April 16, 2019
Thoughts on the Notre Dame Fire
Timothy Birdnow
It appears the Notre Dame Cathedral fire is out.
Authorities are (Naturally) denying this is a case of arson or terrorism. But the grand cathedral appears to be a total loss.
It's interesting; I did a Google search of Notre Dame terrorism and a huge number of sites popped up decrying any suggestion of terrorism - which leads me to believe that everyone strongly suspects this is the case. In our post-modern world none dare call it Islamic Terrorism! If someone had written Aluha Ahkbar on the side of the Cathedral they would claim it was a coincidence.
Methinks they doth protest too much!
Color me very skeptical. If someone tries to build a mosque there we will know.
BTW, There was a big stink over a youtube video link which connected a video of the Cathedral burning with information over the 911 attacks.
According to Fox News: YouTube said that an algorithmic fail caused the wrong information panel to appear with the live footage.
"We are deeply saddened by the ongoing fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Last year, we launched information panels with links to third party sources like Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia for subjects subject to misinformation,†it explained, in a statement emailed to Fox News. "These panels are triggered algorithmically and our systems sometimes make the wrong call. We are disabling these panels for live streams related to the fire.â€
A number of Twitter users hammered YouTube for its algorithmic snafu.
"So if you watch a live stream of Notre Dame burning on YouTube, a pop up tells you about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We are creating an Internet of algorithmic dog whistles,†tweeted Christopher Wylie, research director at H&M.
YouTube joined forces with Encyclopedia Britannica last year in an attempt to battle fake news and conspiracy theories. "Encyclopaedia Britannica will provide custom, fact-checked information on certain historical and scientific topics that have been subject to misinformation, and YouTube will link to this information from Britannica in searches and below videos about these topics,†explained the famous Encyclopedia, in a press release last summer
Earlier this year YouTube, which is owned by Google, also announced that it is reworking its algorithm to cut down on conspiracy video recommendations.
End excerpt.
So to stop fake news we are given fake news. Wonderful!
Meanwhile at Fox, our old friend, CNN anchor wannabee Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto cut off a guest (Catholic League's Bill Donahue) for insinuating this might be a terrorist attack.
It should be pointed out that there have been a rash of desacrations of French churches, up to ten of them, in fact. That is what makes this fire suspicious. And fires. The article states:
The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, a Christian watchdog group, documented another attack at St. Nicholas Church on February 10, when the tabernacle was found thrown to the ground. A 35 year-old man later confessed to committing the act to police.
On February 5, an altar cloth was found burnt and crosses and statues torn down or disfigured at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, in south-central France. The fire was found early by a parish secretary and did not spread, though the smoke damaged the altar and adjacent walls.
The 800 year-old building had also recently undergone renovations, local sources reported.
End excerpt.
Get that? St. Nicholas followed an eerily similar path to Notre Dame; both eight hundred year old churches were being renovated. Why? It would be easy for people who do not belong there to enter, and to tote fire acelerants.
The Catholic News Agency article makes another salient point:
While it is yet unclear if the incidents are at all related, they recall the series of attacks and vandalism that the Catholic Church in France and Belgium experienced in 2016 by the Islamic State. The worst of those attacks included the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel, who was killed by jihadists while celebrating Mass at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy. The assailants entered the church and took the priest and four others hostage. Local law enforcement reported that the priest’s throat was slit in the attack, and that both of the hostage takers were shot dead by police.
End excerpt.
It should also be pointed out that the article mentions a suspect taken into custody but does not identify him by name. Why? Likely because that would erase any doubts as to who exactly is doing this.
Al Jazeera is reporting that much of the structure of the church and most of the precious artifacts have been saved. From the article:
Fire chief Jean-Claude Gallet said that the structure of the cathedral had been "saved and preserved overall" and its bell towers, at one point thought to be at risk, were safe.
French media reported that the fire might have been linked to renovation work. The Paris prosecutor's office said that "as matters stand" it was investigating a count of "involuntary destruction by fire".
The cathedral's most precious relics had been saved, rector Monsignor Patrick Chauvet said.
End excerpt.
Not sure about how much could be saved after viewing the fire on television, but who knows? I sincerely doubt anyone will rebuild it - at least not as it was. Oh, they may build some "peace memorial" there, some cheap frame and curtain structure, but the grand monument to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Christ is gone.
Well, the French government had let it run down anyway. As it turns out the government had taken over all of these structures years ago and simply allowed the catholic Church to use them. Churches have never been a priority to the secular French, not since the Revolution. The reason they were doing renovation work there in the first place was because the church had been allowed to decay horrendously.
I would like to point out that the Islamic Al Jazeera article states:
It was here that Christian crusaders prayed before going to fight in the Holy Land, where revolutionaries defiled representations of French kings and Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804.
"It's a devastating image because Notre Dame, Paris and France play a key role in the history of European Christendom, that is second only to Rome and the Vatican," Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, told Al Jazeera.
"This is really a fire at the heart of Christianity," he added.
End excerpt.
Wouldn't that be a tempting target for ISIS?
Look, we know Muslims operate that way. Muhammad himself destroyed the statuary in the Kaaba, the sacred shrine of the pre-Muslim Arabs, when he conquered Mecca, and Muslim conquerors have done this sort of thing repeatedly, be it plastering over the artwork in Haiga Sofia, or dynamiting the great statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, or using the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as a sanctuary and toilet, leaving feces all over the holy shrine as they did during the Intifada. If this isn't an act of terrorism I'm sure the leaders of Isis, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. are kicking themselves for not thinking of it. The only greater act they could have taken would have been to torch St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
At any rate, we don't know enough yet, but the immediate reaction of the Ruling Class in France, in Europe, in the media, etc. is typically knee-jerk denial of any possibility of terrorism. We are going to be destroyed by our own unwillingness to face reality.
The American Conservative has a fine essay that should be read as the epitaph for this blogpost (and hopefully is not an epitaph for our civilization). Author Rod Dreher says:
Like James Poulos above, I cannot see this as anything other than a sign. The only church in all of Western civilization more important than Notre Dame de Paris is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The consuming fire is likely to have been started from a construction accident. I hope that is the case; if this was terrorism, then France is in for unimaginable spasms of violence. Nevertheless, if this was an accident, it still symbolizes what we in the West have allowed to happen to our religious and cultural patrimony. What happened in Paris today has been happening across our civilization.
It happens whenever we fail to live out our baptism, and fail to baptize our children. It happens by omission, by indifference, and it happens by commission, from spite. It happens in classrooms, in newsrooms, in shopping malls, in poisoned seminaries and defiled sacristies, and everywhere the truths that Notre Dame de Paris embodied are ridiculed, flayed, and destroyed in the hearts and minds of modern men. The fire that destroyed Paris’s iconic cathedral made manifest what we in the West have been doing to ourselves for over 200 years.
This catastrophe in Paris today is a sign to all of us Christians, and a sign to all people in the West, especially those who despise the civilization that built this great temple to its God on an island in the Seine where religious rites have been celebrated since the days of pagan Rome. It is a sign of what we are losing, and what we will not recover, if we don’t change course now. Here are the final paragraphs from The Benedict Option, about a similar catastrophe in the town where St. Benedict was born:
[...]
The flames of Notre Dame de Paris are a call to repentance and conversion. As the monks of Norcia have been doing since their church met catastrophe, so let us all do as we mourn the loss of one of Christendom’s greatest cathedrals. There can be no greater tribute to what this holy and revered temple meant to its builders and to all those faithful who worshiped beneath its vaults all these centuries than to turn, in sackcloth and ashes, back to God, and to raise again the vaults of His sanctuaries in our hearts and families and communities — while there is still time.
For you in the West who are not religious, I hope you will reflect on what this cathedral meant in artistic, architectural, and cultural terms, and that you will think hard about what we are losing as we collectively repudiate our patrimony.
If you were waiting for a sign of the times, this is it.
It appears the Notre Dame Cathedral fire is out.
Authorities are (Naturally) denying this is a case of arson or terrorism. But the grand cathedral appears to be a total loss.
It's interesting; I did a Google search of Notre Dame terrorism and a huge number of sites popped up decrying any suggestion of terrorism - which leads me to believe that everyone strongly suspects this is the case. In our post-modern world none dare call it Islamic Terrorism! If someone had written Aluha Ahkbar on the side of the Cathedral they would claim it was a coincidence.
Methinks they doth protest too much!
Color me very skeptical. If someone tries to build a mosque there we will know.
BTW, There was a big stink over a youtube video link which connected a video of the Cathedral burning with information over the 911 attacks.
According to Fox News: YouTube said that an algorithmic fail caused the wrong information panel to appear with the live footage.
"We are deeply saddened by the ongoing fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Last year, we launched information panels with links to third party sources like Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia for subjects subject to misinformation,†it explained, in a statement emailed to Fox News. "These panels are triggered algorithmically and our systems sometimes make the wrong call. We are disabling these panels for live streams related to the fire.â€
A number of Twitter users hammered YouTube for its algorithmic snafu.
"So if you watch a live stream of Notre Dame burning on YouTube, a pop up tells you about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We are creating an Internet of algorithmic dog whistles,†tweeted Christopher Wylie, research director at H&M.
YouTube joined forces with Encyclopedia Britannica last year in an attempt to battle fake news and conspiracy theories. "Encyclopaedia Britannica will provide custom, fact-checked information on certain historical and scientific topics that have been subject to misinformation, and YouTube will link to this information from Britannica in searches and below videos about these topics,†explained the famous Encyclopedia, in a press release last summer
Earlier this year YouTube, which is owned by Google, also announced that it is reworking its algorithm to cut down on conspiracy video recommendations.
End excerpt.
So to stop fake news we are given fake news. Wonderful!
Meanwhile at Fox, our old friend, CNN anchor wannabee Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto cut off a guest (Catholic League's Bill Donahue) for insinuating this might be a terrorist attack.
It should be pointed out that there have been a rash of desacrations of French churches, up to ten of them, in fact. That is what makes this fire suspicious. And fires. The article states:
The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, a Christian watchdog group, documented another attack at St. Nicholas Church on February 10, when the tabernacle was found thrown to the ground. A 35 year-old man later confessed to committing the act to police.
On February 5, an altar cloth was found burnt and crosses and statues torn down or disfigured at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, in south-central France. The fire was found early by a parish secretary and did not spread, though the smoke damaged the altar and adjacent walls.
The 800 year-old building had also recently undergone renovations, local sources reported.
End excerpt.
Get that? St. Nicholas followed an eerily similar path to Notre Dame; both eight hundred year old churches were being renovated. Why? It would be easy for people who do not belong there to enter, and to tote fire acelerants.
The Catholic News Agency article makes another salient point:
While it is yet unclear if the incidents are at all related, they recall the series of attacks and vandalism that the Catholic Church in France and Belgium experienced in 2016 by the Islamic State. The worst of those attacks included the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel, who was killed by jihadists while celebrating Mass at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy. The assailants entered the church and took the priest and four others hostage. Local law enforcement reported that the priest’s throat was slit in the attack, and that both of the hostage takers were shot dead by police.
End excerpt.
It should also be pointed out that the article mentions a suspect taken into custody but does not identify him by name. Why? Likely because that would erase any doubts as to who exactly is doing this.
Al Jazeera is reporting that much of the structure of the church and most of the precious artifacts have been saved. From the article:
Fire chief Jean-Claude Gallet said that the structure of the cathedral had been "saved and preserved overall" and its bell towers, at one point thought to be at risk, were safe.
French media reported that the fire might have been linked to renovation work. The Paris prosecutor's office said that "as matters stand" it was investigating a count of "involuntary destruction by fire".
The cathedral's most precious relics had been saved, rector Monsignor Patrick Chauvet said.
End excerpt.
Not sure about how much could be saved after viewing the fire on television, but who knows? I sincerely doubt anyone will rebuild it - at least not as it was. Oh, they may build some "peace memorial" there, some cheap frame and curtain structure, but the grand monument to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Christ is gone.
Well, the French government had let it run down anyway. As it turns out the government had taken over all of these structures years ago and simply allowed the catholic Church to use them. Churches have never been a priority to the secular French, not since the Revolution. The reason they were doing renovation work there in the first place was because the church had been allowed to decay horrendously.
I would like to point out that the Islamic Al Jazeera article states:
It was here that Christian crusaders prayed before going to fight in the Holy Land, where revolutionaries defiled representations of French kings and Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804.
"It's a devastating image because Notre Dame, Paris and France play a key role in the history of European Christendom, that is second only to Rome and the Vatican," Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, told Al Jazeera.
"This is really a fire at the heart of Christianity," he added.
End excerpt.
Wouldn't that be a tempting target for ISIS?
Look, we know Muslims operate that way. Muhammad himself destroyed the statuary in the Kaaba, the sacred shrine of the pre-Muslim Arabs, when he conquered Mecca, and Muslim conquerors have done this sort of thing repeatedly, be it plastering over the artwork in Haiga Sofia, or dynamiting the great statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, or using the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as a sanctuary and toilet, leaving feces all over the holy shrine as they did during the Intifada. If this isn't an act of terrorism I'm sure the leaders of Isis, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. are kicking themselves for not thinking of it. The only greater act they could have taken would have been to torch St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
At any rate, we don't know enough yet, but the immediate reaction of the Ruling Class in France, in Europe, in the media, etc. is typically knee-jerk denial of any possibility of terrorism. We are going to be destroyed by our own unwillingness to face reality.
The American Conservative has a fine essay that should be read as the epitaph for this blogpost (and hopefully is not an epitaph for our civilization). Author Rod Dreher says:
Like James Poulos above, I cannot see this as anything other than a sign. The only church in all of Western civilization more important than Notre Dame de Paris is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The consuming fire is likely to have been started from a construction accident. I hope that is the case; if this was terrorism, then France is in for unimaginable spasms of violence. Nevertheless, if this was an accident, it still symbolizes what we in the West have allowed to happen to our religious and cultural patrimony. What happened in Paris today has been happening across our civilization.
It happens whenever we fail to live out our baptism, and fail to baptize our children. It happens by omission, by indifference, and it happens by commission, from spite. It happens in classrooms, in newsrooms, in shopping malls, in poisoned seminaries and defiled sacristies, and everywhere the truths that Notre Dame de Paris embodied are ridiculed, flayed, and destroyed in the hearts and minds of modern men. The fire that destroyed Paris’s iconic cathedral made manifest what we in the West have been doing to ourselves for over 200 years.
This catastrophe in Paris today is a sign to all of us Christians, and a sign to all people in the West, especially those who despise the civilization that built this great temple to its God on an island in the Seine where religious rites have been celebrated since the days of pagan Rome. It is a sign of what we are losing, and what we will not recover, if we don’t change course now. Here are the final paragraphs from The Benedict Option, about a similar catastrophe in the town where St. Benedict was born:
[...]
The flames of Notre Dame de Paris are a call to repentance and conversion. As the monks of Norcia have been doing since their church met catastrophe, so let us all do as we mourn the loss of one of Christendom’s greatest cathedrals. There can be no greater tribute to what this holy and revered temple meant to its builders and to all those faithful who worshiped beneath its vaults all these centuries than to turn, in sackcloth and ashes, back to God, and to raise again the vaults of His sanctuaries in our hearts and families and communities — while there is still time.
For you in the West who are not religious, I hope you will reflect on what this cathedral meant in artistic, architectural, and cultural terms, and that you will think hard about what we are losing as we collectively repudiate our patrimony.
If you were waiting for a sign of the times, this is it.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
07:58 AM
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