Notre-Dame Cathedral, and caring for the things that matter GlobeDebate
There was a terrible moment on Monday when it seemed likely Notre-Dame Cathedral – that muscular yet graceful icon of European civilization – would burn to the ground. The fire was so intense, its white smoke so dense, that it was easy to imagine that no part of the landmark would be spared and that a hole would be left in the heart of Paris.
For years, the Catholic archdiocese of Paris and various levels of French government had bickered about which one of them should pay for the cathedral’s upkeep. As Joni Mitchell said, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Parisians walked past the cathedral most days without giving it much thought, other than to perhaps quietly curse its ability to draw annoying numbers of tourists to the surrounding streets. There was no outcry about its decaying state. Everyone just assumed it would always be there.
It is the normal human condition to assume that the critical institutions at the heart of a free and tolerant society will never fail. But that is a mistake. Like Notre-Dame, democratic governments and impartial legal systems were built by long centuries of struggle, with many halting steps along the way. Those edifices of human achievement haven’t always been there and they won’t always be there if they are taken for granted and people stop working to preserve them.
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