Today there was a very sad story, the burning of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, one of the most famous cathedrals in the world. I've never been there, though I've read the Hunchback of Notre Dame, which isn't so much about football as an oddly shaped man who rings bells in a church buildng.
Many of the stories I have read have focused on the outpouring of grief at the loss of this building. People prayed and wept and sang hymns as the fire raged throughout the evening. While France is mostly a secular nation at this point, it was perhaps comforting to see some semblence of religious feeling for this nation.
However, and I don't mean to sound too hard hearted, I have always believed that the church was much more than a building and much more than a heritage. The church is a living people, a group of people who are dedicated to Christ. If tradition is the living faith of Christians, and traditionalism is the dead faith of the past, what does that say about a building that long ago turned into a symbol of western Europe's religious past but had little to nothing to offer in the present?
Of course, it could be worse. They could have followed our Dear Leader's advice and flown over the fire with enormous water tankers.
