Not those Twin Towers, of 9/11 fame. The twin towers on my mind are those which, for millions across the world, represent Notre Dame Cathedral on the Ile de La Cité in Paris. This is the facade that my wife and I remember still from our first trip in the 1970s and which we have tried to view on every visit since. The cathedral is certainly a crowd-puller and we’ve been in the crowd time and time again.
How I would feel had St Paul’s Cathedral, a place for which I have some affection, been in similar danger of burning to the ground? I guess that if I were a Londoner, able to watch first hand as the dome melted away, its timbers ablaze and with its interior treasures consumed by a vicious fire, my tense fear and eventual sadness would match those of my Parisian counterparts. I guess that all across Britain, just as all across France, the eventual sadness would be a shared one. For St Paul’s speaks of London, England, just as Notre Dame speaks of Paris, France. Brought up in York myself, I was saddened when fire destroyed the roof of the Minster back in 1984. I confess that I shared in the initial popular desire to see its splendid high ceilings restored to their full glory.
So what possible ‘shame’ can there be? Its roots sprang, for me, from a letter sent to the Metro (free paper) of Thursday 18th April. Here, Tom from Worcester dared question the targeting of the expenditure needed to restore Notre Dame to its former glory. As he points out, certain billionaires have already pledged hundreds of millions (perhaps thousands of millions by now). Added to this, there is talk of funds coming in from the rest of France. World-wide concern suggests that even expats and foreigners will also contribute towards its re-construction. Might I tentatively share Tom from Worcester’s unease that, whilst the French and others will undoubtedly rush to pour thousands of millions into this one building, they and others are less keen, by far, to pour such money into people-related schemes (here he cites starving children in Africa or the measures necessary to stop climate change).
The fire at Notre Dame places us on the horns of a dilemma. Should we be spending vast sums to replace a building when the early Church had no buildings – the Church was about people not buildings (and for many it still is)? Against this, set Christ’s reported words suggesting that a bit of lavish devotional spending now and then (he was referring to the costly spikenard) might outweigh the alternative of giving such money to the poor: ‘the poor you will always have with you’. I have touched on this dilemma in the past, (Sofia 118) discussing Civic Monies spent on the provision of Christmas as against the negligible dent such monies could make in the Social Services deficit. Maybe Notre Dame, like these annual Christmas Lights, so cheers the hearts of Parisians that it should not be lightly laid aside. And in addition to its aesthetic and spiritual value, it is important for the jobs it provides those who care for it and for the tourist income it generates, obliquely or directly, for the city.
Perhaps the real shame is that this great cathedral did not burn down altogether, for then there would have been far less incentive for costly restoration of the parts which did not. A simpler building could have been put up to replace it, housing the treasures saved from the original, together with a record of its place in the nation’s history and literature. Perhaps if vast sums of money were to be routed into Paris there should be some expenditure on a small but tasteful museum and chapel, set perhaps in a specially designed garden such as was constructed for 9/11. The remaining billions could form the foundation of a hardship fund of some sort for the benefit of the less fortunate people of this splendid city. This last could serve as a beacon to the rest of France and even to the World.
John Pearson is Chair of SOF Trustees and Editor of Portholes.