Michelle Obama has been on an international book tour to promote her book, “Becoming”. On the week of April 15, she was joined in Paris with her husband, former president Barack Obama.
On the evening of April 16, moments after they bordered a sightseeing boat on the river Seine, a fire broke out in the attic of Notre Dame Cathedral, which allowed them to capture live images on their phones mere minutes later.
Almost immediately, people around the world expressed shock at the catastrophe, and donors from France and elsewhere quickly pledged money to rebuild. Although presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg expressed condolences to the French in their native tongue (it’s one of the 8 languages he speaks) the most eloquent comments came, as usual, from former president Barack Obama:
“Notre Dame is one of the world’s great treasures, and we’re thinking of the people of France in your time of grief. It’s in our nature to mourn when we see history lost – but it’s also in our nature to rebuild for tomorrow, as strong as we can.”
World sympathy for France came about for reasons that are totally unrelated to religion.
After the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11, support came from virtually everywhere, and George W. Bush’s approval rating quickly reached the highest level of his presidency, at 90%.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx
In October of 2001, the office vacancy rate in Manhattan was nearly 10%, so there was no compelling reason to put up another office tower on the site of the World Trade Center. The REASON that the decision was quickly made to rebuild was that the World Trade Center was a SYMBOL of America’s power and strength, which is precisely why the first attempt to destroy it occurred 8 years earlier, when a bomb laden van exploded in the parking garage of the North Tower on February 26, 1993.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/10/business/office-vacancy-rate-climbs-in-new-york.html
The replacement for the twin towers of the World Trade Center is called One World Trade Center, but it’s also known as Freedom Tower. It is now the tallest building in the United States, and it tops off at a patriotic 1776 feet tall. Construction of the building started in April of 2006, and was “topped off” on May 10, 2013, and the building officially opened on November 3, 2014. It cost $3.9 billion to build.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_World_Trade_Center
Notre Dame is the most famous of the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages and is distinguished for its size, antiquity, and architectural interest. The cathedral was initiated by Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, who in about 1160 conceived the idea of converting into a single building, on a larger scale, the ruins of the two earlier basilicas. The foundation stone was laid by Pope Alexander III in 1163, and the high altar was consecrated in 1189. The choir, the western facade, and the nave were completed by 1250, and porches, chapels, and other embellishments were added over the next 100 years.
After the French Revolution it was rescued from possible destruction by Napoleon, who crowned himself emperor of the French in the cathedral in 1804. Notre-Dame underwent major restorations by the French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc in the mid-19th century. The popularity of Victor Hugo’s historical novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), wherein the cathedral is the setting, was said to have inspired the renovations.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Notre-Dame-de-Paris
Before the French Revolution, Catholicism was the state religion of France. Due to the passage of the Declarations of the Right of Man in 1789, the Jules Ferry Laws of the 1880’s, and the 1905 French Law on the Separation of Churches and the State, France today is decidedly secular. Although Catholicism is still the dominant Christian religion, the main religion of France (at 39.6%) is “no religion”. Even among Catholics, only 5% attend mass on Sunday. Ironically, one of the effects of the 1905 law, which separated church from state, is that the state gained ownership of all the churches that were built before that year, which means that Notre Dame cathedral actually belongs to the nation of France and not to the archdiocese of Paris.
According to a Eurobarometer survey conducted in 2010, 27% of French citizens responded that they "believe there is a God", 27% answered that they "believe there is some sort of spirit or life force", and 40% answered that they "do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force". This makes France one of the most irreligious countries in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_France
(In case you are wondering, the vast majority of the most religious countries in the world are in Africa, and the majority of the least religious countries are in Europe)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/most-religious-countries-in-the-world/
The
fire at Notre Dame started in the
cathedral’s attic, said Jean-Claude Gallet, commander of the Paris
firefighters.
The
attic is an oddly shaped space, seldom visited, that lies above the soaring
stone arches visible from the floor of old European cathedrals. Diagrams of
Notre-Dame and official descriptions of the space indicate that it is
crisscrossed by giant, timber trusses that add structural integrity to the
cathedral.
“Once these massive timber structures start to
burn, they almost never can be stopped,” said Jonathan Barnett, an
international fire safety authority at Basic Expert in Australia. “We focus on
their masonry walls and forget all the massive timber within.”
Each
beam of the cathedral attic’s wooden frame is made from an individual tree —
more than 1,300 in total — giving it the nickname “the forest.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/15/world/europe/paris-notre-dame-fire.html?module=inline
Notre-Dame De
Paris/Maurice de Sully association
A dry
space like the attic tends to accumulate dust and debris, making it even more
flammable. “That’s where your risk really is,” said Andrew Tremlett, the Dean
of Durham Cathedral in the United Kingdom, which has a similar wooden vaulted
roof like Notre-Dame’s.
After
taking over the attic, the blaze quickly spread across the roof and engulfed the spire,
a wood-frame structure covered in lead.
The
attic of the cathedral was inspected 3 times a day, and French firefighters
were well trained on what to do in the event of a fire. However, for a variety
of reasons, fire at the cathedral was inevitable.
According
to the Wall Street Journal article posted below, the cathedral suffered from
decades of neglect, caused (in part) by the churches refusal to accept
donations, which would have helped tremendously with its maintenance needs.
Pictures of the cathedral
have exploded in the last few days, but the best were provided by the
Associated Press, and they appeared in the local Tucson newspaper, and other
papers around the country,
https://tucson.com/news/world/photos-a-look-at-the-damage-caused-by-the-fire/collection_de4e5dc5-ef1c-59a0-8b0d-07a3e9b9d9a4.html#32
There ARE people who question the wisdom of spending nearly $1 billion on the church, but they are missing the point. France's tourism industry is a major component of the economy, as France is the most visited destination in the world. Sophia Antipolis is the major technology hub for the economy of France. Paris is ranked as the most elegant city in the world, which propels the agglomeration of the fashion industry. According to the IMF, in 2013, France was the world's 20th country by GDP per capita with $44,600 per inhabitant. In 2013, France was listed on the United Nations's Human Development Index with 0.884 (very high human development) and 25th on the Corruption Perceptions Index. The OECD is headquartered in Paris, the nation's financial capital.
As a result, Notre Dame isn’t simply an old church, it is a symbol of France itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_France
At
times like this, we are all still Americans, but we are also French as well.
(Never
forget the fact that the statue below was a gift from France in 1875.)
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