Mark Steyn questions why a ‘Godless, aggressively secular’ nation like France would rebuild Notre-Dame

 

Author and cultural commentator Mark Steyn appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show Monday and fearlessly wondered aloud why in fact “post-Christian France” would rebuild Notre-Dame cathedral.

He has been studying the decline of western culture for 30 years.

The liberal, secular media and an untold number of loyal sheep are pretending today to take offense, apparently on behalf of the hordes of hidden, non-practicing Christians in France.

“Christendom is in retreat in Europe,” Steyn pointed out, “in France particularly. France actually has quite an aggressive belief in secularism. According to some polls, even by the standards of the modern western world, among the most Godless people in that sense.”

Steyn reflected on going to Paris three years ago for the funeral mass of a priest who was murdered by knife-wielding Islamists in front of his congregation. He said, “at the time it seemed as if the entire French state was unraveling.”

He talked about visiting the Basilica of Saint-Denis in northern Paris where multiple French kings and queens are buried. “It’s basically a Christian museum in the heart of what is now a Muslim suburb,” said Steyn. “There’s no sense of Christianity outside the walls of that cathedral.

“It was after that that I went to Notre Dame. You do have the sense that a living, breathing faith is just becoming a museum, an art gallery, a storage facility.”

Continuing, he said, “The French who were on streets in tears this evening, on the streets of Paris, I don’t think they’re mourning just history or architecture or art or culture. They’re mourning something else. But that something else … post-Christian France can’t quite identify it. That’s really the conundrum when Monsieur Macron says, ‘oh, we’re going to rebuild it’ … rebuild it for what?

“When people talk about the heart of France has died–what is in the soul of France? What is this–is it just a building or is it something else?”

Carlson had introduced Steyn by saying that “The fire you’ve just been watching is in some ways a metaphor for the broader decline of Christianity in Europe. That decline has been swift and full of unintended consequences.”

Steyn addressed the possibility of our modern culture building something like Notre-Dame cathedral and how it was actually done when it was an act of supreme reverence to God. “When you go back eight-and-a-half centuries, to the time when this building began construction, it took a century for the first part of it to be completed. The men who set to work on this knew that they would not see it finished in their lifetime. But their sense of a transcendent meaning to life was so strong that the idea of building the most beautiful building to the glory of God, they took naturally in a way that we don’t anymore.”

Video from Fox News

Despite France’s growing secular population, many have openly mourned the destruction:

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