Reopening of Notre Dame saw a clash between the beauty of tradition and the oddity of modernism
After nearly six years of restoration, the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris reopened with a mix of breathtaking beauty and modernist innovations, bringing together state leaders the world over while placing Our Lady at the center of the celebration.
Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images for Notre-Dame de Paris
Mon Dec 9, 2024 - 10:52 am EST
PARIS (LifeSiteNews) — The reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral on Saturday evening in Paris was in many ways a symbol of the antagonisms of our times that are full of error and confusion but also grace and faith.
After the tremendous fire that destroyed its roof, spire, and “Novus Ordo” altar at the beginning of Holy Week five and a half years ago on April 15, 2019, but left it standing with – incredibly – its relics, treasures, organ, and stained-glass windows intact, it has been restored to its former glory.
Although the restoration process is not complete France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, had promised on the very evening of the fire that the cathedral would be rebuilt in five years. An impossible task, but it was done, notably because research proved that its 13th century builders had used green, not seasoned oak beams to build the monumental framework – appropriately called “the forest” – supporting the leaden roof.
Cranes still rise over the cathedral and parts of the scaffolding are still in place, its flying buttresses need to be reinforced (but that was already true before the fire) and the apse is also still in bad shape. But inside, everything is ready for religious services to resume.
Notre Dame’s nave now glows with its forgotten medieval light, as each stone has been painstakingly cleaned, traces of 19th century painted decorations have been revived and every single piece of colored class from the roses and high windows has been delicately rid of the stains left by the fire – and the dust of centuries. The original blond stones give the high vault an impression of weightlessness where prayers are effortlessly lifted to God: to the God who is so absent from ordinary life in France… and excluded from the public life, as the state was officially separated from the Church in 1905.
READ: Bishop Strickland: Some Church leaders ‘caught up in finding their own truth,’ ignoring the Gospel
This is the first paradox. On Saturday evening, heads of state (including president-elect Donald Trump), kings and queens and members of the fallen French government, voted out of office only days before, jostled in the front rows while President Emmanuel Macron officially “returned” the building to the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich.
Some have complained that the ceremony should have been exclusively Catholic, instead of appearing as a sort of convention of the mighty of this world. But because of the 1905 law, all cathedrals and parish churches throughout the nation are the legal property of the state. The French Republic is responsible for their upkeep, while the Catholic clergy, to whom the buildings are assigned at no cost, are alone in charge of their interior, furnishings, policing, and decoration insofar as its purpose, the celebration of Catholic worship, is met, and inherited treasures are safeguarded.
Restoring Notre Dame was the responsibility of the state. A special public body was created to that end by Macron to organize, supervise, and finance the 850 million euros (almost $900 million) it took to get the job done – although the sum was the fruit of donations, which in turn offered French donors the opportunity to get tax relief. U.S. citizens made up the largest group of foreign donors, accounting for 55 million euros. So, it was probably only fitting that the event should have seen Church and state mingle, with the clergy in the sanctuary and Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump, and Brigitte Macron (flanked on her right by Jill Biden, in the absence of Joe), in that order, in the first row at the head of the nave.
But before we reflect on Trump’s personal triumph on this occasion of occasions, seen by millions all over the world, we must return outside, where the cathedral’s main entrance was kept closed, while Macron and his wife Brigitte and the mayoress of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, stood in the falling rain after having welcomed all their guests, waiting for Archbishop Ulrich. They would not enter before being invited in by the assignor of the cathedral. The bells of Notre Dame filled the Parisian night with their peals, as has so often happened in France’s historic occasions, when Ulrich arrived, preceded by the bishops of the Parisian region and other guests, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.
Following an ancient tradition, Archbishop Ulrich thrice gave three resounding knocks on the closed door of the cathedral, and each time the cathedral choir “answered” with a hymn: “Behold the dwelling of God among mankind” to the sound of brass instruments, as the monumental organ of Notre Dame had yet to be “awakened.” Then the doors opened, and once again, five and a half years after that fateful April 15 night, the procession could enter for a religious service in Paris’ beloved shrine.
The occasion was momentous, it was symbolic, but it was horribly defaced by the vestments worn by Ulrich and the other clergy. The archbishop tasked a left-over couturier from the 1970s and ‘80s, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, with “creating” new vestments, as he had already done when Pope John-Paul II visited Paris for the World Youth Day in 1995, dressing bishops and cardinals in almost-rainbow colors while the Pope sported a chasuble with childishly drawn crosses of all colors.
This time, he came up with a block-color cope in garish red, green, yellow and blue that were instantly ridiculed on social media for their disturbing likeness to the Google logo or Uno’s four-color wildcard. Children asked their parents why the bishop was dressed up as a clown – of the Harlequin variety. Most of the bishops and priests were wearing similar garb that looked even worse on the backdrop of the delicate “stone lace” of Notre Dame and its manifold beauty.
At this point it must be said that it is a relief, and in some ways a miracle that such garish, anachronic statements have not made their way into the restoration of Notre Dame. On the very evening of the fire, Macron suggested in 2019 that it would be right to add a “contemporary” element to the cathedral. He was already dreaming of a new and improved spire – indeed an international competition was about to be set up for architects to submit their innovating ideas, but it never saw the light.
This was thanks to the decision of the “Commission du patrimoine et de l’architecture,” the public body tasked with protecting buildings and other “heritage” artefacts, which decided in 2020 that French laws and international agreements needed to be complied with, and that the medieval cathedral and its 19th century spire must be restored to their state at the time of the fire.
It was the same public commission that largely put a stop to Ulrich’s wild plans to revamp the cathedral’s interior decoration with contemporary art and a Laudato Si’-compatible “discovery trail” in the lateral chapels: existing artworks may not be moved, the commission said, and intended modern pews underlined with blue lights would not fill the nave as the archbishop had hoped.
he commission did greenlight the choice of new liturgical objects, though: altar, lectern, a coffin-like cathedra, tabernacle, baptismal font… the ugly bronze objects, chosen for their “noble simplicity” (in the terms of Vatican II) are as unfitting in the Gothic splendor of Notre Dame as Macron’s contemporary salon under the gilt walls of the Elysée palace which he refurbished to his taste.
What is more, they would (or should) be out of place in any church, because of their inability to express what the God-willed liturgy should be: a foretaste of the truth, the goodness and the beauty of God.
But the point is that it was the institutions of the state, and not the Church, that protected Notre Dame from its modernist predators, and this is also a paradox.
In the same way, it was the little people, the ordinary faithful, the lovers of history and art the world over who were up in arms against newfangled spires and slogans written in letters of light along the sides of Notre Dame.
And it was the many craftsmen (and women), who still know and learn the ancient trades in France, often with the support of state-run or funded professional schools, who were able to meet the challenge of rebuilding Notre Dame, using innumerable ancient techniques and skills that have continued to be handed down over the centuries. Even the beams of the new roof’s frame were sawed and hewed and prepared by hand, because no computer-driven machine can match a true carpenter’s eye for the grain of the wood and the feel of its “rightness.”
Here it must be said that there was a dreariness about the liturgy of vespers that was celebrated in Notre Dame, on the eve of the feast of her Immaculate Conception (although in the Novus Ordo, Advent Sunday takes precedence, and the Marian feast is transferred to December 9). Even a procession of banners from all the 170 parishes of Paris, also designed by Castelbajac, paled in comparison with – say – the glorious procession that enters the cathedral of Chartres every year during the traditional Pentecost pilgrimage.
But when Archbishop Ulrich entered the now breathtakingly beautiful interior of Notre Dame, it was to the sound of a haunting motet composed by the Polish Catholic composer Henryk Górecki in 1987, to the words of Pope John Paul II’s motto: “Totus Tuus.” For several heavenly minutes, the cathedral resonated with the name of Our Lady: “Maria, Maria, Maria!” A hymn of praise and wonder (to be heard here from 28’55”) for the Virgin whom “all generations shall call blessed.”
This was a moment of grace. So – strangely enough – was Macron’s speech within the cathedral. He was supposed to have spoken outside, because no political figure, not even the kings of France, has ever dared thus to encroach on the rights of religion, but decided together with Ulrich to do so all the same because of the rainy weather.
He spoke of Saint Louis, bringing back the Crown of Thorns from the Orient; of the vow of Louis XIII to honor the Virgin Mary if he had a son (his prayer was heard, and the feast of the Assumption of Mary on August 15 is still a public holiday in France), he spoke of the conversion of the poet Paul Claudel “who recovered hope at the foot of a pillar on a December evening in 1886.” He spoke of the students who came to pray at the foot of Notre Dame when it burned. He spoke of “providence,” he spoke of the desolation of the cathedral when at last, past midnight, the fire was under control, the doors were opened, and he could see:
The spire was gone. The transept had collapsed. Lead continued to flow everywhere, in sparks. There was water; a pungent smell, the cross and the Pieta, which appeared with a unique brilliance. And the Virgin of the Pillar, untouched, immaculate, just a few centimeters from the fallen spire.
Yes, the Virgin is untouched, she is the Immaculate. Did Macron realize the truth of these words? He is the man who caused the right to abortion to be enshrined in the French constitution, and whose wife, by his side in March to celebrate the horrendous amendment, received Holy Communion this Sunday in a horrible scandal at Notre Dame’s inaugural Mass. But he described Our Lady as she is, with the word that defines her. Whatever Macron’s motives, God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform…
In her all-powerfulness of intercession, will the Virgin Mary, the mother of all those who love her and seek her, being honored as she should be, give France the grace of remembering the promises of its baptism? Surely that is what the faithful must pray for, when they return to Notre Dame (and one out of two French people have already said they hope to do so).
The speech was followed by the “awakening” of the organ by Archbishop Ulrich, to contemporary improvisations; then Vespers were sung with the Magnificat in Latin – and its words that must have resonated with the mighty and powerful who were there in the nave: “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” A Te Deum was sung to the triumphant sound of trumpets: the traditional parts of the program were the best.
Notre Dame, Our Lady herself, was the true center of gravity of the event, and because of that, despite its shortcomings, it was good that so many powerful figures of our troubled world were brought here to look her way. From Prince William of England to Volodomyr Zelensky of Ukraine, from African heads of state and their wives who knew the prayers to Elon Musk who posted on X: “Magnificat Cathedral,” those who so often flaunt God’s law were faced with “the Immaculate.”
At the political level, Donald Trump’s reception was particularly remarkable. He was the top guest, the star of the public show; all seemed eager to see him, to talk to him, and to be seen with him. He is clearly being looked to as the man of power who in a way dwarfs them all. That, at least, is the visual impression given by his brief stay in Paris: Trump is being turned to as a man with solutions.
He agreed to a private talk with Zelensky under the auspices of Macron, in a “last-minute” initiative of the French president according to one of his aides; there are already sounds of negotiations and mentions of ceasefire coming out of Kiev and out of Moscow. But most of all, Donald Trump was face to face with Mary in a Catholic Cathedral just a month before being sworn in, once again, as president of the United States.
May he will realize that she is the most powerful of all created beings, the Queen of the Universe and the Queen of Peace.
