I wrote on November 27, in a post that has a quote from The Spectator for its title "Plans are afoot to turn Notre Dame cathedral, once it’s restored, into what some have called a 'politically correct Disneyland.'"
I'm rereading that this morning after encountering "Opinion: Sorry, Internet: Notre Dame is not being 'wreckovated.'" by art history professor Elizabeth Lev (at WaPo). She observes that the criticism is about what will be done with "the two dozen-plus side chapels" — what I called "those alcoves along the perimeter." Before the fire, they'd been "an ill-kept hodgepodge generally passed over by tourists."
In the new design, Lev explains, the side chapels will follow a chronological sequence beginning with Genesis and continuing through the resurrection and the story of the Church in the modern world. The visitor will follow a "catechetical path." That's less of a jumble, but chronological order isn't a special province of Disney. It's the most obvious order, used by lovers of order all over the world and through the grand course of time. There are other orders — alphabetical order, order of importance — but getting bent out of shape about chronological order is super silly.
There is also a plan to use 5 of the chapels to represent 5 continents, displaying Bible quotes in the languages of those places. That's a tad Epcot-y, but come on. Should the Church not flaunt its extension over the globe? If you think that, I must chide you, paraphrasing Jesus: Why do you look at the speck of political correctness in your brother’s mind and pay no attention to that plank of political correctness in your own?
On the other hand, if you are on the left and usually condemn colonialism and cultural appropriation, why don't you take over the condemnation of the renovation of the Notre Dame side chapels?
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You'll have to forgive me for being uninterested in the opinion of an art history professor. This is the kind of thinking that has driven the decline of the church in the modern age. What about the timelessness of the cathedral, the calling of the grandeur of an earlier church, the mystery inherent in worship built around a 2,000 year old event?
The new Notre Dame may inform, it may even amuse, but the old Notre Dame inspired. Put this children's museum stuff in the building next door.
Immediate thoughts that come to mind. 1. What, EXACTLY, is the "hodgepodge" that is being replaced? That just might bear some thinking about. 2. Regarding the 5 continents with bible translations in various languages....THAT is the FOREMOST mission of the church. To spread the "good news" to all the people of all the lands. And Notre Dame seems a really good place to celebrate that mission. 3. The cathedral is after all the property of I am guessing the Archdiocese of Notre Dame, and they can do what they want with it? Unless the government is subsidizing it, then it is really no one else's business.
Why do you look at the speck of political correctness in your brother’s mind and pay no attention to that plank of political correctness in your own?
Because shut up.
On the other hand, if you are on the left and usually condemn colonialism and cultural appropriation, why don't you take over the condemnation of the renovation of the Notre Dame side chapels?
Because you're a racist.
For those that might never saw the interior of Norte Dame, here is a video that is a person walking around with stereo microphones, so that it sounds like you are there. Unfortunately, the GoPro didn’t do great in low light.
I had a very devout Catholic friend (who was taken too young) who described the stained glass windows of gothic cathedrals as comic book catechisms for the illiterate worshipers who would see them in times of very low literacy. That is, the Church used her cathedrals to teach people at the level they were at. Doing so again seems appropriate.
Because the left despises Christianity far more intensely and viscerally than it does colonialism.
Colonialism is a dead letter. Christianity, by postulating a source of moral authority beyond the reach of the state, actually impedes their Will to Power.
SEVEN LEVELS OF HELL!!! SEVEN LEVELS OF HELL!!!!
don't like it?
SEVEN DEADLY SINS!!! SEVEN DEADLY SINS!!!!
Is Ms. Lev a Catholic? If not, maybe that explains her indifference. Of course, what explains the Pope's indifference?
How many WaPo editors - who approved this - are observant Catholics or anykind of Christian?
Not my circus… & it wouldn’t matter anyway- the powers that be will do what they will do.
I don’t consider myself politically correct- I’m just polite.
It being a Catholic cathedral- it’ll be criticized till the world thinks it’s crap, regardless.
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in chronological clothing, but inwardly they are woke pink wolves. You will know them by their fruits."
We'll know soon enough
The "hodge podge" is the altars, works of sacred art, and candles that people would still light for loved ones, in memory of the deceased, etc. (I've lit candles in Notre Dame myself in my visits there.) Everything there had meaning, it's not just decoration that looks churchy or something. I believe the original purpose of the chapels was to accommodate private masses for the release of souls from purgatory, as well as private prayer.
"It's the most obvious order"
Obvious, yes, but not most obvious to Christians. Nor in any traditional culture that encompassed some form of the Great Chain of Being. Gothic cathedrals symbolize order as hierarchy.
There is a difference in finding an exhibit of pussy hats from a 2017 anti-Trump march in a cathedral niche versus finding a statue of St. Zita with her cape full of roses.
Althouse: " If you think that, I must chide you, paraphrasing Jesus: Why do you look at the speck of political correctness in your brother’s mind and pay no attention to that plank of political correctness in your own?"
Althouse paraphrasing Jesus?
Hmmmmmmmm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=621eYPjXwLw
As for various languages, Latin has worked just fine for the past couple of thousand years.
It's a church. My wife and I attended Mass there. The modern Philistines have no concept. Can the left leave anything alone?
You'll have to forgive me for being uninterested in the opinion of an art history professor.
Elizabeth Lev is a VERY orthodox and knowledgeable Catholic art scholar.
See - https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/how-catholic-art-saved-the-faith
For me, the "Disneyfication" is how the tourists behave while visiting Notre Dame. If you've ever attended mass there, you'll find tourists walking right through the middle of the service between the pews and the altar, stopping to snap photos of the priests and deacons delivering the sermons. Sometimes, they stand there, having loud conversations, completely ignorant of all the parishioners behind them.
BTW, they celebrate an International mass every Sunday, with part of the mass in English, and the rest in French. Otherwise, they seem to assume tourists can figure out what's what.
If a burnt church is rebuilt in line with the woke world order, doesn't it create incentive for more arson?
ISIS arsonists----🤝----woke arsonists
On the other hand, if you are on the left and usually condemn colonialism and cultural appropriation, why don't you take over the condemnation of the renovation of the Notre Dame side chapels?
Althouse FTW. :-)
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC has side chapels based on that plan representing different nationalities that came to America. Each chapel is in the architectural idiom of the nationality. It's really quite beautiful. So there's nothing wrong with the concept. Of course, I wonder what French secularists will do, especially when they get to "the Church in the modern World." Back in the 1890's when the anti-clericalists wanted to get rid of the Church and were passing laws against its presence in education, they used to pull up in front of rectories, churches and convents in fire trucks and wash out Catholic sinfulness with fire hoses - and if there were Catholics there, they washed them out, too. A good laugh brought to you by secularists of days gone by. But picture their descendants redecorating Notre Dame. Hmm.
PS Back in the Seventies, renegade Catholic priests in America made a bundle getting rid of statues and stained glass which they told their parishioners were rubbish and then sold for high prices to others. I expect there are plans to do the same with the "hodge-podge" in Notre Dame which goes back to medieval times.
The problem is already baked in the cake. These famous sites are already Disneyland. They are lovely and worth seeing, but made so popular by travel shows and bucket-list type 'Must see" pressures, the crowds make it an amusement park atmosphere.
I only hope they can build it back the way it was, but perhaps with modern materials that cannot catch fire as easily. It's a cathedral with a history - and that history should be preserved. But mere mortals are in charge and everyone has a different opinion as to how best to do that. Like a dysfunctional HOA.
I fully understand I probably will never see some of the architectural wonders of the past, based on crowds. I do not like crowds.
There are only a few on my list. Gaudi is one of my favorite architects and I long to stand in front his designs and weep.
There is also a quiet rococo church in Germany that I'd like to see. shhh. It's a secret.
Harsh Pencil made the point I was going to make: Churches in previous ages used stained-glass windows to illustrate Bible stories for largely illiterate congregations. Illiteracy, in many different forms, is still present today and finding ways to work around this laudable. The issue isn't in how something is being communicated, but what is being communicated.
"Opinion: Sorry, Internet: Notre Dame is not being 'wreckovated.'" by art history professor Elizabeth Lev (at WaPo)
So, here's the thing. If you want to disprove "right wing misinformation", you get teh most right wing person you can to explain why the claims are wrong.
The chances that any "art history professor" is not to the Left of Stalin are somewhere between slim and none.
So she starts out not being believable.
Did she start her article with "I'm a believing Catholic who loves [fill in some right-wing approved religious architecture]". No?
Then she's a leftist, and we shouldn't believe anything she says
My wife and I were there as tourists almost exactly four years ago. As noted by others, many of the tourists have no conception of proper behavior-- I'm a bit surprised that the authorities don't try to maintain a little decorum. I found myself sorely tempted to slap a few yaps. (I'm not shy about these things--I mortify my wife sometimes at concerts when I accost chatterers and tell them to shut up.)
There were some displays up about the renovation, the big surprise being the many redos that were only found out by physical deconstruction. In truth, the place was never 'finished' according to some original master plan, but grew and changed when need demanded.
OTOH, in Nov of '19 we were in Berlin and saw both the Broken Tooth and the restored Nikolaikirche--Samuel Pufendorf is encrypted there, for you lawyers. The Germans enforced quiet and order better in both places than the French did in their churches.
Seriously people, there is this thing called google. Look her up --
Lev is an art historian specialising in the Baroque and High Renaissance periods, with a focus on Christian sacred art. A US expat in Italy, she teaches at the Roman campus of Duquesne Catholic University, and is a consultant at the Vatican Museums. Her most recent book, How Catholic Art Saved the Faith, concludes with a plea for Catholics to display more sacred art in their homes....
Lev is a woman with a mission. In her book, an examination of the role that sacred art played in the Counter-Reformation, she firmly endorses Pope Benedict XVI’s claim that “The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb.” Lev wants to help renew interest in Catholic sacred art, and in doing so help to create the conditions for a revival of great Catholic art in the modern age.
https://catholicherald.co.uk/take-risks-on-catholic-artists-an-interview-with-art-critic-elizabeth-lev/
Here is a fascinating talk Lev gave last month on "Michelangelo's Women: Feminine Genius in the Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel" for the Lumen Christi Institute.
https://www.lumenchristi.org/event/2021/11/women-of-sistine-chapel-rethinking-michelangelo-elizabeth-lev
I knew before that Eve was depicted in the Creation of Adam, but she points out that Jesus is also present in the scene.
I ordinarily read Dr Lev with interest and appreciation (see the site Masters' Gallery Rome, for example) but I won't open up WaPo to read her essay.
My own opinion is more or less that of the art historian Didier Rykner: the fundamental issue is that Mons Aupetit and Fr Drouin et al want to re-make the interior of Notre-Dame into a space where the Pauline Rite, the 'novus ordo' as it's called, can feel at home, since obviously the Traditional Mass is (from their parochial and partisan perspective) dead and needs to be erased from memory.
Detestable as their project may be (pace Dr Lev, who I think probably puts the best possible face on it), the worst of it is (as anyone who has lived through forty years of parish liturgical life can imagine) that there will be something new they'll want to install next year, and again some novelty in two years, and yet another in three-- it will initiate a never-ending progress through the fads and fancies of the 'contemporary social milieux'.
Prominent Catholic writer, and occasional commenter here, Amy Welborn has weighed in in recent days -
the accusation of “Disneyfication” expressed in the proposed renovation is a bit misplaced by those who hurl it. Any Disneyfication is not so much in the technological element, but in the sensibility that the Notre Dame experience should ideally be controlled, managed and coherent.
To anyone who’s been in a museum exhibit in recent decades, this is familiar. These experiences are not about wandering and random discovery, and not even much about being still and thinking about what you’re seeing, but more about being guided on an educational journey. Which has its place, of course.
But is it appropriate for a church still in use, still a living symbol and expression of the faith it represents? Still a place where believers go to worship?
https://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2021/12/08/about-notre-dame-3/
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