It’s hard to think that Holy Week anno domini 2019 will be remembered as having created a strict demarcation in our cultural timeline: pre-Notre-Dame fire, and post. April is the cruellest month, indeed. But here we are. Living in a world, in a West, without the full Notre Dame cathedral looking out protectively over Paris, a spiritual stone guardian. The façade remains; its sacral inside, including a forest’s-worth of 12th-century oak latticework, is smoldering and gone. The live coverage of the fire was painful to watch, if even for the brief time it held the rapt attention of our otherwise jumpy news channels. I imagine I wasn’t alone in this feeling, which was disturbingly reminiscent of watching the Twin Towers burn and crumble. There were differences, of course. The Notre Dame inferno, from what we know, was caused by an unintentional mishap. The 9/11 attack was deliberate and took thousands of lives. Even so, helplessly watching as a...(Read Full Article)