(Part 2, with details of the plan, posted here.)
I’m going to write a couple of blog posts today over the next couple of days on the proposed restoration of the interior of Notre Dame in Paris. I had a cynical reactive reaction ready to put into words, but then I looked back at the few photographs I have of our visit there in 2012, and took the time on this rainy morning to laboriously go through the original presentation of Fr. Gilles Drouin, from back in May, using a combination of the YouTube transcript, my very basic French and Google Translate to make sense of it, and my thoughts are now….as we say…more nuanced.
(There will be hearing on the proposal on Thursday)
Why give time to this?
Because it’s a metaphor, isn’t it?
Notre Dame burned – for reasons still not understood or revealed, take your pick – and must be reconstructed and restored.
A rather obvious metaphor, really.
A metaphor for a Faith, once looming tall and solid, threatened by revolution, reshaped by entanglements with secular states, and finally burned and half-destroyed.
How do we rebuild? And why?
Let’s begin by excavating some deeper assumptions and paradigms which would ideally be honestly confronted in public discussions of this.
First, contemporary – post-World War II – European experts and dabblers in interior church fabrication and restoration tend to be – at least as evidenced by the fruit of their labors – minimalists who truly believe the past is done, gone, buried and of no value to the present.
The past exists to be broken with, overcome, and overwhelmed. It’s all very adolescent, really, and is expressive, not of deep community over time and space (which is Catholic), but of alienated existentialism, atomized, lonely. Not an unreasonable reaction to the devastations of the 20th century on European soil, but still, guess what:
Nobody likes it, and it’s instantly dated.
A book I picked up an estate sale a couple of years ago. (The estate sale, weirdly, of Wayne Rogers, star of MASH, who was born in Birmingham and maintained an apartment here. )
Cistercian simplicity (in case you were going to argue that) is great for the Cistercians whose charism that spareness expresses, but it’s generally not suitable as an expression of the riotous diversity that just is Catholic life out in the world.
So there’s that: any European expert in the design and renovation of liturgical space is assumed to be operating within a particular paradigm, correctly or not.
Secondly, there’s the matter of hostility to pre-Vatican II expressions of Catholicism (and not just expressions, but we won’t go there) and an general conviction of the uselessness, if not harm, that comes from the traditional Latin Mass.
This matters for a number of reasons, but I’ll stick to historical integrity here. I’ve long puzzled with those Catholics who rhapsodize about the beauty of traditional Catholic architecture, particularly Gothic and Romanesque, but bring no understanding – or desire of understanding – of how the design of these structures evolved in response to the shape of the liturgy for which they were built.
So whether all of that is fair or not, critics of an interior renovation of Notre Dame come armed. Armed with the fear that the adage “never let a crisis go to waste” will be weaponized here by the movements that have stripped sacred spaces, exploited and monetized them in the name of “openness to the culture” and imposed abstracted, intellectualized, alienating installations on the rest of us.
***
The idea, said Mr (sic)Drouin, was to teach a captive audience of 12 million visitors with “multiple motivations” and very little Catholic culture the basics of Christianity and the history of salvation without turning it into “catechism in the heavy sense of the word”.
It’s very, very hard to argue with that.
Take into account, too, the pre-Covid nature of tourism in Paris.
I’ve only been there once, but it was for five weeks in the fall of 2012. At that time, Asian tourists, I presume mostly Chinese, dominated the scene. The large, historic department stores all had double signage in French and Mandarin throughout, on every display. Near the entrances to those stores were smaller storefronts, all Mandarin signage, providing not only goods, but currency exchange and shipping. We were the lone caucasians on our bateau mouche tour of the Seine, and the ladies around us would not stop taking photos of Michael, then six and blonde. I finally put an end to it when I turned around and pointed my camera at them and took a photo and got a flurry of ducked heads and waving hands. Sheesh.
So let’s pretend Covid didn’t happen, and talk tourism and religious sites.
Drouin is correct. You have millions walking through Notre Dame every year. Do they know what they are seeing? Can they really understand it?
Some, since the wandering is not going to be totally aimless, of course. There are tour guides for groups, and there are guidebooks and audio tours, and many take advantage of all those and do, indeed, learn as they tour.
But yes, there is undoubtedly more that could be done for the masses of tourists who have been born into and lived in cultures, East and West, in which religious language and imagery is no longer part of a common heritage, or maybe never was.
In fact – the existence of a Notre Dame and its status as a tourist site makes it obligatory to consider the place as an evangelization opportunity.
This, of course, is a hobbyhorse of mine. I have written about it a few times, including here, in reflection on a visit to the Savannah Cathedral at Christmas time, incredibly busy with folks streaming in and waiting in line to see the Cathedral’s nativity scene:
But what I didn’t see was any kind of handout about the Cathedral itself. There was, I think, a booklet for sale, but there was no free pamphlet with either a history of the church itself or a description of what to look for in a Catholic church.
It’s this last point that bugs me the most. I’ve been in countless Catholic churches in my life, and that kind of offering – a simple description of the meaning of the shape of a cruciform church, the layout, the meaning of the altar, tabernacle, stations of the cross, and so on – why doesn’t it exist and why isn’t it everywhere?
Plus an invitation to return. A notice of inquiry sessions. A notice of ways to join in the Corporeal Works of Mercy sponsored by the church..
….Yes, church buildings are modes of evangelization because they are witnesses to the presence of God in the world. Even non-traditional chapels and churches are. Even churches in the suburbs. Too much of what passes for evangelization in Catholicism isn’t, at all. Evangelization is reaching out and inviting and understanding what brings the curious and building vigorously on that – not sitting, waiting, not explaining anything and then charging a fee for your trouble when you do.
And then, inspired by our visit to Florence in 2015:
As we finished with the tower and moved to the church and then the baptistery, I was struck by what these crowds were about on this spot. They were walking around and in, studying, photographing and contemplating just that: a church. A baptistery. And a tower with bells that for centuries had called not tourists, but worshippers and seekers, not just to see and gawk, but to be. To be with.
I considered the other sights we had seen over the past three weeks – this was our last night in Italy. All of the crowds we had joined, all the tickets we had purchased and photographs we had taken? Most of them had been of places where people had been baptized, where they had come to seek what is real, to connect with it, to have hope. All of these places had been heavy with images, and not just any images, and really the same images from place to place: Jesus hanging on a cross. Disciples following, listening. Saints gazing out, looking up, reaching. All of these had been places where even now, people touched by the hands of others who had been, back in the mists of history, touched by the apostles in the stained glass windows still talked about that Jesus. Even now, in most of those places, seekers still came to meet that Jesus hanging on a cross, to find life in his life, offered to them to eat and drink.
People don’t come to church anymore.
But they do, don’t they?
I travel a lot, and everywhere I travel, I end up in churches, for there are churches everywhere. The United States is not as heavy with historical and artistically-significant churches as Europe is, of course, but still, in every major city, you’ll find a downtown Catholic church or two of historical import.
And most of the time, you will find scores of people streaming in and out of that church during the day, perhaps even hundreds.
People don’t come to church anymore.
(Excellent recently seen exception – the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City)
So, I don’t disagree with Drouin. The conversation to have then, is how can the renovation of Notre Dame be faithful to historical integrity as well as the mandate to mission and evangelization?
Is this plan the right approach?
The line to go up into the tower.
Part 2
Charlotte was Both 