning but Notre Dame's self-immolation.
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Mr. Douthat, I am going to disagree. The crisis in the Catholic Church goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. It is rooted in the times when the Church was one of the few centers of learning in a world that had gone backwards and lost much of its civilization. The Church, along with the centers of learning in the Arab world in Northern Africa, brought civilization back from that brink. As you point out, the hubris that engendered in the Church led to a belief that they could do no wrong. Combine that with their fundamental mistake of insisting on Celibacy, led to a culture of perversion within the Church. Evidence from Ireland, Germany, England and others point to the abuse of children going back hundreds of years.
The Catholic Church is fundamentally broken. By their own actions as recently as this Pope they have shown they will not change, that hubris is alive and well. It is now up to civil authorities to force change upon the Church. The immunity of the Church must be stripped away. Severe penalties, the jailing of those who committed the crimes, those who covered it up, and those who authorized the policy, going as high as necessary are what is required. Forced disgorgement of asset in amounts which will beggar the Church, are also a means of getting their attention and forcing change.
Lastly, while in today's cynical world many will sneer, but this is absolutely true and required for change: The love of power must be replaced by the power of love.
5
Douthat is correct in his observations. However I suggest the rebuilding of the cathedral buik ding is not the rebuilding of the Cathedral. The genesis to rebuild the Cathedral is seen in the streets where the people of the Church gathered and sang. Buildings and organizational structures are servant of the people both governments and all Christian demoniations have forgotten that, as we have assumed the role of master and not the servant of all. Rev Dr. JS Trotter (Episcopal Church).
So where is your God -- Creator and Master of the Universe, Lord of Lords, etc.-- in all this? All I read is politics and history, scapegoating and religious one-upsmanship. Did He have a hand here, no less than when a rural Baptist church is hit by lightning and God's supposed omnipotence and omnipresence is immediately and conveniently disregarded, or not?
Was it His Will that Notre-Dame stood for centuries to awe the common man and the powerful alike, or was it His Will that it burned? Must not the answer be "both"? Or, in a lucid moment of doubt, "neither"?
Was it an idol, a worldly if magnificent material construction of stone and wood and glass, man's imagination and longing, but inevitably subject to the the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the immanent, necessarily laws of that same material world?
The "spiritual", so often trotted out in legitimizing worldly authority, certainly seems secondary to politics -- and materialism -- in this, as in most religiosity.
Francis washed and kissed the feet of another, a profound act of respect for the in-dwelling spirit in each and all, but is criticized for his "liberalism", while the mountain of stone revealed its own temporal, finite vulnerability.
One might thank God for the juxtaposition.
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"Notre-Dame Found Structurally Sound After Fire"
Not bad for an 850-year-old building after a major fire. It certainly sets the standard for quality workmanship.
But it makes me think of the many magnificent buildings across Europe and around the world that are dedicated to religion. Sadly, so often the people gathered in them have listened to sermons condemning the people attending services in other magnificent buildings, and calling for their destruction. I wish that the tallest and finest buildings in ancient cities belonged to universities instead of churches.
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It was a lovely cathedral. Graceful and architecturally significant, I'm sure. But also expensive. As uplifting as an edifice can be, something more functional and cheaper could also serve.
In the end the Church isn't a set of cathedrals. It's a communion of people sharing beliefs and hope. The burning is a travesty, but a rebuild would also be a travesty because it would drain money that would be more useful in the service of the Church's prime mission, the needs of people.
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@cjg
I agree with the premise of what you're saying. However, two things:
First, Notre Dame de Paris was a massive tourist draw, bringing tremendous income both into the Catholic Church and the City of Paris. A rebuilt, restored cathedral would continue to do so.
Second, Christianity really has two prime missions. Helping those in need is undoubtedly one of those; but the other, is the worship of the Trinity. Neither is more important than the other.
In any case, the investment in rebuilding will pay massive dividends as before, of which surely a large portion will go to helping those in need.
"The cathedral will be rebuilt; the cross and altar and much of the interior survived."
I view this fire as a test of one's faith, especially with this tragedy occurring during Holy Week. While my heart has been broken beyond repair because of the Catholic Church, my faith and love for God remains strong, intact, and as solid as ever.
3
What happened to the world in the 1960s was a result of everything that happened to the world before the 1960s. Separating out the 1960s as if it was grafted on to us by some outside entity is not intellectually honest. We can’t shut down change, or control how it happens rapidly at times, and we can’t separate human/societal evolution into decades or a neat little sections that we somehow could’ve avoided. No one has any idea what the world would look like if we avoided the kind of change that was concentrated during the 1960s. We have no idea if the world would be better or worse.
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True and priests, bishops, and archbishops throughout history had many, many children some of whom they acknowledged openly, many of whom the society at the time openly accepted as simply the child of a priest.
At some point, the male power hierarchy of the Church has to stop hiding behind Mary’s skirt and just take responsibility for their behavior (and the beliefs that they espouse - ie. Every human problem, every evil in the world is women’s fault. Maybe that’s why they as men aren’t responsible for the abuse they inflict on children - it’s ultimately Eve’s fault in the first place).
I've often wondered what Jesus would have said upon viewing spectacular stained glass, beautiful statues, and paintings
within cavernous edifices. I truly do appreciate this man-made beauty, but I think it falls far short of God's intent. ( I know- it's probably presumptuous to even start to perceive this intent). Perhaps, though, Christians should focus on a rough wooden cross and what it represents, and go from there in rebuilding what is wrong.
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My early experimentation with various faith systems was motivated by the feeling of transcendence when I entered a place of worship---That feeling, however, seems to be difficult to sustain when the myth system is dragged through the human mud of politics and criminal behavior.
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Whenever I have seen any of Europe’s great cathedrals my thought has always been that the builders loved God so much more than we do.
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The data and history cited about sexual abuse and the sexual revolution is a little disingenuous. The sexual revolution facilitated more documented sexual abuse. It's of classic case of "when you hire more police officers, the crime rate goes up." The sexual revolution permitted an awareness of sexuality that enabled more victims to come forward with their stories. The statistics obviously reflect this cultural shift.
Hopefully, the gradual shift downward reflects the Church's response to the public's heightened awareness of wrongdoing. However, this conclusion is far from clear. The response is arguably greater and more sophisticated suppression of sexual abuse scandals. Did the Church actually reduce sexual abuse in response to the sexual revolution or did the Church simply get better at hiding it? Nothing Douthat's blogging convinces me one answer is any more compelling than the other.
That said, I don't think we should any deep symbolism from the Notre-Dame fire. The fire is certainly a tragedy of sorts. However, a brunt roof is not a metaphor for the larger Catholic impasse. The cathedral would have brunt with or without any Pope. That's how the physical world works. Organic matter burns when the appropriate heat is applied. It's a little hasty to start drawing divine conclusions about the matter. The Church burned and the Catholic church has a problem. The two events are coincidental, not causal.
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@Andy The fire is " a tragedy of sorts " . That says a lot about the writer's state of mind.
1
As with Notre-Dame, there is much beauty to Catholicism. The ritual of the Mass itself is one striking example. As with Notre-Dame, the Church will live on, albeit with change. And as with human beings, crises transform and force a rebuilding. There is no other way. The Paris Cathedral must have a new structure atop in order to preserve what is within. The same with the Catholic Church. As with this present Trumpian paradigm. without all encompassing, compassionate, just, and moral leadership there will be chaos and grief. Like our Constitution the Precepts of the Church must be interpreted according to the needs and challenges of the 21st Century. People will soon enough be worshipping or touring Notre-Dame. The question is: Will Catholicism also atone, rebuild, and welcome all of us with no judgements, no archaic dogmas, no more sins within its structure.
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I watched the fire on live TV yesterday and have read most articals about it this morning, They all talk of this great symbol, this beating heart of Paris, etc. Funny thing is before yesterday afternoon I haven't heard or read about the church in ages, Its just an very old building filled with "relics" , statues and stain glass. I feel this is the problem with the Catholic church, it holds buildings, relics, statues and ritual in higher a steam than its flock, the people. If you look at what Jesus said the church does just the opposite. Something to think about this holy week. As for the burned out building, I say take it down and put up a tent and start caring for you stray flock!!
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Ross, a heart-felt column. Now, in my late eighties, I well remember our trip to Paris 30 years ago, my wife and I looking at the cathedral and asking what genius created that magnificent edifice.
Raised catholic I left the church in my late teens, a time when the church brooked no dissent. Your piece today clearly identifies what has happened in a church now sundered.
Jim in Wilmete
6
I think that Douthat misses the real meaning of our grief over this fire. We grieve because Notre Dame is the symbol of beauty and human creativity. It’s construction incorporated the most advanced architecture of its era and it evidenced a balance between the ornate and the classical. If the Church is to survive, it must discard the ugly remnants of its past (anti-Semitism, patriarchy, homophobia, and maybe clerical celibacy), enrich its ritual life, and once become once again a respected mediating center for the conflicting currents of our day. Francis is trying to move in the right direction. The retired Benedict, now reinevoking that ugly past, should have the grace to remain silent.
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Great comment, but when was the Church a “mediating center” - I remember the expansion using Constantine’s army that demanded conversion or death; the crusades, the power alliances during the crusades with Arab nobles against Christian nobles to grab land for the Church (from Christians), the intolerance of any other faiths, the power wielding hierarchy, the inquisition, the torture, the cruel rationalizations that allowed for decades (if not centuries) of child abuse, the cover ups, the lies, the hypocritical shaming of others (especially women) for minor breaches while priests’ cruelty and abandon mocked their followers, ... I’ve read about all this, but not too much on mediation - maybe I missed the PR releases.
The faithful are often wonderful people, it’s a shame that the church’s leaders are so craven, power and status hungry and often just plain cruel. Believers deserve so much better. But pretending that the church’s leaders are what believers need them to be (pious, honorable etc), is just mean and itself cruel.
@Ron
It is a church, a house of God.
The moral depravity and profound hypocrisy demonstrated by the Catholic church's history of sexual abuse, especially child sexual abuse, has rightfully brought the Church low. That must stay in front of our eyes. But we must also admit that children and the weak have been sexually abused throughout human history and this is ongoing. The Church's moral position and hierarchical unity makes its fall tragic and vividly on display. This fall reveals a dark side of humanity however that extends throughout all of society. Revelations in other scattered sectors are quickly forgotten. This display has shown light on a problem that we need to fix about ourselves. I don't think it's a coincidence that it occurred at nearly the same time, if not just prior to, the #MeToo movement.
You could view the Catholic church abuse crisis as the tip of the iceberg. But as a Catholic, hopeful that my Church will reform, I view us as the tip of the spear.
Now I hope that in an act of redemption the Catholic church can come together to help lead humanity in a triumph over climate change, which is also caused by a deep darkness within us and also may burn all the churches in Europe.
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@Paul Q The Catholic Church needs to be consigned to the trash heap of history. But it won't happen until parishioners decide they will no longer grant carte blanche to their corrupt leadership.
In this they are similar to the Trump supporters who keep supporting this monster and vote against their own interests.
As Bill Maher says, any other business or organization with even a fraction of the scandals of this church would be in bankruptcy court.
The only reason people support the Catholics is out of a weak-kneed sentimentality.
See Benedict's recent paper that blames the sex abuse scandals on the liberal sexual mores of the 1960s. A more craven and buck passing document could not be conceived in our worst nightmares!
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/04/priest-abuse-catholic-church-1960s-pope-benedict/587044/
As an outside observer, I believe that Mr. Douthat and his fellow Catholics should come to grips with the reality that the Church has been figuratively burned down many years ago when it decided that protecting sex offenders was more important than helping the poor and needy. The loss of the magnificent Cathedral serves as only a period at the end of a sentence. Let's hope the both the Church and the Cathedral can be built in a better way soon.
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@jonr Beautifully stated!!!
Benedict's recent paper blames the sex abuse scandals on the liberal sexual mores of the 1960s. A more craven and buck passing document could not be conceived in our worst nightmares!
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/04/priest-abuse-catholic-church-1960s-pope-benedict/587044/
2,996 people died on September 11, 2001 with more than 6,000 injured. That day changed the world. Yes it did. The USA would not be at this point of low had 911 never occurred. So far as we know, nobody died in Notre-Dame's fire. We still don't know how it was started. But I can not think a single person I know who has seen images of the planes crashing into the twin towers and the Pentagon.
My point is, Notre-Dame in no way except a common fire resembles the horror of 911. The Catholic Church, as with all religions, exist entirely through faith of believers. It is not going to falter any more or any less than it has over the last 2,000 years. A church burnt and will be rebuilt by the faithful and the citizens of France who are not Catholic.But it is still just a building, a beautiful building. It is not a person and a person is worth more than a fine building full of memorabilia. At least according to those religiously inclined. I'm rather surprised that you don't think so.
9
If Ross Douthat doesn’t realize that the avowed, alleged celibate priests who are given immense power in the Catholic Church have been molesting children for centuries, behind the curtains — and these cruel offenses hasn’t just developed since the awful 1960s, when women, gay individuals, and black men and women were granted civil rights and fuller lives as citizens — then he’s just plain silly.
The Rolling Stones and The Pill and the anti-war movement and even Vatican II did not ignite this problem.
The Church did.
37
@Deborah
I could not have said it better. Ross continues to promote denialism.
I just saw a photo that showed the candles still burning in Notre Dame after the fire. The mystical essence of faith always endures despite political posturing, the crassness, the name calling, our need to be “right,” our condemnation and hatred of others. The essence what it means to be human, to see beauty, is there too. My takeaway is that there are fundamentals that unite us, and those are good. It is too rare that we acknowledge that. Peace.
11
1): 9/11 brought the death of thousands of innocent people. Ongoing genocide and war have killed millions. A medieval cathedral tower collapsing in flames is the loss of a symbol and artwork but should not be compared to the loss of life. A cathedral can be rebuilt. Lives are lost forever.
2): if as Ross states, statistics show that the sex scandals worsened beginning in the 1960s has it not occurred to him that this could be due to an increase in reporting? Rape is a similar case where victims long felt they could not report the crimes.
3): for centuries, priests and bishops had affairs with women and men, they raped victims, and they had children. They just couldnt acknowledge those children because of the hypocrisy of church teaching.
4): now that hypocrisy is exposed. Victims are reporting. The Church has only just begun to understand the damage it has caused and to make amends.
5): celibacy is not about purity. It is about safeguarding the wealth of the church.
6): Notre Dame is a most beautiful place of cultural heritage and I hope the rebuilding will help unify France. I am Jewish but have attended a service there. It feels like a living artwork for all people who can marvel at the handiwork of so many unrecognized artisans. That is the loss for me—their work that lasted hundreds of years is lost. But hopefully there are artisans today to rebuild and honor the past in their effort.
32
It’s interesting to me to read and witness how profoundly the world’s people, regardless of their religious orientation, are affected—politically, theologically, metaphorically, and symbolically—by this fire.
As one trained by the fine minds of Jesuits and the deep compassion of Franciscans, it offers so much to contemplate.
The Jesuits’ influence does make me wonder why 800 years went by, after the selection of such a precarious geographical site, without the creation of a specific and logical plan for responding to such a fire; the Franciscan teachings make me mourn the loss of all the handmade beauty, but also allow me to ponder the wisdom of spending hundreds of millions to rebuild and restore a building (after all, and once the sentimental and symbolic attachments are surrendered) when that wealth could alleviate great suffering on a planet that’s suffering greatly.
1
I visited Paris in March, mainly to study the art in the Louvre and do some urban sketching. Seeing the photos of the burning cathedral, the flames consuming the very roof that I had sketched last month, made me ill. For a conservative Catholic like Douthat the fire may very well be a symbol of a once grand Catholic synthesis consumed by modern partisanship. But for me, an unrepentant modernist with no faith in supernatural master narratives, the fire was equally painful to watch. I love Paris for its beauty, for its devotion to Venus in all her forms, from Delacroix to the arts of daily life. Any accident that mars her beauty cuts me to the quick. We may all mourn the destruction for separate reasons, but it’s right and good, isn’t it, that we mourn together?
41
The burned-out shell of the cathedral may be little more than another metaphor for the disenchantment of the world and the collapse of ancient superstitions which began about the time the construction of the cathedral was mostly completed. As a protestant minister for 50 years, I consider myself something of an expert or at least an eyewitness to the decline of churches, which is also liberation of the essential messages of love and justice from the imprisonment of institutions and buildings. My Easter sermon will be that "Jesus (his teachings) are on the loose!"
6
@Dennis Maher: Without institutions, and yes, buildings, messages go unheard and teachings wither. Human bodies are improved by clothes. Spirituality benefits by having a material focus - cross, Torah scroll, mosque, cathedral.
Metaphorically, at least, churches will continue to burn, and chasms expand because they are human institutions. We can’t escape our humanness. But it can be mediated by reason and the honest search for knowledge about who we are and what kind of universe we live in. The answers are not found in the Bible, but in an understanding of neuroscience, the social sciences, philosophy, and Shakespeare.
3
Good article, that said I remember walking through Norte Dame looking at all the beautiful windows and statues and oh my gosh all the gold, and then for a few additional francs could see the riches in the upper floors. This was on a 4 month vacation through many European countries and my take away is that many churches were built as a way of confession, as a way to ask God for forgiveness, a few Hail Marys so the church could go on plundering. Symbols never work (ie. confederate statues ) and should face a reckoning.
2
It is indeed unfortunate that the author frames his opinion by claiming "the most dreadful live images since Sept. 11, 2001". Such framing I would argue is false framing, intended to motivate by emotion and loss. His lens is ethnocentric in both his belief structure and nationality - I could reasonably imagine those watching the Grenfell Tower fire, as one example, would beg to differ. It is also sadly the case that the mass murders at the Al Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre would qualify as "live" through social media. Finally I would suggest that Mr. Douthat's colleague Mr. Kristof may add enlightenment to the discussion; is the death and suffering of millions due to civil war/strife/conflict in many locations throughout the world less dreadful because they are not "live" images? Let us be thankful that not one soul perished in the Cathedral fire - the same cannot be said of Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan massacres.
17
I am not a Catholic but, looking at it from the outside it would seem that if priests were allowed to marry that would help prevent sex abuse in the future. Of course, I do not understand the whole top down, authoritarian concept of the Catholic church. My relationship to God is direct and no one, not even my minister (I go to church every Sunday) tells me what to think. I value the Bible and other holy books for the wisdom and insight they provide and I value the thought that religious teachers put into their sermons but I don't think another human has a more direct line to God.
15
"Notre-Dame de Paris is a monument to a particularly triumphant moment of Catholic synthesis — the culture of the high Middle Ages, a renaissance before the Renaissance, at once Roman and Germanic but both transformed by Christianity." What hopeless nostalgia! Even Henry Adams, writing in the early 20th century, knew that the force of medieval Christianity was spent; like Mr. Douthat, he longed for a comparable source of societal energy, but he saw it not in the Virgin, but, famously, in the dynamo. And he had the wisdom to recognize that its force was destructive as well as constructive. Yes, the High Middle Ages gave us the glories of Gothic architecture and scholastic philosophy. But it also gave us the Albigensian Crusade, the demonization and persecution of "heretics" and Jews, and, in 1277, a clamp-down on philosophical speculation at the university of Paris (issued by Stephen Tempier, the bishop of the city who issued his decrees ex cathedra from his seat at the church of Notre-Dame). So it wasn't all sweetness and light. In the famous words of Walter Benjamin, "There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism." Notre-Dame de Paris will and must be rebuilt, and it makes sense to see in that effort hope for the future, but to try to make of this catastrophe a metaphor for one's own highly polemical understanding of the sexual abuse crisis in the Church is to see signs and portents in what was, it appears, an accident.
20
This sad event is also an opportunity for Christians to reflect and unite - echoing the mystery of Eastertide itself.
Let's pray there is a rush of reflection on the value of our faith; a transcendent truth embodied in the beauty of this cathedral and every other.
We have already heard of pledges of support from around the world - may that result in a new Notre-Dame de Paris - perhaps an inspiring fusion of ancient and cutting-edge that will last at least another 850 years. The united outpouring of appreciation and giving will be soul-soothing.
There will be other voices, too.
6
In 1985, when I was between my junior and senior years in college, a friend and I traveled to Europe. As a pious Catholic, I was eager to visit St. Peter's and Notre Dame. Much to my surprise, I was disheartened by all of the vendors outside St. Peter's hawking cheap religious souvenirs and even more disheartened by our tour inside, which seemed to reduce St. Peter's to it's historical, artistic and cultural contributions. I felt nothing of the Spirit when I was there. I wondered if it might feel the same at Notre Dame. Much to my surprise, shortly after walking inside this magnificent cathedral, I began to weep. Every where I looked, there were people in prayer. I suspect that I am not alone in having had such an experience at Notre Dame. It is not merely her artistic and architectural beauty that stirs the soul; it is a place where the soul can awaken and where the Spirit lives. Since that summer, it has seemed to me that the Catholic Church has been far more reflective of my experience at St. Peter's - fixated on maintaining tradition no matter what the cost - and far less focused on the movement of the Spirit, blowing wherever She wills.
62
@Sue, There is something inherently sacred in a place that people gather to commune with God. Somehow, the structure seems to absorb the holiness of those moments. To defile such places with matters of the mundane, such as you mention at St. Peter's, ought to invoke disgust, just as Jesus experienced with the money changers at the temple. (Personally, I even have problems with the passing of collection plates during services.)
More than the structural beauty and testimony to man's ingenuity, Notre Dame invoked the same spiritual reaction in me that it did you. But first I had to overcome any association it has with the human stain that's sullied the Catholic Church. The solemn worshippers there helped a great deal.
5
@Sue
I have been to Notre Dame on every trip we’ve taken to Paris (5 at last count). Each time, I get something different from it. The first time, we attended Mass, while an orchestra from Washington DC provided the glorious accompaniment. The last time, about 5 years ago, we hiked to the towers and roof. Each time, I was overwhelmed by spiritual peace, even when celebrating Mass amongst non-Catholic, shuffling, non-whispering, rude tourists. While visiting nearby Saint-Chapelle the same number of times, I found a sense of wonder. Visiting St. Peter’s, I had a similarly-disheartening reaction as yours; when we attended Mass at St. John Lateran, however, I was uplifted. But it wasn’t until I visited St. Patrick’s for the first time in New York City, that Gothic architecture made me literally weep.
3
@Ronald Sprague Thanks for sharing your reflections.
Staring into a fire allows a person to see whatever images he may makes of the flames, glowing embers, and smoke. Ross sees one thing from staring into this fire. Others see quite different things.
Rather than searching for some mystical message sent by God in the form of fire, Ross and his fellow Catholics need to examine their own actions and beliefs if they truly wish to reform the Church and make it a place of spiritual guidance, and above all a place free from sexual and emotional abuse.
12
@Comet "... above all a place free from sexual and emotional abuse"
What about "above all" the Church as a place to commune with God, and from which to bring forth that refreshment to the world in the form of social justice and the valuation of human (and all) life as inherently (or at least potentially) divine?
I think it is bold to say the burning of Notre Dame is among the most searing images of destruction since 9/11. The images out of Syria and all of the horror of war upon war come to mind as truly searing. Or the slaughter of gun violence. I mourn Notre Dame deeply. But it will be rebuilt. And no one died.
28
Christ teaches us humility above all, humility before the majesty of almighty God. Perhaps no virtue is more absent from the modern world, and so needed.
We are but ashes, and to dust we shall return- as will all of our works- even if they are meant to glorify God.
13
W.H. Auden, arriving at New York harbor on his first trip to the US, seeing that astonishing cluster of downtown towers, said "It will make a wonderfu ruin." The vast temples of post-Augustan Rome and Constantinople are gone, or repurposed. I think it likely that the majortiy of visitors to Notre Dame were of no particular faith, just as those walking the Roman Forum were not believers in the gods. Such places can't be built without a society's deep commitment to what they stand for and embody. But when the god has fled, the human enterprise remains, and ruins are as great a human project, and as powerful an impulse to thought, as the "living" edifice ever was.
19
"...liberal Christianities usually end up resembling a post-inferno cathedral, with the still-grand exterior concealing emptiness within."
My goodness. If that is how you describe your fellow believers I shudder to think of how you would describe my family---married 25 years, two daughters, supporters of our community and institutions, but devout atheists---"a vast void of emptiness within"? "a supermassive black hole of emptiness within"?
Notre Dame is a monument to the glory of God, but also to the shear audacity of a human society willing to embark on a construction project taking generations to complete. It embodies an ability to work on long-term goals that is sorely needed to address the problems we face as a human culture---economic inequality, climate change, extirpation of species beyond those we raise for food. This is why the burning of Notre Dame is a calamity for all of us; our medieval forebears built this cathedral not as a momument to themselves but to their culture, and they built it to last.
In your columns you frequently and, in my opinion, unfairly, decry the spiritual vacuum of all but the most conservative believers. One can have meaning in one's life without the supernatural. Consider if you will Earth as the most beautiful cathedral of them all; it too is on fire, albeit a slow smoldering one. As with Notre Dame we must quench those fires, and like Notre Dame we must rebuild, carving and setting each stone for the benefit of generations yet to come.
284
@R Calhoun
This is the best, most profound comment from anybody, professional, political, clerical, that I have read since the tragedy yesterday. Your last paragraph is inspiring. Thank you.
29
@R Calhoun He said "liberal Christianities" not "liberal Christians". One can find a belief system hollow without believing the same of all its adherents.
1
R Calhoun, beautifully said, thank you.
11
It took almost 200 years to build Notre Dame. It provided employment, poorly paid and dangerous, to generations of people. It may have represented a holy mission to those who built it, or it may have just been a job.
I feel sad that it has been so damaged, but I also have hope that its rebuilding will represent something good. For me, this has nothing to do with religion.
The "sexual revolution" did not "cause" the Catholic priesthood to abuse the trust of their parishioners. That kind of behavior is as old as human nature. The history of the Church is replete with examples.
I think rebuilding Notre Dame will be secular. The destruction of such beauty and tradition deeply saddens us and many will volunteer to help with the repair of this important expression of western culture. Let's do that with joy and understand the the rebuilt structure will be something new that ties us to the past.
53
Of course Ross would see something symbolic in the Notre Dame fire--because that type of symbolism is endemic to religious structure, seen as a sign or portent from God or the powers that be.
Those of us whose faith tends to the more mundanely scientific, though, don't tend to think that the burning of the cathedral was somehow a symbol from on high; far more likely it's an indication that safety procedures that were supposed to be followed during work on the place weren't being followed as strictly as they should have been.
Be cautioned about reading a pattern into things that are random. Much of history can be summed up with the word "oops". That may not give many of us much comfort that there's a guiding hand and intelligence to tell us how to live, but it has the advantage of throwing the responsibility for those decisions back to humanity, where it belongs.
28
@Glenn Ribotsky seeing an event as a symbol doesn't preclude scientific explanation for that event. Please.
@Glenn Ribotsky: Recommend! When I first saw Notre Dame, way back when, I said it was a monument to princes who were murderers, rapists, and thieves. I still feel that way, but I have come to see that good can come of the deeds of evil men. The architects and artists, the carpenters and stone masons all earned some kind of living from such monuments to men. Who can condemn the Sistine Chapel just because popes have been evil, even into our times? And to France and Europe, Notre Dame is a symbol not only of grotesque superstition but of the persistence of our better angels.
1
I have a hard time believing that evidence points to a rise of abuse in the 60s since this is a horror that has deep roots. But, if that is where the evidence points, then perhaps Benedict is on to something. This is where we have to look at competing versions of the term "conservative." Mr. Douthat uses conservative as if it still has some backing in evidence. The term in American politics has lost evidence as part of its meaning. Now it means something to the tune of "gut feeling." Conservatives in America don't use evidence. I would like to see the terms "conservative" and "liberal" retired proper media outlets because they are loaded terms that change over time. They are terms that make people angry for no good reason. They are devoid of explanatory power.
18
Terrific piece! While the structural fire is terrible it also symbolizes an opportunity for rebirth within the church. The abuses of this religion, my former religion, drove me away. I can't support a church that can't protect its most innocent and vulnerable. As Jimmy Beslin wrote: The church that forgot Christ. The rebuilding of the entire religion has to come from the inside, at its core. A shiny new outer structure just won't cut it.
8
The column is better than the subtitle. All of Christianity should look at the fire in a deeper way. It’s a physical and spiritual loss. Given how few Europeans visit churches & cathedrals today other than to tour them as museums, perhaps this is the clarion call they need to think about becoming faithful again.
8
"The real challenge for Catholics, in this age of general post-Christian cultural exhaustion, is to look at what our ancestors did and imagine what it would mean to do that again".
What our ancestors did was build a church through empire, war, suppression and domination. Yes, the RCC does a lot of good in this world but taking everything together it looks more like a wash. There are examples everywhere of people doing the right thing without the need for this outdated institution.
I'm a Christian too, but one who believes in the teachings of Christ, not in hierarchy. I want my church to take responsibility for its mistakes, not look for excuses. Blaming liberals for the sex abuse scandals? Really?
45
Heartbreaking destruction of a beautiful church. It remains an important tourist attraction and will survive for many more years.
I look forward to a day when all people of any religion, or no religion at all, can enter these refuges to find a few moments of peace and temporary refuge from the madness in the world.
I would pay for that privilege.
I would pay for the privilege of attending an organ recital, or a lecture on any subject. Even about other religions or no religion at all.
I would love to hear a choir, or a piano recital, or a bluegrass band.
I find it distressing when any church of historical or architectural significance is left empty and dilapidated.
I believe that churches, the structures, can still play an important part in any community.
Even though I no longer consider myself a Catholic I will donate to the rebuilding of Notre-Dame Cathedral.
And I will continue to hold out hope for the preservation of all the beautiful churches in all the cities and towns in the world.
And on Sundays? Well, I can walk in the park or read a book.
10
Mary is present whenever and wherever you need her. The nuns taught me that. She swoops in and covers you - protects and defends. The world is on fire if you want my opinion - we are in a dark time of history. Conservative Catholic equals scared Catholic to me. Benedict "stepped down" for many reasons. The fire that roared through Notre Dame yesterday signifies many thing to me - we are burning our planet, our civility, our culture, our kindness on a daily basis and there is a pervasive anger in the air. It's destroying us. Mary can be glorified in a cathedral, a school lunchroom, or my own kitchen table. We keep looking for answers - here you go - Love Your Brother as you Love Yourself. Don't Judge. When you see the least of your brothers you see Me. Be Kind. We could go on and on. Vatican II ddin't reset that for anyone and the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s and 1970's didn't either. God Bless Paris.
38
Can we just let a tragic fire be a tragic fire instead of a political or religious metaphor? There is nothing new about divisions in the Catholic Church. There have been differences of opinion for centuries, some eventually leading to schisms. The time we live in, along with the tensions and divisions in the Church, are unique only to us. Please, just allow some time to grieve this loss.
27
The commentary about Roman Catholicism's disintegration seen in the ashes left today along the banks of the Seine in Paris is a nice try, but I doubt the men wearing the cassocks--left or right-- down the road in road in Rome would ever see such symbolism. Therein lies the problem. You can buy Benedict's treatise that carnal desires are the downfall of the church, but in the end, the Curia, the College of Cardinals, and Bishops' Conferences, like our own, Ross, are like their political contemporaries. These men use the trappings of their holy offices, and modern media tools, to gain influence over the dwindling numbers of the faithful. On the other hand, the church fathers have been waging sexual wars for millennia, more or less, that have led, in part, to splits in Christendom.
Today, it is true, religion plays a far less important role in the West, and the culture warriors of the Catholic right just drive people out of the pews. Hence there is this constant tension rather than a groundswell for more splitting. Each side wants everything so the hardliners on both sides stay and fight another day. The fire in Paris will mean nothing to these hardened hearts. Or, they will see it as part of their greater cause.
Incredible that these Christians should be contemplating this week the significance of Christ's Passion and Death.
No grace, no love!
13
The tragic sight of one of the world’s greatest religious symbols can be seen as not only a rebuke to the Catholic Church, but a message of God’s anger at all who would use religion as a weapon to wield power, hate and violence. One can look at the charred remains and see either a sign of hope that so much was saved, or a warning to re-examine our own faith, morality and behavior because all can be lost in an instant.
15
Ross, rather than framing Benedict's proclamation through the liberal / conservative lens that you obsess over so often, perhaps you might instead consider testing Benedict's hypothesis: Do you really believe that the clergy sex abuse crisis is something that suddenly sprung up post 1960?
The sex abuse scandal is not new. It is not a response to changing mores in society. Rather, it is the natural evolution of a deeply problematic set of power relationships combined with an unnatural set of restrictions surrounding sex.
The only thing that changed post 1960 is that the victims were not longer willing to keep quiet.
430
@Richard E. Willey,
Of course the abuse has always gone on, but children were too terrified and embarrassed to speak of it. The priests abusing them likely were seen as having more power in their lives than their parents. After all, more than any other, they were the closest a human could get to God.
Not only has Ross failed to understand the growth of "permission to speak", a real outcome of the 60's, he also neglects to observe another big difference between now and then: the advent of the Internet. Without the worldwide exposure of pedophile priests, and easy access to the inspiring stories of others' courage, how many more victims might have remained silent?
46
@Richard E. Willey
exactly, it's not that clerical sex abuse grew in the 60s and after but that it came to be exposed more in that period.
15
@Richard E. Willey Who can’t remember that Benedict left the Papacy under suspicion for his own part in the obstructing justice in the sex scandal? Among Catholics, blaming Francis for the scandal is confined to the pro-Benedict conservatives who were at the center of obstruction for the sake of preserving the privileged clergy. Benedict is like the politician who authored the cover up. Unworthy, conservatives cling to nostalgia, sentimentalism, and hypocritical longing for the clergy above reproach and the law.
The Cathedral was started in 1163, Second Lateran Council held in 1139, where Celibacy became a dogmatic requirement for Catholic priests coincide. Celibacy was imposed to prevent clerics from accumulating wealth. Celibacy forced clerics to turn over their wealth rather than pass it on to their wives and children. Thus funding massive construction, art, and armies. Norte Dame burns as does the hypocrisy of celibacy and the consequences of sexual repression and victimization of children. Norte Dame burns yet Douthat constructs a narrative that longs for hierarchical immunity and privilege and authority over elected government like that in Iran. Rebuilding Norte Dame may be as foolish as restoring Catholic sexual repression and tyranny over women.
11
The metaphor of the burning Notre Dame extends along many radii.
It is not just the dilution of Christianity (in the Western world) with politicized postures, but it shows that Christendom once aspired to emulate the Divine.
The Middle Ages were a time of intellectual regression for the West, relative to Classical antiquity. But it was a time when the summary of human achievement were devoted to the glorification of ideals larger than themselves, at was understood then. It was an earnest time. The high gothic was a metaphor of reaching for the Heavenly.
Notre Dame’s felled spire punctuates well that in one of the birthplaces of humanism, humanity is more inspired by division. Headscarves, yellow-vested vandalism, and an increasingly policed state.
The West may be wealthier than ever, but the ideals that built it are an ashen stratum on the Île de le Cité.
12
@Brian Zimmerman
The “Middle Ages” were not a time of intellectual regression, but one of great advances in theology, philosophy, art, literature and technology—Aquinas, Bonaventure, Maimonides, Dante, The troubadours, Giotto and many more—and the anonymous architects, engineers, designers, sculptors, painters, skilled craftsmen and competent workers who built something that we no longer just lack the will to do, but lack the know-how to do. This view of the “Middle Ages” as some benighted way-station from Antiquity to the “Renaissance” is itself regressive. If you are interested in learning more, the Great Courses by the Teaching Company offers a course on the Great Cathedrals by William Cook. Nobody who watches that will come away with the idea that the “Middle Ages” were “regressive.”
To see French Catholicism, or what remains of the country that was mother to the Church, where Paul the Apostle walked on the ancient streets of Marseille, one has to go elsewhere. In Paris one may go to Saint Sulpice, where Andre XXIII presided over a Mass that I attended some years ago. He knew who I was and why I was there and when I shook his hand, calling him "Excellency," he rejoined, "You are the excellency." The Church is its people, including both the Cardinal and myself who have roots in thousands of years of Jewish tradition. It will survive and evolve.
9
@Tournachonadar
As a former postulant, advised by the Novice Master to return to secular pursuits in that year of silence I experienced a love of Christ that through the years of swirling changes in the Church have stayed with me. At 85 I look back and wonder what happened, what caused from my perspective the hierarchy distancing itself from the cause of the poor, the cause of the disenfranchised. Did the Church become too enamored of the wealthy who contributed to its constructions? How did so many of its clergy sink to the debauchery of children, a debasement covered up by the hierarchy?
The wonderful, caring church seems to still exist in Covenant House, in Sister Mary Rose and the many wonderful ladies, the brides of Christ, who built orphanages and hospitals and run schools. I joined protests against our Bishop of Venice FL when he loudly and vigorously opposed Obama Care. I hope that from the ashes of Notre Dame through Francis, a resurrection of the Church, aligned with the great caring traditions of all the major religions that God has inspired. A recognition that God is not limited in Her voice, She inspires humans in prophetic formulations: Buddhist, Judaic, Christian and Islamic.
1
In all of my 76 years of theological propensity, I have never ever heard of St Paul in Marseille!!?? Martha and Mary of Bethany, yes! - but St Paul! Even Mary of Magdala and Jesus’ infant son, but never Paul!
I've read four articles on the terrible fire that has consumed so much of Notre Dame; two by women and two by men without encountering a single word about the actual significance of its existence: Mary, the all-loving, all-forgiving nurturer whose grace is sought at the moment of death and at moments of desperation throughout life. In other words, Mary is the Christian Great Goddess.
From deepest antiquity, humans saw the female as the Source of existence. The overwhelming logic of it permeated the human concept of "deities" and Goddesses reigned for tens of thousands of years. Monotheism is about 10 thousand years old and was meant to supplant The Goddess with the One, True God as Male. Goddess-worship did not disappear overnight; she had to be overcome repeatedly all the way down to Mary whose quiet sanity stood in opposition to the male mania that took life rather than nurturing it. Mary is Present; indeed she is a Presence at the "crucifixion", the ultimate assertion of male power to destroy in the name of "law and order". But Humans seek life, not death. Mary eclipsed all as the life-giver and by 1100 her following was creating Chapels, Churches and Cathedrals in her honour.
It is Mary who is the beating heart of Paris, dwelling at its centre in beauty and grace. Will Mary now be buried under a pile of brutalist 2019 architecture or restored to her Gothic/Romanesque splendour? As Goddess, she is divinely indestructible. And fireproof.
88
The French government will preside over the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris: all such churches in France are national monuments and are maintained by the state.
There is a fine irony worth exploring in that donations for the restoration have also been offered by luxury goods providers. Just as during the Renaissance.....I say take it, but keep the plaques to a minimum.
We can only hope, however, that what happens in the future interior life of Notre-Dame comes under the prevailing counsel of Pope Francis, rather than harkening back to that of his predecessor. The Italian right-wing anti-refugee minister, Matteo Salvini, has lately been peddling t-shirts proclaiming "his" pope is Benedetto/Benedict. I suspect this columnist is more than what we in Ireland call "a sneaking regarder" of same.
42
@MaryF. The rebuilding of Notre Dame will be much more complicated than most people realize because the limestone of which it is constructed may have “survived” the flames but its internal strength is likely to have been compromised. Thus, it may be that much of what looks perfectly fine is, in fact, not able to sustain any of the weight of new wall. In addition, this limestone was quarried on site and it is not at all clear how much of that material is still available.
It is heartbreaking that this beautiful building did not have a sprinkler system installed years ago. Penny wise and pound foolish. Ironic that the same destruction took place at Windsor Castle. Did they use the same careless construction crew?
A certain Parisian who woke up so sad this morning. Probably one of thousands. In the news so much opinion making, taking advantage of the moment.
The only satisfying quest right now is not an analysis of our souls, or the politics of religion and society. It is in the embers themselves. Be present.
What happened? Such a complex moment with its ancient and constantly renovating structure, the thousands of artifacts, the church itself of course, the tourism, and the society - all surrounding this heart of France. What happened?
It must have been a complex fire with so many factors contributing. And from where I sit in the outskirts of Paris, what did not happen rings as loud: only minor human injury, great and deeply-considered response from the fire fighters, political restraint on the part of the local and national officials, and quite true and delicate expression of sorrow on the part of people here and everywhere.
If it was arson, I hope we never know more about it. Do not give those thoughts the light of day that they crave. If it was human error, let it be known for the sake of others. And what it means to us in our hearts, everyone who gives a hoot about western society, let time tell. Let time tell the tale.
Right now, silence is golden.
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People who declare themselves Conservative Christians (Catholic or any other denomination) should ask themselves whether Christ, in his time, was seen as a conservative or a revolutionary, and then reflect on whether they are truly Christians.
As for Notre Dame, like so many other magnficent monuments that survived centuries, revolutions, and other calamities, they are as much original as restored works. Notre Dame should be restored to re-create the original, as it was in the vast restoration works in the XIXth century which we see today.
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one of course should first ask whether Notre Dame followed a conservative or revolutionary architectural plan before rebuilding - wouldn't want to project any reactionary feelings onto such an innovative building - maybe we could get some more modern architects to redesign the vaulting to make sure it carries with it it's revolutionary original intent
Notre-Dame de Paris stands as a monument to the medieval era. It is one of the many grand cathedrals of Europe serve as tourist destinations rather than as pillars of society.
While I too lament its destruction, I see little sense in having the secular government (as the owner of the structure) devoting resources into rebuilding it.
The moment of its destruction might instead serve as a reflection point on the core values of Western society.
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@Phil D
From a strictly monetary perspective, given that it's the most visited spot in Paris, spending government money on it makes sense.
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"The Second Vatican Council and everything after, have left the church partially and unsuccessfully transformed."
I disagree. I remember those days before Vatican ll. Parishioners, especially children, did not know the Mass, the source and summit of Catholic life. People's minds and bodies wandered during Latin Mass. Some people ignored the Latin liturgy and said the rosary to themselves. A bell had to be rung to cue people's attention to the consecration of the host and the chalice.
Now people can follow the Eucharistic prayer. Now people know the body of Christ, and the process by which the people become the Body of Christ through atonement, or at-one-ment with Christ.
Douthat brings up very serious issues about the future of the church. But with the compassion of Christ through the Eucharist, all things are possible in a new life.
Ross seems to suggest that because Vatican ll came forth concomitantly with a sexual revolution in society that the reforms are tainted or perverse. This is the view of someone who cannot hold views of the sacred and the carnal aspects of life without a complex.
The main thing is to live by Christ's compassion, and to achieve an at-one-ment with mankind after dismissal from "la Misa."
There is an element of power to almost all sex. If hierarchical power were eliminated from the Catholic Church, much of the pederasty would go away. Then priests and parishioners could focus on forming the Body of Christ.
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@Wordsworth from Wadsworth:
You are correct. People did have trouble following the Latin Mass before Vatican II. Unless they were learned in Latin, they had to use missals, which were a Latin/English translation of the liturgy.
Ironically, when LBJ was sworn into office aboard Air Force One in Dallas, no one could find a Bible for him to use. He was sworn in with his left hand atop JFK's missal, which had been taken from the president's quarters on the plane.
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@Wordsworth from Wadsworth
The numbers don’t support your position. In 1958, every category of the Church’s life was booming. Sure, it wasn’t perfect. The “crisis” was manufactured so the “Sing a New Church in Being” arsonists could get to work.
Also, your last comment contradicts the explicit teaching of Vatican 2.
@Wordsworth from Wadsworth
The numbers don’t support your position. In 1958, every category of the Church’s life was booming. Sure, it wasn’t perfect. The “crisis” was manufactured so the “Sing a New Church in Being” arsonists could get to work.
One wishes you hadn’t conflated Notre Dame’s Cathedral loss to fire cathedral with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s letter. Rebuilding such august and historical house of worship has the possibility of bringing all together. It’s a good time for reflection, humility and commitment Hopefully, Pope Francis will lead the effort.
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I’m torn about hoping for Pope Francis to lead the rebuild or not. I still believe I would highly prefer the rebuild/major renovation is lead by President Macron or Prime Minister Philippe or even Paris’ Mayor Hidalgo.
In one hand, Notre Dame is one of the best known symbols of Paris, and France which is a secular country. It represents cultural heritages of those who are and are not Catholics. For Pope Francis to lead the rebuild is bringing it to the wrong direction.
In another, it was an active place of worship for Catholics and Catholicism in French Middle Age is part of our cultural bagage from the past, and is still a part of French Catholics’ community worship place.
All considered, I’d still prefer for Mayor Hidalgo team to lead the rebuild instead of Pope Francis. Symbolically, France and Paris as a whole needs a symbol stronger than just one part of our community.
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@Charlene
I agree. This is France's cathedral. Although, whoever is Pope when this sacred space is rebuilt, should with joy and celebration come to officially reopen it.
And all of France, regardless of creed, should be invited to the jubilee.
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It's a sad, rainy morning in Paris. We walked out to our bridge over the Seine last night and saw the glow of the remaining fire rising behind the two towers after the 19thC spire and 2/3's of the roof collapsed which we watched on TV in real time. No one died, but it brought us back to 9/11 when we were still in New York. Loss. People we saw were out too...searching for some meaning.
Notre-Dame was a "solid" monument of Western Civilisation. 850 years of history and devastated in a day. Macron assured us it will be rebuit and Francois-Henri Pinault has already pledged 100 million towards the the reconstruction.
It's not about Conservative or Liberal factions in the Catholic church, or wanting culture to return to a "better" time before the '60's revolution (or before Trump for liberals like us). It's about a kind of loss (death?) that nothing we do will be avoided.
Makes you think...
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When Catholics after Vatican II did build something nearly as emotive as Notre Dame -- the Mariandom in Neviges, for instance in Germany -- most Catholics of both stripes as well as those who are not Catholic ignored the scope of that achievement. An aesthetic triumph it was not a cultural triumph because the Church by 1968 no longer played the same kind of role in society as a whole.
The sexual scandals coincide with the sexual revolution almost certainly -- as the Irish case probably shows -- simply because that generation survives in large numbers and eventually reported it. Those who were abused in the 1920s are largely gone now and said too little.
Had Notre Dame burned in the middle ages, it would have been rebuilt in an entirely new form. Now there will be new aspects, perhaps stained glass, for instance, but like the Romanesque churches destroyed in Cologne in World War II or the many 19th century parts of Notre Dame itself that were lost yesterday, fifty years from now most people won't remember the difference between old and new.
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@kate, Yes, saying the scandals coincided with the sexual revolution - for the reasons you state and more - is entirely different than saying the sexual revolution caused either the abuse or the revelations of the many decades of abuse and cover-ups.
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The horror, there is no other way to frame this. I question rebuilding though because we are no longer like those that built it. Our faith has shifted, some say perverted. The minds and hands that built it had a different quality to their Love.
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@Gilbert Satchell
Much of what one saw in Notre-Dame before the fire—including much of the sculpture and (I believe) all of the stained glass and of course the spire that we saw burning so spectacularly—was restoration work dating from the 19th century. The chief designer behind that—and much other neo-Gothic bldg and restoration in France, the passionate medievalist Viollet-le-Duc, was himself not a believing Christian.
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@Gilbert Satchell. Read more history . Portions of the faith were plenty perverted and evil in the so called religious era. As a religious believer and former Catholic give me today’s open questioning and a place at the table for all. Oh and Russ there is no possible liberal conservative consensus on pedophilia a crime that the Catholic Church was complicit with.
As an atheist, I can confirm, my heart, as the world's, was broken today. My love and condolences to the citizens of France and the people of Paris.
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Take a little comfort from the fact of unification - people of all faiths & no faith were agonized by the fire & brought together in mourning.
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@RKD
I do take that comfort. And it is the comfort, that "civilization" -- that hard to define thing -- always finds a way.
We live in trifling times. But when something truly great that "we" have built or attempted falls, it seems another side of us rises up.
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