About Notre Dame (3)

A catechetical journey happening in Notre Dame in Paris, 2012

Part 1 here. Part 2 here.

I’m going to make this quick because (a) I need to get to Mass and (b) the proposal will be given a hearing tomorrow and who knows, the conversation may be moot after that point.

But will it?

Will it be moot?

I don’t think so – which is why I’ve been taking time to write about it here – to write about the proposed renovation of one structure in the midst of a world of problems. Because, as I said in my first post, it’s just a more prominent, newsy version of an ongoing conversation.

I ended my last post by suggesting that the accusation of “Disneyfication” expressed in the proposed renovation is a bit misplaced by those who hurl it. Any Disneyfication is not so much in the technological element, but in the sensibility that the Notre Dame experience should ideally be controlled, managed and coherent.

To anyone who’s been in a museum exhibit in recent decades, this is familiar. These experiences are not about wandering and random discovery, and not even much about being still and thinking about what you’re seeing, but more about being guided on an educational journey. Which has its place, of course.

But is it appropriate for a church still in use, still a living symbol and expression of the faith it represents? Still a place where believers go to worship?

I don’t think so, especially for a Catholic church. The Catholic church is, it seems to me, an entity in which various elements are constantly held in tension, reaching, ideally, a balancing point.

The local ——– the universal

populist ——– authority

clutter ———- clarity

questions ——— answers

accident ——— design

A Catholic church, especially an old one, will express all of this. Yes, this structure has been renovated and stripped and rebuilt over the years, for worthy and less-worthy reasons, by friends and enemies. But if it is a “coherent” expression of the Catholic faith, one should, I think, be able to sense all of these elements in tension, all working with and against each other in space and time, for the glory of God.

That then, is an argument against the clean, smoothed-out experience that I see in this proposal.

Yes, these side chapels are cluttered and incoherent in design, and could use an upgrade of sorts – the spaces could be more fruitfully used, I suppose.

But perhaps there’s an irony here. Perhaps if we want to communicate was Catholicism is…we accept, in some sense, the clutter.

For the mess and the clutter is, in a sense, Catholicism, and expresses what Catholicism is far more powerfully and truthfully than a clean space dedicated to committee-designed messages projected on a wall.

In those chapels, there are artifacts from all eras, placed in those spots for reasons no one really remembers anymore, but artifacts that someone, at some time in the past, found hope and peace and meaning in. And even today, every one of those chapels has a bank of votive candles in front of it, and in front of them, throughout the day, people pause to look, to puzzle and to pray. Those chapels are a little messy and could use a cleaning and new and different art, including contemporary pieces. But what happens when we make them too clean? What do we lose?

So that’s my takeaway. Expressed, I think, in the photograph above, taken on our 2012 trip, where a group of schoolchildren crowded on the floor in front of a crypt in the middle of Notre Dame. Is everything clear and obvious? No, it’s not. Who is the dead guy anyway?

You want catechetical? Perhaps there’s a powerful catechetical message in a place that’s a little dark, a little messy and cluttered, where people still light candles and say their prayers every day and into the night. It’s not a reason not to straighten it up and consider how the space can be more accessible and understandable to non-believers – that’s essential – but at the same time, there’s a coherence in Catholicism that is powerfully embodied in what the world sees as incoherence.

Finally – if the Church shouldn’t be a museum – as we often hear – maybe … we shouldn’t make it into one.

Update (9/9): The proposal was approved by the historical commission. I think there is another step or two, but this is important.