This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
My mind swirls in confused horror as I watch one of Christianity’s most significant monuments fall to the ground. Many think that Europe is in decline, and this imagery stokes this pessimism of Europe’s future. Atrocities and news stories keep streaming at a more rapid pace, especially from Paris. Disastrous policies. Ridiculous politics. Declining culture. Many see this fire as a turning point, yet hardly a peripeteia: Europe’s decline has been ongoing and steady.
This isn’t exactly the first attack on France’s churches, and Notre Dame in particular. Saint Sulpice church in Paris was reportedly lit on fire just last month. And then there was arson in St. Nicholas in northern France a month before that, and Saint Alain cathedral in south-central France. There was also attempted arson in St. Denis cathedral in Paris a few weeks ago. When twelve church are vandalized in just a week in France, you know they’ve got a problem–and now this on the first day of Easter week.
France has expressed a fiercely anti-religion bent ever since the revolution, and as I traveled from city to city I was shocked to see great iron bars covering the grand windows of France’s cathedrals and churches. These windows were under threat from atheists as well as certain hostile minority religious groups, I was told. It has become somewhat of a national past-time to resent the church and ridicule religious belief. News reports say some French were celebrating the Notre Dame fire. Many consider the edifice a tourist gimmick, an outdated relic, or a symbol of tyranny akin to America’s confederate statues–and this kind of reaction illustrates the babel chaos enveloping the continent. Some at least recognize the historic significance and the need to preserve heritage, but that falls well short of the full significance. Perhaps very few really understand the full significance of this event. I was shocked to see the Catholic cardinal of New York on the news displaying less emotion than I was feeling. It’s as if people are consigned to Christianity’s future, bombarded by hostile media conditioning, and uninvigorated to do anything about it. As the pious sang Ave Maria on the opposite banks of the river, I was reminded of Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.”
My fond memory of Notre Dame cathedral comes from my family’s trip to pick up my brother from his European mission. My odyssey in Paris began in the morning at the Louvre, and then a stroll down the grand Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, and then we turned to the river Seine to conquer Notre Dame. The city became increasingly magical, and as the evening approached, my head turned to the heavens, admiring the soaring stained glass of that great solemn space. It gave me a window into the foundations of this city, as if I delved underground into the primal caverns of Europe’s culture. Notre Dame was built on the earliest inhabited area of Paris, the Ile de la Cite. The river splits here to reveal a charming little park where the birds are so tame they sit on your hand to eat crumbs, and it is upon this small island Notre Dame sits. Unlike many Gothic cathedrals, Notre Dame is built of gleaming white Lutetian limestone, a sparkling jewel in the heart of the land.
The Unraveling Of Europe
This fire does not compare to the awful loss of life on September 11, 2001. But as a destruction of a monument and cultural symbol, this fire may be even more significant. The Time magazine that came out just a few days ago read: “The unraveling of Europe,” and it included an article titled: “Notre Dame Cathedral is crumbling.” The article observed the French public’s reluctance to preserve the cathedral. “’People don’t want to give money because of laïcité,’ says Finot, referring to the strict secularism that infuses French law.” The crumbling of the cathedral seems to symbolize the death of religion in the country, a monument to history that many want gone.
The cathedral in its hey-day was much more than a church: it was the center of the city and government. Cathedrals had guilds and commercial buildings surrounding their exterior walls, where people did business under the church’s watchful eye. It was the center of economics, religion, government, and culture. After the Enlightenment, their significance lessened, but the church still retained massive power. Today, internet lingo makes “cathedral” synonymous with elite powers who control and manipulate societies, a shadowy collective of elite aristocrats. It may not be a building of towering buttresses and stained glass windows today, but there are still powers that control and manipulate our most intimate beliefs.
Victor Hugo explains this beautifully in his book “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” published in 1831. “The book will kill the edifice,” he said, referring to the technology of the printing press. With increased individual communication possibilities, the controlling elite symbolized by the cathedral had less control over the masses. Of course, the flip side to this is everyone splinters into their own faction without a central power to control them, like with the Tower of Babel. The death of the edifice, or the church, was not something Victor Hugo necessarily celebrated, though it was popular for revolutionaries to do so at the time. He mourned that the cathedral had been wrested of its original function. Its form had been contorted and misshaped by controlling powers over the years. The biggest affront, he said, was the 18th century central circular spire added the middle of the cross section. He called it a “scar” and plaster “pot cover.” I think it is ironic, therefore, that the spire is where people are saying the fire started today. “The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last. On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. Tempus edax, homo edacior [“Time is a devourer; man, more so”]; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid. … Three important things are to-day lacking in that façade: in the first place, the staircase of eleven steps which formerly raised it above the soil; next, the lower series of statues which occupied the niches of the three portals; and lastly the upper series, of the twenty-eight most ancient kings of France, which garnished the gallery of the first story, beginning with Childebert, and ending with Phillip Augustus, holding in his hand “the imperial apple.” … And if we enter the interior of the edifice, who has overthrown that colossus of Saint Christopher, proverbial for magnitude among statues, as the grand hall of the Palais de Justice was among halls, as the spire of Strasbourg among spires? And those myriads of statues, which peopled all the spaces between the columns of the nave and the choir, kneeling, standing, equestrian, men, women, children, kings, bishops, gendarmes, in stone, in marble, in gold, in silver, in copper, in wax even,—who has brutally swept them away? It is not time. And who substituted for the ancient gothic altar, splendidly encumbered with shrines and reliquaries, that heavy marble sarcophagus, with angels’ heads and clouds, which seems a specimen pillaged from the Val-de-Grâce or the Invalides? Who stupidly sealed that heavy anachronism of stone in the Carlovingian pavement of Hercandus? Was it not Louis XIV., fulfilling the request of Louis XIII.? And who put the cold, white panes in the place of those windows, “high in color,” which caused the astonished eyes of our fathers to hesitate between the rose of the grand portal and the arches of the apse? And what would a sub-chanter of the sixteenth century say, on beholding the beautiful yellow wash, with which our archiepiscopal vandals have desmeared their cathedral? He would remember that it was the color with which the hangman smeared “accursed” edifices; he would recall the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, all smeared thus, on account of the constable’s treason. “Yellow, after all, of so good a quality,” said Sauval, “and so well recommended, that more than a century has not yet caused it to lose its color.” He would think that the sacred place had become infamous, and would flee. And if we ascend the cathedral, without mentioning a thousand barbarisms of every sort,—what has become of that charming little bell tower, which rested upon the point of intersection of the cross-roofs, and which, no less frail and no less bold than its neighbor (also destroyed), the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, buried itself in the sky, farther forward than the towers, slender, pointed, sonorous, carved in open work. An architect of good taste amputated it (1787), and considered it sufficient to mask the wound with that large, leaden plaster, which resembles a pot cover. … Fashions have wrought more harm than revolutions. They have cut to the quick; they have attacked the very bone and framework of art; they have cut, slashed, disorganized, killed the edifice, in form as in the symbol, in its consistency as well as in its beauty. And then they have made it over; a presumption of which neither time nor revolutions at least have been guilty. … Thus, to sum up the points which we have just indicated, three sorts of ravages to-day disfigure Gothic architecture. Wrinkles and warts on the epidermis; this is the work of time. Deeds of violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures; this is the work of the revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau. Mutilations, amputations, dislocation of the joints, “restorations”; this is the Greek, Roman, and barbarian work of professors according to Vitruvius and Vignole. This magnificent art produced by the Vandals has been slain by the academies. The centuries, the revolutions, which at least devastate with impartiality and grandeur, have been joined by a cloud of school architects, licensed, sworn, and bound by oath; defacing with the discernment and choice of bad taste, substituting the chicorées of Louis XV. for the Gothic lace, for the greater glory of the Parthenon. It is the kick of the ass at the dying lion. It is the old oak crowning itself, and which, to heap the measure full, is stung, bitten, and gnawed by caterpillars.” (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo)
Churches Should Not Follow Fashion – He hated the spire addition. It was very controversial at its time due to its historical incongruency. It was probably structurally unsound as well. That Time magazine article reports: “Water damage to the spire’s covering is threatening the wood-timber roof, which the medieval craftsmen built using 5,000 oak trees.” Whatever caused the fire, the spire is certainly involved. It was a fashion statement, an update to the current year, which I find similar to those who today wish to “update” the church. The definition of marriage, gender roles… the list of progressive demands is growing every general conference season, and each change is like a change to a grand old cathedral structure. That spire was constructed as a hasty fashion update that may have brought the church to the current year, but also may have contributed to the catastrophic collapse of the edifice. This should serve as a valuable lesson to us all. The function of the church is not congruent with modern fashions and shifting shapes.
More to Victor Hugo’s overall point, the written word and modern technologies may afford greater freedom of expression and learning, but the edifice will always be needed. Do we want to live in one of China’s boomtowns, where streets are lined with endless apartment buildings and the only value to life is your work potential for a big corporation? The cathedral gives structure to society. If it isn’t the church organizing society, it is the government, and a secular government will always tend toward Satan’s plan. A city simply cannot exist without some cathedral in control; and either it is the corporate skyscraper or it is the church bell tower. Unfortunately, it is not always evident which is which. The cathedral was a perversion of the holy temple, and I think today’s secular structures that dominate modern European architecture are likewise perversions. But they lose pretty much all religious value, and they do not imbue the history and heritage like the cathedrals did. This is why I think there exists a vacuum of holy architecture in Europe.
The Two Towers – In my earlier article on Egyptian design, I explained the significance of twin towers looming at the front of their temples: “The Following of Horus proceeded to the temple through two massive pylon towers, like we see at the front of the temple at Luxor, which represented the twin towers of Manu. The temple was designed so that the sky rose between the pylon towers, like the king rising as Re in the morning of the day together with Horus.” In this article, I was going to explain more about about how this design is reflected in modern architecture, like the twin towers of many cathedrals and the World Trade Center in New York. The cathedral’s design probably came from Egypt, and the World Trade Center was probably based on the cathedral. But something told me not to talk about this.
Well, many people have noted the similarity between today’s imagery and 9/11. I heard “twin towers” mentioned many times on the news stream. A dramatic falling spire. Smoke filling the skies of the city, silent crowds below, struggling emergency responders. I do not believe it is fair to compare 9/11 with Notre Dame, because like I said, the cathedral serves a different function than the World Trade center did. And nobody died. But it definitely served a function. Nobody talks about the World Trade towers as a mere “heritage building, national symbol” like they do about Notre Dame. To modern man, a building does not serve a function unless it is making money. Unless a building has a storefront or is charging people for rent, it is purposeless. This is the essence of Babylon which the prophets all warned us about. Notre Dame may have lost much of its imbued symbol, but it was not just some tourist attraction.
Hinge Point In European History
I eagerly await the results of investigations into how this fire started. The pessimist in me says that it will be blamed on faulty wiring or construction equipment, whether or not that’s the real cause. It seems like we don’t get true explanations for anything big that happens in the news these days, everything gets covered up. If it was arson, it follows the pattern of events in France’s recent history regarding religious buildings. If it was an accident, well, we can all draw our own conclusions. Looking at the timberwork between the ceiling and the lead roof, I don’t see any wiring at all. I don’t see any electric lights, mechanical equipment… absolutely nothing that could ignite the wood. Cathedral builders dealt with many fires and learned how to prevent them. I also don’t see any particularly large open spaces where fires could grow to such a large size. Modern building codes require fire walls to prevent fire from easily spreading through attic spaces. I believe the Notre Dame cathedral attics likewise utilized design strategies to slow down the spread of fires. Yet the Notre Dame fire saw the roof collapse, the entire building utterly engulfed in flames, and the central spire collapse in about an hour. How did it spread and grow so quickly?
This is truly a historic event. I don’t believe it was divine judgement against a church or nation, or anything like that. But in the midst of such a dark and tragic event, I can’t help but recall what President Russell M. Nelson recently said at the Rome temple dedication: we are at a hinge point of church growth in the world. Is Christianity done for in Europe? Not one bit. I’ve had high employees for the church in Europe describe to me evidence that church populations are on the decline. The older generation is dying off and the younger generation isn’t replenishing what they leave behind, I’ve been told. But is that really so? The long-anticipated Paris temple was dedicated just under two years ago. No, Europe is not done for, but there may be massive change ahead, and such horrible loss is probably going to continue. Maybe we are just experiencing the swing of a cycle, the same kind of cycle that always happens in history, and very soon we will see surprising change. There is a vacuum forming, and I do not expect secularism and wickedness will endure for very long. I greatly mourn this building’s loss, and I wish to do all I can to strengthen the members of the Catholic church. My prayer is that such wonderful constructions, beautiful heritage, and centers of Christian worship may not fall victim to this change.