When more than 340,000 people banded together to donate nearly a billion dollars to restore one of the world’s most magnificent Gothic cathedrals, chances are, they weren’t imagining their money going to a chapel with an “environmental emphasis.” Or modern sound and lighting effects intended to make the space more “accessible” and “comfortable” for non-Christian visitors.
But that is exactly what Father Gilles Drouin, appointed to oversee Notre Dame’s restoration by scandal-plagued Archbishop Michel Aupetit, has planned for the 850-year old structure.
When the iconic church accidentally caught fire in April 2019, the transfixed world seemed to be mourning something bigger than the destruction of an historic artifact. The sense of loss was so acute, it suggested a collective, unspoken awareness that we were watching one of the last citadels of Western civilization burn. Now that the plans for Notre Dame’s renovation have been revealed, it seems we may have been right.
Drouin first unveiled his plans for the new interior during an online conference in May. The video soon made its way to YouTube where it sat, unnoticed, until the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph published a report on the presentation last week. What they saw prompted them to describe it as a “woke theme park.”
“Paris’ fire-ravaged Notre-Dame cathedral risks resembling a ‘politically correct Disneyland’ under controversial plans for its renovation,” the report began. The story then went into horrific detail:
Under the proposed changes, confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures will be replaced with modern art murals, and new sound and light effects to create “emotional spaces”.
There will be themed chapels on a “discovery trail”, with an emphasis on Africa and Asia, while quotes from the Bible will be projected onto chapel walls in various languages, including Mandarin.
The final chapel on the trail will have a strong environmental emphasis.
World-renowned French architect Maurice Culot told the Telegraph, “It’s as if Disney were entering Notre-Dame.” He added, “What they are proposing to do to Notre-Dame would never be done to Westminster Abbey or Saint Peter’s in Rome. It’s a kind of theme park and very childish and trivial given the grandeur of the place.”
Even some of those close to the renovation aren’t happy about the changes. One unnamed source told the Telegraph the Catholic Church is risking turning the global beacon of Christianity into an “experimental showroom” that would “mutilate” it.
As Culot pointedly asked The Art Newspaper in a separate interview, “How could a priest choose, on his own, the interior decoration of a cathedral that belongs to the universal heritage of humanity and is being rebuilt with donations coming from all over the world?”
And yet, even Culot is missing the depth of the travesty at work here. More than simply undermining its historic significance, the plans for Notre Dame’s interior undermine its religious significance.
In 1844 architect and medieval-specialist Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc undertook the job of painstakingly replacing the crumbling original 13th century spire and rehabbing the cathedral from the brutal treatment it received from secularist mobs during the French Revolution. During their time in power, they claimed Our Lady of Paris for their “Cult of Reason,” tearing down statues and melting down artifacts (sound familiar?) Nearly all of Viollet-le-Duc’s professional life was dedicated to restoring Notre Dame’s uniquely Christian beauty.
Edifices like the great cathedrals of the Western world were designed to transcend man’s internal, oppressive awareness of himself and cause him to look heavenward — to feel, paradoxically, both his own smallness and gratitude that a God so great as to inspire such worship seeks communion with him.
These wretched 21st century plans for the cathedral accomplish the opposite. They center man — his comfort, his emotion, his temporal preoccupations — at the center of the experience. It is a form of self-idolatry.
Do the great cathedrals not immediately open their mysteries to every tourist? That’s as it should be — all the better to inspire them to seek the peace and joy visitors have, for centuries, found in such places.
Notre Dame is an edifice that has survived not only the ravages of time and fire but of secularism and revolution, and it has already overcome one close brush with philistinism since the 2019 inferno.
In the wake of the destruction, French President Emmanuel Macron floated the idea that, since the spire and roof had burned anyway, why not take the opportunity to try something different? Calling for “an inventive reconstruction,” he suggested perhaps the 315-foot spire should be traded for a “contemporary architectural gesture.”
His prime minister Edouard Philippe recommended an international architecture competition and put out a call for proposals. In response, modern firms unleashed a torrent of gaudy and appalling designs, from a space-age disc-and-arch staircase to monstrous carbon-fiber flames permanently reminding everyone of the tragic sight of the structure on fire.
The French public rightly recoiled in horror. Facing overwhelmingly negative polls, Macron slunk away from the idea toute suite, assuring his citizens mere weeks later that he had “become convinced” that the Gothic masterpiece should be restored in such a way that was “as true as possible” to its “complete, coherent and last known state.”
Ironically, a vestige of the French Revolution that put historic churches under state ownership may be Notre Dame’s saving grace from clergy more interested in indulging political fashions than in honoring the Lord of Hosts.
On December 9, Father Douin and his team must present their proposal to France’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission for approval. What the nation’s leaders will not do for the sake of religion, they may do for the sake of national pride and popularity. The people who gave from their hearts to save the great cathedral and the French people who demanded their leaders respect the past must raise their voices again.
Barbarians have been at Notre Dame’s gate before. It’s our turn to force them back.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.