Western civilization no longer thinks in terms of giving glory to God

Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt at National Review today is infuriating in its entirety. The first part is essential reading (although, as I say, it will infuriate you) because it chronicles such Leftist distortions of conservative positions as Talia Lavin's lie about Ben Shapiro. Real quickly, because the main point of this post is the second part of Geraghty's piece, Lavin is a disgraced writer . . .

. . . who had to resign in disgrace from the New Yorker last year after she smeared a Marine combat veteran by falsely claiming he had a tattoo of a Nazi symbol. 

So what was the Washington Post thinking in giving her space to imply that Ben Shapiro calling Notre Dame "a monument to Western civilization" and "Judeo-Christian heritage" was a white-supremacist, anti-Muslim dog whistle?

As I say, read part one for the full discussion.

Now on to part two, which deals with architects chiming in on how the cathedral should be reconstructed:

Following the tragic fire on Monday, more of the Cathedral of Notre Dame was left standing than many expected while we were watching the fire burn. Much needs to be done to restore the church, of course, but the fact that so much remained intact — including most of the stone foundation, the two bell towers and front façade, and the rose windows — has already spurred an outpouring of financial support for the effort to rebuild.

Yesterday, French president Emmanuel Macron said the country will restore the cathedral within five years. “We will rebuild the cathedral and make it even more beautiful,” he said, and multiple companies and individuals have pledged large sums to make it possible.

But now some suggest that rebuilding Notre Dame exactly as it was might not be a good idea. Patricio del Real, an architecture historian at Harvard University, told Rolling Stone in an interview, “The building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation.” No, it really doesn’t.

Del Real is unfortunately not alone in that thinking. Others say the fire might in fact have created the perfect opportunity to update and modernize the glorious cathedral, bringing it more in line with secular France. More from Rolling Stone:

Although Macron and donors like Pinault have emphasized that the cathedral should be rebuilt as close to the original as possible, some architectural historians like Brigniani believe that would be complicated, given the many stages of the cathedral’s evolution. “The question becomes, which Notre Dame are you actually rebuilding?,” he says. [John Harwood, an architectural historian and associate professor at the University of Toronto], too, believes that it would be a mistake to try to recreate the edifice as it once stood, as LeDuc did more than 150 years ago. Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of an old France, or the France that never was — a non-secular, white European France — but a reflection of the France of today, a France that is currently in the making. “The idea that you can recreate the building is naive. It is to repeat past errors, category errors of thought, and one has to imagine that if anything is done to the building it has to be an expression of what we want — the Catholics of France, the French people — want. What is an expression of who we are now? What does it represent, who is it for?,” he says.

The central problem with this argument — aside from the fairly obvious reality that modern architectural design pales in comparison to the beauty of the older style on display in Notre Dame —  is that it ignores what the Cathedral of Notre Dame was, and still is: a cathedral. It’s not, first and foremost, a testament to French history or architecture. It’s not a French monument. It’s not an expression of French culture or taste, or a reflection of French preferences. It’s a Catholic church. 

Indeed. It is a place for the Bride of Christ to physically gather. Its majestic design is meant to give us a glimpse of the never-changing, one true living God's eternal glory.

In a world that was not so given over to darkness, that would be foremost on the mind of anyone interested in the building's restoration.

Let some other structure reflect what some human being thinks contemporary France is all about.

Be faithful to the original design or leave Notre Dame alone.