COMMENTARY: Having faced death, the rebuilt cathedral strikes a divine chord in the human heart.
The reopening of the grand cathedral of Notre Dame-de-Paris at the start of the Advent season was marked by a grand expression of enthusiasm across the West. International personages like President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Prince William and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — all neither French nor Catholic — rushed to the banks of the Seine to pay tribute to the world’s most famous monument to Our Lady.
The fervor surrounding Notre Dame’s resurrection exceeds any relatively small strands of Francophilia or appreciation for Gothic architecture in our culture. Something far bigger is afoot because Notre Dame is and always has been more than a building.
At its construction, Notre Dame was a testament to Christendom and the French people’s aspiration to love and serve God. Yet the cathedral soon took hold in the popular imagination more than any average church.
Stories like Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame expanded the structure’s symbolism to include an openness to every benighted character in the human family. The French revolutionaries attempted to convert Notre Dame into a “temple of reason,” recognizing the symbolic importance of the place to enthrone their own god in the place of the old.
Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself within its walls, and for four years during World War II the church refused to ring its bells until it was liberated by the Allies from the Nazis in 1944.
Notre Dame has always embodied, for good or ill, the passions and aspirations of the times.
In recent decades, Notre Dame has reflected a larger European trend, welcoming more tourists than faithful and becoming a sort of historical quasi-Disneyland — a sight to see, not a sacred space to be used. When the more than 800-year-old structure nearly burned to the ground five years ago, it was impossible not to see it as a sign.
Like the West itself, the cathedral had become a shadow of its former self. In a moment, it seemed destroyed. The roof collapsed. The spire fell. Only a few glories of the past — an old statue, the stained glass, a reliquary with the Crown of Thorns, and other treasures whose meaning we’ve long forgotten — were preserved. Most wondered if the structure would even survive.
The immediate response of our elites left little room for hope. Early renderings of the reconstructed edifice “reimagined” Notre Dame as a shrine of sustainability or as an immersive, educational, interactive space. Both reflected the leadership class’s green, utopian, “inclusive” and wonder-less vision of the future. At best, the mystical and glorious legacy of Notre Dame was held at a cold academic distance. At worst, its meaning was forgotten.
Surprisingly, a secular leader, French President Emmanuel Macron, declared that Notre Dame would be rebuilt “more beautiful” than before. Beauty, not political ideology, would be the standard.
And that’s what the world has just joyfully received — a building whose stones now glow more luminously, revived with the ancient techniques of our skilled ancestors. Notre Dame has risen from the ashes not as a sign of Western nostalgia, but as a symbol of hope. What is glorious from our past can be made new. What is sclerotic can be revived. What is old is not dead, but, rather, gives us reason for life.
Notre Dame’s resurrection rejects the timid and self-effacing psychosis that has long strangled the West. It is a physical reminder that the principles that make the West great, like human rights, open inquiry, individual liberty, and rule of and by the people, grew out of a civilization that worshipped God.
The completion of Notre Dame at the start of Advent felt particularly poetic. After all, Christmas is yet another staple of Western culture that once had great meaning and has been reduced to saccharine displays of nostalgia. The Christmas story, like the story of Notre Dame, can be masked and forgotten. But it is a story that still holds sway over the human heart.
Notre Dame — once again triumphant and beautiful — is now more than a cathedral or a national symbol. Having faced death, the rebuilt cathedral strikes a divine chord in the human heart, stirring up the once-certain conviction in the West that what looks like the end can be a new beginning.
Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America.
Jeremy Wayne Tate is the founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test (CLT), a humanities-focused alternative to the SAT and ACT tests.