The fire in Notre Dame is a symbol, but of what?

I don't want the terrible fire to be symbolic but it is, of course. Notre Dame is a monument to belief in the Holy Trinity, not to Western civilisation, but it seems to symbolise Christendom. I wish I had properly visited it when I had the chance. There are no words for how I feel about this.

Inevitably, Notre Dame has a different symbolism for different people and is being used for political purposes by conservatives, liberals, liberal and conservative Catholics, communists and fascists. A left-wing online magazine in New Zealand called The Spinoff:

The far-right wants to identify Notre Dame as a pinnacle achievement of “Western civilisation” – a dog whistle term for white civilisation. In many cases, this is blatant. In his YouTube video, [Stefan] Molyneux described Notre Dame as a Western achievement, then went on to argue that white men were responsible for “way more than 90 percent of scientific innovations from 800 BC to 1950 AD,” a reference to a debunked statistic from race scientist Charles Murray

Here is something from an article in Rolling Stone:

But for some people in France, Notre Dame has also served as a deep-seated symbol of resentment, a monument to a deeply flawed institution and an idealized Christian European France that arguably never existed in the first place. “The building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation,” says Patricio del Real, an architecture historian at
Harvard University. If nothing else, the cathedral has been viewed by some as a stodgy reminder of “the old city — the embodiment of the Paris of stone and faith — just as the Eiffel Tower exemplifies the Paris of modernity, joie de vivre and change,” Michael Kimmelmann wrote for the New York Times.....

....Now that the world has rallied in support of the rebuilding of the cathedral, however, and donations have started pouring in from all over the world, there’s likely to be renewed interest around the cathedral as an emblem of French history and culture. For some, this is deeply concerning. “One of the things that worries me about this event is that in a country that is deeply divided right now like France is and having this assumption of [Notre Dame] serving as a bedrock institution, it creates a hole and you have to imagine what it has to become again and who does the imagining, and that is a really loaded question,” says Harwood.

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. Harwood, 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.

I am not a fan of Viollet-le-Duc, and hope the restored cathedral resembles the one he remodelled. Viollet-le-Duc was a French Sir Gilbert Scott and, by the way, recommended his pupil, André Lecomte du Nouy, to remodel the monastery at Curtea de Arges.

Here are some interesting tweets.

Massimo Faggioli‏ @MassimoFaggioli

Catholics arguing - seriously - that the fire at #NotreDame was divine Providence.

Xander Lucie-Smith‏ @ALucieSmith Apr 16

That Notre Dame is burning in Holy Week means something. But what?

Byzantine Ambassador‏ @byzantinepower 19h19 hours ago

Byzantine Ambassador Retweeted Peter Sandham

Unpopular opinion: Londoners are usu quite indifferent to St Paul's. Not even blitz iconography rescued it. It doesn't feel like our Minster; more like a giant neoclassical folly that the smaller, humbler, more English churches throw shade on.

Xander Lucie-Smith‏ @ALucieSmith 20 hours ago

Notre Dame is the property of the French state, thanks to the anti-clerical laws of the early 20th century. That is something that is going to come to the forefront of discussion in the coming days.

Charles Bourne‏ @CharlesBourne5 Apr 16

"Instinctively I have the feeling that Providence has created France either for complete success or for exemplary misfortunes" (De Gaulle) - and in overcoming those misfortunes, to show its greatness. #NotreDame #NotreDameFire

Alessandra‏ @alessabocchi More

In 2017 @michaelbd noted the French state only invested about 2 million a year for basic maintenance, but the cathedral had pieces falling off for years. The Archbishop of Paris was looking for 100 million. The cathedral did not burn by “accident”.

Byzantine Ambassador‏ @byzantinepower Apr 15

You lost Notre Dame long ago. It just had to burn down for you to see it.

TimurThe @ TaimurAwan_Apr 15

What a loss.

Being a Muslim, it was my wish to visit #NotreDame once.

Jeanne Griffin‏ @JeanneGriffin3 More

It is the European people carved in stone