The problem with Notre Dame Cathedral

OPINION:

A few weeks ago, a Francophile friend of mine asked what I thought of the grand reopening of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Paris. I wandered around before concluding that while the restoration was well done and the building was beautiful, there was something not quite right about it.

The short answer is that Notre Dame de Paris, started by a thriving and healthy Roman Catholic Church in 1163, desecrated by French revolutionaries in 1790, and mostly burned by a fire of uncertain origin in 2019, has finally become what it has been since 1789—just another government building.

The re-opening ceremony itself certainly had elements of Roman Catholicism (they intoned the Te Deum!) but, like all governmental functions, it also involved speeches and appearances by non-believers and, incredibly enough, representatives of governments (the British crown) who have persecuted Catholics for hundreds of years.

The state-sponsored nature of the affair and the presence of so many governments and former government officials is the source of my discomfort. The simple truth is that when the state gets involved with the Catholic Church, usually nothing good happens.

In many circumstances, the state winds up persecuting the Church. It can’t be accidental that the 20th century, which was characterized by the dominance of state power, was also the century in which more people were killed for their faith than in any other century. The terrible reality is that few governments like competing power centers and usually do their best to destroy or co-opt them.

The Romans killed Christians not because they believed in Christ but because they refused to accept the emperor as a god, a plain old case of civic disobedience. Saint Thomas Becket was probably the most famous martyr in the French-speaking world. He was killed in 1170 in his own cathedral by Henry II’s knights because he refused to yield to the king regarding who should be bishops. Jimmy Lai sits in a Chinese prison in part because he is the most well-known Catholic in Hong Kong, and he refuses to treat the genocidal, murderous regime in Beijing as normal.

In short, being on the wrong side of the government can get you killed, and it seems like Catholics are on the wrong side of the government quite a bit.

But being on the right side of government is probably worse. Everything the government touches eventually becomes corrupt and desiccated. The Catholic Church is no exception. When the Church becomes dependent on the state, it withers and dies like everything else that becomes dependent on government.

It can’t be accidental that remarkably little of the gospels deal with government, except our Lord’s dismissive comment that we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s. The reality is that everything is God’s, and Caesar is purely transitory, not even important enough in the story to have a name.

In his letter to the Hebrews, Paul makes it simple: “For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come.” We are pilgrims, just passing through on our way to another place. That’s always going to be a problem for those in power.

Which brings us back to Notre Dame. It is a lovely building, but it is not part of the lasting city, at least not in its sad, present incarnation as a government building.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.