Cathedral

Five years have passed since a major fire swept through the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris on April 19, 2019, bringing down the church’s roof but sparing the rest of the building. In response, French president Emmanuel Macron immediately promised that the structure, which is owned by the state, would be rebuilt quickly, and more beautiful than before. He further promised that the cathedral would be ready to receive worshipers and visitors in time for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. Since his announcement, however, things have not gone entirely to plan. Notre-Dame will not be finished in time for the Olympics; as of this writing, completion has been pushed off to December 2024.

In 2019, I wrote a piece for the American Conservative reflecting on the Notre-Dame fire and on the meaning of that cathedral in a secular age. At the time, I considered donating my paycheck from that article to the rebuilding effort. I’m glad I didn’t. I certainly wasn’t the only one moved to devote some of my hard-earned money to saving one of the jewels of Christendom. Over €800 million poured in from around the world. €165 million was quickly spent restoring the edifice’s structural integrity. But over €600 million remained, and soon the architects descended. After an initial flurry of mostly outlandish proposals that aimed to modernize the building’s exterior, the French government caved to popular outrage and ditched the design contest.