I am still moved by the sight of Notre Dame de Paris engulfed in flames during the most sacred week of the Christian year. The intense array of images and signs are too great to chalk up to mere accident.
Yet it is a strange fact that many commentators argued about who had the best and worst “takes” on the significance of the Cathedral fire. Two Jewish writers quarrelled over whether we could value the “beauty and profundity” of the Notre Dame cathedral without also understanding the “philosophy and religious principles that built it.” Is it so controversial to suggest that our common grief for the loss of something so beautiful might be tied inextricably to its animating principles? Some Catholics mirrored the same dispute, surprisingly arguing whether any deeper theological significance could be ascribed to the fire at all. It was as if we had returned to the liturgy of Palm Sunday: “Then an argument broke out among them about which of them should be regarded the greatest.”
