Not Hallowed but Hollowed Out Emotional Spaces

Some thoughts on Notre Dame

The secularists who confuse religion with “comfort” and “feeling” completely miss the robust challenges that many of the faithful endure and gain strength from. Apart from the obvious fact that a space cannot experience emotion, the question of what the “emotional spaces” offered by the new version of Notre Dame Cathedral will offer visitors remains open. It would appear that the fashionistas have seduced the clergy toward a mirage of future progress on condition that they turn away from the “past” in a futile and malevolent attempt at overcoming it. We rush towards the future at our peril.

The Stations of the Cross are transformed into an exciting “new” discovery trail, as if there had never been anything to discover beforehand. With a weary inevitability, the trail’s culmination is an ill-defined and untested political construct of “environmentalism.” Why bother praying for spiritual guidance, inspiration or confession when we have a shiny new scientific religion, with its holy books (and priests) to tell us the answers. It is a new idolatry where Mother Earth replaces Mother Mary.

The emphasis upon Africa and Asia in the discovery trail experience will exclude the Church’s Israelite roots for sure, and no Hebrew will adorn the walls in what would have been a truly reconciliatory and radical gesture. Entertainment, sensation and “feeling” replace service, sacrifice and prayer. Rather like a frothy happy meal instead of the bread of life.

If you’re not careful, Fr. Gilles Drouin, prayer will be replaced by online wish lists, confession by social media posts, and priests will become merely “events managers.”

(Originally published online for Church Militant in November 2021)