webenda wrote:...If France wants to restore Notre Dame, they will find a way....
Money is already pouring in, from a variety of different sources and places on Earth. That cathedral is part of the culture of the world, as much as The Grand Canyon is, as much as The Great Wall is, as much as the Pyramids of Egypt are; Petra; Aztec and Inca art and architecture; in fact, I'd include polar bears in such a list because they are part of what the civilized people of the world value and revere and protect.
Notre Dame de Paris was not built as a church. It was built as prayer.
And I think many people are anxiously awaiting news of which artifacts and sacred treasures have not been damaged or destroyed. Did I correctly perceive a report of many of them being loaded into a truck for transport and safe-keeping in Paris City Hall?
Speaking as a Roman Catholic, I hope the Blessed Sacrament was, somehow, saved. I heard on the News that many of the sacred items had been, previous to the fire, secured in the Sacristy, as is the custom in Catholic churches, and that they were rescued and are safe. All of them? I have not heard.
There is (I hope so, that it still is) a Gothic statue of The Blessed Mother, holding Jesus, in the Sanctuary of Notre Dame ("Our Lady") which, though it is of that period in art history, was a pivotal piece of sculpture for that period because instead of having the figure of Mary bolt-upright, as was the artistic style for such statues at Gothic edifices, inside and on the outside of the building, that her figure was carved to represent her turning at the waist, accommodating the weight of the Child, thus making a kind of "S" shape, somewhat unheard-of in the sculpture ('Synagoga' at the west portal is another example of this change) of the Middle Ages.
Here she is...
