Notre Dame: A Fiery Sign?

BY WILLIAM KILPATRICK | APR 21, 2019

Was the near destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral simply the result of an accidental fire? Or was it also a prophetic sign?

In the Bible, the destruction of a city or a temple is often linked to immorality or unbelief. The fire and brimstone that was rained down on Sodom was punishment for the sins of its people. Likewise, Jesus warned the people of Capernaum and other cities that their fate could be worse than Sodom’s because they did not repent despite the “mighty works” he had performed in their midst (Matt. 11:20-24). When Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, he prophesied that its enemies “will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:41-44).

The “sign” of Notre Dame ablaze comes on top of other disturbing signs. Since the beginning of the year, dozens of churches in France have been vandalized, desecrated, and torched. In 2018, 1,063 attacks on Christian churches or symbols were registered in France—a 17 percent increase over 2017 when “only” 878 attacks were registered. Other signs that the times are out of joint are not hard to find.  Among the more horrific were the massacre at the office of the Charlie Hebdo publishers, the Bataclan Theatre attack, the truck jihad in Nice, and the Christmas Market massacre in Strasbourg.

Church desecrations and terror attacks are not confined to France, but since France is one of the most aggressively secular states in Europe, it may be more in need of signs than most.  And it may require more spectacular signs to call France—once considered the “eldest daughter of the Church”—back to the faith.

When asked why her stories were full of grotesque characters and shocking violence, Flannery O’Connor replied: “When you write for the blind, you have to write in big letters.” Those who live in overly-secularized societies, such as France, often become blinded to what is truly important in life, and may, therefore, require fiery signs to wake them up to reality.

The truth is that unbelief in France is probably as great as, if not greater than, in the biblical cities and towns cited in Christ’s warning to the unrepentant. Only 4 percent of French Catholics attend Sunday Mass on a regular basis, and in the larger cathedrals the number of tourists far exceeds the number of worshippers.

After visiting several churches in France, including Notre Dame, Mark Steyn was struck by their emptiness: “One gets the sense that a living, breathing faith is just becoming, actually, a museum, an art gallery, a storage facility.” The cathedrals of Europe are truly magnificent and awe-inspiring, but the awe is for achievements that we no longer seem capable of because we lack the requisite faith.

The damage to Notre Dame is a wake-up call not only for Christians who have let their faith lapse, but also for dyed-in-the-wool secularists. Though run by the Church, Notre Dame, like other historic churches in France, is owned by the French state. Notre Dame is important to France not only because of its history, art, and architecture, but also because it is one of the main reasons that people visit France. Notre Dame draws more visitors than the Eiffel Tower. Many who visit the Cathedral come not just as tourists, but also as pilgrims. For them, “Our Lady’s” Cathedral means far more than one more historic site to check off the list. Ironically, secular France’s greatest attraction is a spiritual treasure.

French President Emmanuel Macron promises to raise enough funds to rebuild Notre Dame within five years. But to what purpose? For the greater glory of God? To worship and praise him? Not quite. The damage to Notre Dame could be a fatal blow to France’s tourist economy which is already reeling from rising crime rates and the constant threat of terrorism brought on by mass Muslim migration. Macron’s haste to rebuild suggests that the state is far more dependent on the Christian faith than it had thought.

Many moderns assume that the secular can get along fine without the sacred. But much of the glory and greatness of France—and of Europe as a whole—is bound up inextricably with its Christian faith. Take that away and much of the glory and greatness would disappear with it. There would be no parliamentary democracies to boast of, little sense of the dignity of man or of his inalienable rights, and, quite possibly, no planes, trains, or automobiles.

But Europe’s leaders seem disinclined to admit any of this. In a fine essay on the subject, historian Paul Kengor writes: “The burning cathedral, and the state’s inability to stop the blaze, seemed a harsh symbol of France’s failure to protect its religious heritage.”

Or even to acknowledge it.

Kengor reminds us: “In the early 2000s, a battle raged within the European Union over whether to include a reference to God in the EU constitution.” In the end, the European Union decided to keep God and Christianity out of its constitution. Having rejected the cornerstone, the builders are now discovering that the whole edifice of secular Europe is crumbling.

Why does the secular need the sacred? The answer is that the sacred realm makes sense out of life—a service the state cannot perform for itself. If there is no fixed transcendent order, everything becomes relative. Without reference to a higher authority, laws are perceived as arbitrary impositions of the state. One follows them simply to avoid the state’s penal institutions. As Dostoevsky put it, “If there is no God everything is permissible.” Likewise, if there is no God, there is no ultimate standard by which the state itself can be judged. Hence, the state becomes the ultimate arbiter of what rights you can and cannot have.

Pope St. John Paul II was the most prominent proponent of keeping God in the European constitution.  According to Kengor:

He made arguments akin to those made by the American Founding Fathers: It is crucial for citizens living under a constitution to understand the ultimate source from which their rights derive: their rights come not from government but God.

The hollow shell of Notre Dame should be a reminder to France that the secular state is itself a hollow shell when it fails to acknowledge the Creator who endows us with inalienable rights. The state has no lasting vision to offer. And its guarantee of liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of man are backed by absolutely nothing.

Thus the damage to Notre Dame is not necessarily a tragedy if it serves to remind people of the source and center of their lives. Hopefully, it will provide a much-needed spark of recognition. President Macron and other secularists are now acutely aware that France’s tourist economy depends much more on God than they had realized. Perhaps that is a step in the direction of realizing that France depends on God for everything.

There is, of course, one other consideration. France is allowing itself to be taken over by an alien religion—a religion that has been at war with Christendom for over 1,400 years. Whether or not the French leadership takes the fire at Notre Dame as a sign from heaven, Muslims almost certainly will. They will see it as a sign from Allah—a sign that Islam is destined to triumph over France and all of Europe. Some Muslims will, no doubt, feel that they have a duty to hasten the process along. As a result, we can expect the attacks on Christian churches to continue and even to escalate.

Most French citizens, one assumes, would prefer not to live under sharia law. But that is the direction in which France is headed, and secularized France doesn’t seem to know how to prevent it from happening. In previous centuries, the people who built the great cathedrals were able to turn back massive Islamic invasions. Apparently, the faith that enabled them to build the cathedrals also gave them the strength to resist.

Providentially, enough of Notre Dame has survived intact to make a full restoration possible. And quite possibly there remains enough residue of Christianity in France to provide a foundation for the restoration of the Faith. In that case, it seems quite likely that Our Lord and Our Lady will give the people of France the strength to resist the advance of Islam, and perhaps even to convert their Muslim neighbors in the process. 

AND WE PRAY!

https://turningpointproject.com/notre-dame-a-fiery-sign/

This article originally appeared in the April 18, 2019 edition of Crisis.

Notre Dame -- God Takes Back What Is His

Notre Dame en Feu: God Takes Back What Is His

During my senior year of college, I took a class on the French Revolution — my first real academic exposure to that seminal period since a brief survey in high school. Going into the class, I was confident in my understanding of the Revolution, a narrative more or less predicated on the traditional historiography: the French Revolution was a struggle against an oppressive monarchy in defense of the same basic principles as our own revolution in the United States, though perhaps with a bit more bloodshed. Guillotines or not, how could one take umbrage at such lofty ideals as liberty, equality, and fraternity?

Such was the extent of my understanding of the Revolution at the time I began the college class, a misguided view (as I would learn) that my Catholic high school education criminally failed to correct.

In what turned out to be the biggest seismic shock of my academic career, my professor quickly disabused me of my preconceived notions and tipped over the first domino that would soon cause the total reorientation of the foundations of my political and philosophical worldview. The class showed me, for the first time, the ugly and unvarnished truth of modern France’s founding myth: the guillotine, yes, but also the Vendée. The mass shootings and drownings of nuns and priests. The desecration of the churches — Notre Dame itself was converted to a hideous “Temple of Reason” under the careful eye of Robespierre and his republican thugs. The virtual abolition of the Catholic Church in France and the forced conversion of priests into mere civil servants. The expulsion or arrest of those priests and bishops who would not conform — then, as in the England of St. John Fisher, a depressing minority. The senseless savagery, the unbridled, visceral rage — is this what modern Europe proudly holds up as the fruit of Enlightenment?

For the first time in my life, I began to doubt the received wisdom that, whatever its faults, the French Revolution ultimately liberated the French people and was a bold step forward in the quest for La Raison. This first domino toppled my views on the (previously not to be challenged!) Euro-American dogma that democracy is the highest, indeed only form of government, and later on the very legitimacy of republican forms of government themselves.

The tragic fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris brought me back to that lecture hall of my college class. I can only say what so many others are saying: is there no more fitting metaphor for the absolute state of the Church in France — indeed, in Western Europe — today? What distinguishes today’s Frenchman from his forefather of 1789? The French Revolution was not an event; it was a regime, and one that still reigns in the secular Wahhabism that is the French policy of laïcité.

Watching such a great treasure of the Catholic patrimony go up in flames brought me grief, yes, but it also awakened in me a sense of righteous anger born of God’s infinite justice: as the Apostle reminds us, God will not be mocked. In a nation where Mass attendance has fallen to single digits, is it any wonder that God has taken back what is His? In a city where the average church hosts more iPad-clutching, shorts-clad tourists in a single day than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass attracts in months, did we honestly expect anything different from what transpired Monday? In this part of the European continent, where one can sooner find a rainbow banner than an altar rail in the sanctuary, did we really think God would be mocked indefinitely?

Regicide has become deicide. Where once men beheaded their earthly kings, they still strive to decapitate their heavenly King. The Temple of Reason has once more become the funeral pyre of the Faith.

Much has been made of Islam’s alleged threat to “Christian Europe.” If the people of France have taught us anything, and if the events of this week are any proof of divine justice, then it is clear that the people of France and indeed of Western Europe need no help from the Muslims in destroying their culture, their heritage, their faith.

Louis XVI, king of France, martyr of France, pray for us. Holy martyrs of the Vendée, pray for us. O Lord, Who promised to destroy the temple made by human hands and in three days raise it up once more, have mercy on us.

https://onepeterfive.com/notre-dame-feu-god-takes/

Editor’s note: This essay was submitted to 1P5 by an anonymous Catholic.