#479: Auschwitz 75--A Pilgrim's Memory

This week’s 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz has revived an indelible image from my long–past (but not lost) youth. I wrote this piece 5 years ago, and it continues to shock me that my first encounter with the Nazi genocide came barely 20 years after it was ended. Some of those survivors, now old, were then in their 20s and 30s. But this memory must outlive all our lives.

One November day in 1968, during my college year in Paris, I killed time between classes by wandering the area around Notre Dame Cathedral. After a few minutes exploring the Pope John XXIII garden behind the church, I noticed a low stone wall at the far end of a small green across the street, and crossed over to get a closer look at the words carved into the stones.

My French was still pretty basic, but I managed to figure out that the wall commemorated 200,000 French deported by the Nazis who occupied France during WWII. Actually, it was not a wall at all, but the roof of a (mostly) underground building, with stairways cut into it leading down into a courtyard.

This was the Mémorial de la Déportation. I had never heard of it, but I was about to experience it for the first time. I would emerge convinced it was the most powerful monument in all Paris---and I would emerge a changed person, someone whose personal pilgrimage had taken a sudden unseen turn.

The roofline rose around the narrow stairs as I descended, squeezing me between the stone walls. The same high wall enclosed the deep-set courtyard itself, blocking any sight of the city beyond. The Seine’s waters just below showed through one small grated opening, topped by the jagged points of a plate-iron sculpture that looked like barbed-wire enlarged 100 times. It felt like I was standing in a prison yard.

Turning back toward the stairs, I saw two massive stone slabs splitting a narrow space leading inside.

I squeezed through and found myself in an underground crypt softly lit by faint light coming from its four corners. In each corner I found a barred doorway to a stone jail-cell; the light came from windows one could not see from outside the locked empty cells. Carved into one stone wall is a poem reflecting the spiritual anguish of the camps:

I've dreamt so much of you

I’ve walked so much

Talked so much

So much loved your shadow

That there is nothing of you left for

     me—

What’s left for me is to be

The shadow between the shadows

The shadow that will come

And come again 

Into your sunlit life.

Returning to the center, I stood before a fifth set of bars blocking entrance to a low, long, tunnel-shape corridor. 

It led, like a horizontal black hole, to an invisible destination, but along both sides I saw thousands of tiny, faint-white lights, and instantly knew each one represented an individual lost to the Nazi genocide machine.

 

 Just beyond the bars, at my feet, was a raised coffin-shaped black stone, to mark the resting-place of an unknown deportee. Just behind me, in the middle of the floor, burnt an eternal flame.

And as I turned to go I saw, carved over the huge slabs leading out, the plea:  “Pardonne, n'oublie pas”—“Forgive, but Don’t Forget.”

When I climbed up the cramped exit stairs to ground level, cold drizzle greeted me like a refreshing breath of life after the stunning, symbolic specter of so many deaths. The few minutes I had spent inside had marked me, and shadowed the rest of that day and the weeks that followed.

I remained in France another eight months, and returned to the Mémorial every three or four weeks. In a city unrivaled for its cathedrals, monuments, places of historical significance and breath-taking beauty, this obscure, almost invisible memorial became my own personal place of pilgrimage.

Three years later I returned to Paris, and made time one morning to visit the Mémorial. After a few minutes of reflection I noticed the guard on duty approaching me.

“Excuse me, Monsieur, I do not mean to intrude. But I was wondering—you have been here before, non?”

I admitted I had.

“But it was some time ago, was it not? Two, maybe three years? And more than once?”

Yes, I agreed.

“You see, Monsieur, most people who come, they are just on tour—they walk in and walk out, maybe they take a photo or two. After five minutes they are gone, and have already checked this place off their list of sights to see. But you would come and stay, spend time, and you would return again.”

“Yes, it’s true,” I said. “But I was studying here, not on tour. I was here a whole school year.”

“That is what is even more striking, Monsieur. You see, the people who live here, the Parisians? They do not come at all. Most of them don’t even know it exists. And frankly, Monsieur, many would not care to know.”

He then added that I was not the only pilgrim who returned, telling me of the US officer who led the first US liberation of a Nazi death camp in January 1945.

“He saw what there was to see, Monsieur, and immediately said, ‘Ike (Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower) has gotta see this.’ He got Eisenhower to come, and (Generals) Bradley and Patton with him. The man was marked for life, and every year, when he returns there to observe the anniversary, he also comes here to pay his respects.”

“You see, Monsieur, I can tell the pilgrims from the tourists! That is why I remember you.”

My first visit came only 23 years after the camps were liberated. It shocks me to think how near that awful history was to me then, and how fast the time since has passed.

Now, this week, we observe the 70th anniversary. That old guard is gone (as are, of course, most of the holocaust survivors), but the Mémorial remains.  It is still mainly seen by tourists who traipse in and out and check it off their lists. It is still largely invisible to, and ignored by, the average Parisian.

In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust, Boston erected its own Holocaust Memorial, an evocative rendering of 6 glass chimneys symbolizing the 6 major death camps, each one etched with 1 million numbers—one for each of the victims. It is a haunting venue, and I am grateful to have it near my home.

The New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston

But whenever I return to Paris, I still make sure to go back to the Mémorial. Often I bring someone along: in 1971 it was with the woman who became my wife; another year, it was a Parisian friend seeing it for the first time; in October 2013, it was my daughter.

And more than once I have returned to my old American school in Paris to arrange an official tour of the Mémorial for the students. This tour includes an upper level inside the building containing a great deal of historical documentation.

On one occasion, several English–speaking tourists tagged along with our group. Realizing this, the tour leader, who spoke only French, asked me to act as interpreter. For half an hour I translated her remarks for the tourists. So once again this place touched me in a personal way.

In the last 10 years, however, the Mémorial de la Déportation has been largely displaced by the new Holocaust Memorial, only a few hundred meters across the Seine, which is the largest center for Holocaust research in Europe.

So when I go back to this place—and I do, as often as I can—I know it will probably be quiet, or even empty, and unchanged. It will still urge me “Pardonne, n’oublie pas”—Forgive, but Do Not Forget.

For our generation, this has become a sacred duty. We face a time when, more than ever, faith and violence seem linked by emerging Holy Wars waged by global crusaders. The horrifying prospect: genocide may not yet be buried in our past, as long as fanatics seek a “final solution” for their fears by liquidating the hated evil enemy.

 As former President Jacques Chirac said in 2005 at the Holocaust Memorial’s opening: “The refusal to forget is all the defense we have against the renewal of barbarism.” And part of what we remember is that Nazi genocide emerged, not from a historical vacuum, but from the history of Christian anti-Semitism.

The holocaust was, indeed, mass murder—but it was more than that. It was a deliberate, intentional program aimed at making the Jewish people extinct. And it was carried out by people who claimed the Christian faith as their heritage, and a “Christian” view of Jews (as, for example, “Christ-killers” guilty of “deicide”) as their justification.

So, as we journey out of the shadow of the 20th century (history’s bloodiest century) into this new century of terror and revenge, our refusal to forget—our determination never to forget, to remember always—may be all that determines, for each of us, whether we are mere tourists or genuine pilgrims.

“Am I Tourist or Pilgrim? Just sightseeing, or sharing a journey?” If we ignore this question, we cannot give the right answer.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2020

#478: Getting “The Two Popes” Right

By all means see the Netflix film “The Two Popes,”

 ---but see it for the wonderful thing it really is.

George Weigel takes pride presenting himself as someone who has known several popes, so he rightly claims to be “credentialed” for inside insight into recent papal history.

But a film critic he is not.

And even professional critics sometimes make the mistake he commits in his review of the movie “the Two Popes,” criticizing a film for what it is NOT rather than analyzing what it IS. Sadly, this leaves Weigel—and others like him—unable to appreciate the film before his eyes. He saw “baloney on steroids,” and missed what was actually on the screen: a delightfully plausible parable aimed at inspiring the viewer.

Weigel begins by saying the film claims to be “based on actual facts.” This is not true. The screen title at the movie's start reads “Inspired by true events”—which is an entirely different matter. Both the screenwriter and the director have explained that they wanted to make the movie because of their admiration for Pope Francis, combined with being intrigued by the events surrounding the resignation of Benedict XVI.  They asked themselves: “What if these two were to arrange something together?”

Weigel says the movie reveals more about the screenwriter and the director than about the historical figures. Well, duh—the whole point of film art is to express the creators’ vision. Weigel makes the common mistake of testing a film about historical figures for its historical accuracy. But this is not a documentary, or even a docudrama.

Could anyone really think that images of the College of Cardinals entering the conclave to the tune of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” could be about documenting events? Or that setting Benedict’s announcement of resignation to three different versions of the Beatles’ tune “Blackbird” aimed to serve historical accuracy?

The Filmmakers are exercising what is generally referred to as “artistic license”; typically they care less about veracity and more about verisimilitude. Yet they land on some verities.

So they contrive a two-day meeting in which both men change by coming to terms with their differences. My personal reaction: I left feeling, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this had happened—and even better if such things happened more often!” I took it as a parable for our time, a time in which people of differing views –in our Church, in our communities, in our nation, in our world--have stopped listening to each other. Imagine the Church as a public model inspiring people to resolve their differences!

Weigel is entitled to consider the film’s characters as “stick-figures,” despite the screenplay being nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Oscar. But his comparison of “one–dimensional portrayals of popes” with Xavier Rynne’s New Yorker coverage of  Vatican Council II is a simple category mistake—the proverbial “apples and oranges.” While Rynne claimed to be reporting, these filmmakers openly admit to inventing. One can search numerous sites detailing what is historical and what is apocryphal in the film.

Still, the characters' positions on issues are consistent with the public record. Weigel complains that the film misrepresents Benedict’s attachment to the papacy, quoting him that “I am not a man of governance.” And while it is true the film shows him urging cardinals to support him at the conclave in 2005, it also has him arguing for his own resignation by saying “I’m a scholar, not a manager.”

And while Weigel sees “self-knowledge, spiritual detachment, and churchmanship” in Benedict, he ignores how the film portrays precisely those qualities, thus humanizing a figure who has too often been stereotyped in the media as an ogre. Weigel writes as if the film were a hatchet job on Benedict. But every single viewer I’ve spoken with has come away finding Benedict a much warmer, more admirable character.

Weigel complains that the movie portrays the 2013 election of Francis as fueled by a desire for a reform movement, a course change from John-Paul II and Benedict back to engagement with the world. What motivated the voters is hard to prove, but there is ample evidence from Francis’ own public statements that he himself took his election as a mandate to make changes in the Church’s approach to the world—and that he took much of his inspiration from the two popes who preceded John-Paul II and Benedict:

Vatican II, inspired by Pope Paul VI and John, decided to look to the future with a modern spirit and to be open to modern culture. The Council Fathers knew that being open to modern culture meant religious ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers. But afterwards very little was done in that direction. I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.

Weigel further argues that the real motive behind Francis’ election was to choose “a tough minded, no-nonsense reformer who would quickly and decisively clean house"--that is, the Vatican itself, especially the curia. He implies the movie ignores this.

He seems to have missed the scenes when Benedict complains about the curia, pleads his inability to fix things (“I have lost,” he says) or when Cardinal Bergoglio (later Pope Francis) recounts how he had already cleaned up his ecclesiastical house in Argentina. When he expresses his intent to do the same in Rome, Benedict says "Well, good luck with that!"

Sadly, Weigel simply ignores a large part of the movie showing Bergoglio's own path to the priesthood, as well as his struggles as a leader. But viewers who saw the Oscar-winning films “City of God” and “The Constant Gardener” will recognize in these flashback scenes the world-engaging imagery of director Fernando Meirelles, full of vibrant third-world street scenes and the chaos of poor people’s lives. These scenes reveal that what inspired Meirelles to make this new film was precisely Francis’ career-long engagement with struggling people.

Finally Weigel calls the movie “fake news” and states his desire to “clarify the historical record.” But people who react to this movie as if it were (or claimed to be) a historical record of what actually happened have already failed to see the film on the screen. They just don’t get it. It’s their loss.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the one point on which Weigel and I agree: the film is quite funny! In fact, several critics have called it a “buddy comedy”—and they are closer to the truth than Weigel.

The closing scene of the two popes watching the 2014 Argentina-Germany World Cup Final together may well be apocryphal, like most of the film—but the accompanying documentary footage of the Two Popes warmly embracing is not. When you see “the Two Pope” on Netflix, take it for what it really is: a hopeful fiction of how powerful but opposed leaders might come to see each other as (to quote Benedict's character) “only human”-- and even to become friends. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2020

#477: D-Day Reflections

A tough question for 21^st century Catholics.

On this 75th anniversary of the landings at Normandy, I am reflecting on comments made by a reader following my last CrossCurrents posting, about the fire at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, which also included my comments about Armistice day as it has been observed in Europe,  and my dissatisfaction with the way the date is observed in the United States.  In response I got this comment:

“Would that WWI had truly been the "war to end all wars." Each year, I, too, recognize the historic moment, 11-11-11, and would much prefer that world peace had prevailed since then.

At the same time, I believe that those brave souls who "visited" France on 6-6-44, via the beaches at Normandy, or who parachuted onto French soil behind enemy lines  deserve our respect for their service, not necessarily "praise as warriors." If not for their selfless courage, might not Hitler and his Nazis have had their way....and what then, of Notre Dame Cathedral?”

For me this comment raises an important question: how should we, as Catholics and Christians, regard those who have served in the military?  The question is important because the answer is complex and reveals a contrast between Christian identity and national identity.

My own reflections are personal because they are rooted in both my faith in my family.  My father and five of his brothers served in WWII.  A sixth brother served in Korea, and a seventh - - the youngest--died during active service in the US marines.  Their only sister was also married to a WWII veteran.

Do I recognize that many serving in WWII sacrificed a great deal, and even life itself, for their country?  Yes, of course!  But then the matter is more complex than that.

In my previous blog I mentioned attending Armistice Day services in Paris when I was a student.  On November 11, 2010 I also attended services in Chartres, as part of a reunion group.  We arrived on the train and immediately, next to the station, we came across found a small ceremony at a WWI memorial.  Some texts were read, a wreath was laid, and then one man - - an elderly war veteran--stepped forward and spoke.  He said this day mattered to remind us that the men who died in WWI could only be honored if we commit to ending war.  He said their sacrifice proved, as he too had learned in combat, that “the barbarism of war is an unacceptable way to resolve conflict.” He implored all of us to take that message with us.

I have not often heard an American veteran deliver this kind of speech on Veterans Day.  And it seemed to me that his point was worth repeating: those who die in any war die in vain unless we overcome war itself.  If not, their sacrifice only brings us brief respite before the next war begins.  I say “brief,” since the U.S. has not had a generation without war in more than 120 years. 

I suspect that French veteran would recognize that sometimes war is a necessary evil. This acknowledges, just like the Catholic “just war theory,” that war is always evil, but sometimes unavoidable. Yet since WWII, our nation has engaged in many “wars of choice”—conflicts engaged, not in self-defense (although that has usually been the pretext) but to serve other men’s goals.

And the just war theory also demands that, even when war is unavoidable, its conduct must also meet certain moral standards.  We often think of World War Two as “the good war,” but of course the reality was more complex than that.

Did the men who landed on Omaha Beach display uncommon courage and sacrifice?  Yes--but we must recall that not all who served in WWII were on the beaches of Normandy. 

In any war, those who serve have missions—and we should never confuse their service or their sacrifice with the mission they perform. The men on the Normandy Beaches were sent to fight a well-armed and fortified occupying army that had invaded France. But not all in WWII had such honorable missions. Some who served were sent to firebomb Dresden, killing tens of thousands of terrified civilians. Some were sent to firebomb Tokyo, killing even more civilians. Some were sent to drop the A-Bomb on Hiroshima, and others were sent to drop it on Nagasaki. More than 100,000 civilians were killed in minutes, and countless more died over the following years. All soldiers serve their country, but not all missions are equal.

During one parish meeting after 9/11 an older man approached me during the break. He had served on an unnamed Pacific island in WWII. When it was time for his company to move out, the commander gathered all the prisoners of war they were holding and ordered this man and his mates to shoot them. And this man and his mates shot them. All of them. All dead. In cold blood. By 2001 this man, now in his 80s, had long realized his guilt would haunt him to his grave.

Yet we like to think of World War Two as the “good war.” If that is our idea of good, then the realities about Korea, and Vietnam, and Iraq, and Afghanistan are even more morally fraught.

Those who serve in the military serve policies made by other men, usually older men (and now sometimes women).  They must obey orders that come from others.  Some soldiers may kill, or be killed, in ways we can justify. Others end up committing crimes against humanity.

Whatever the case, the soldiers have this in common: they are cogs in the machine of war. They do what others want—and often those others want evil things.  Even many who survive never really recover. My WWII parishioner never did, and two of my family members suffered permanently from Vietnam. Many veterans now with PTSD suffer pain that is mainly, not physical or psychological, but moral.

So while I recognize we can honor the sacrifice of those who served in the military, for me that honoring is always with a remorseful, even mournful spirit.  For me, this is never a matter for marching bands, cheering, applause, and flyovers. “Taps” for the deceased and a silent salute for the survivors seem better to me.

Recognizing the sacrifices of D-Day is perfectly reasonable, especially on the 75^th anniversary of the landings.  But we dishonor the heroes of that day if we pretend that all other soldiers were equally courageous, that all others performed with equal honor, or even that all others were heroes. 

One of the tragedies of our time is that thousands of Americans have died or been maimed or traumatized while serving their country under the pretense that they were protecting our freedom when in fact, in a case like the invasion of Iraq, no threat to our freedom even existed.

Such people served their country, often at great cost, and they deserve our respect. But if we pretend that we benefited from their service, if we pretend they protected us from some phony evil, if we pretend that those who died did not die in vain, then we blind ourselves to the reality that if war is sometimes a necessary evil, more often it is an unnecessary evil.  Victory does not justify such deaths; in the long run, the real enemy is war itself. 

This was the lesson of the original Armistice Day. World War One ended on “The 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month” in 1918 because Maréchal Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander, chose the feast of Saint Martin of Tours, a soldier who resigned to become the patron saint of the poor and of peace.  His feast is about repenting wars, not praising its heroics.

It is right and just that we honor the soldiers who fought on D-Day, and especially good if we do it by memorializing their sacrifice with gratitude but also with remorse that their sacrifice was ever necessary. But we also mourn the sacrifice of those many soldiers serving in “wars of choice,” whose sacrifice was never necessary.

We Catholics are taught to hate the sin, but love the sinner. So even as we honor these people, we hate what they were made to do in our name.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2019

#476: Why Notre-Dame de Paris Matters

A simple building fire provokes world-wide grief.

Mere minutes after the spire of Notre-Dame toppled in flames, a TV journalist asks a by-standing historian about the importance of the cathedral’s treasures.  During her reply he suddenly interrupts: “We’re just getting some sobering news.  The firefighters now say they may not be able to save the cathedral.”

“What?!?” Is the stunned reply.

He repeats himself; what follows is deep long silence.  The eyewitness is literally struck dumb by the prospect of losing Notre-Dame de Paris.

In the end, the building was saved after the roof was lost.  And no one died. 

Objectively, this was not the worst tragedy of recent days.  The Sri Lanka Easter Sunday attacks, the Christchurch mosque shootings--these cost human lives.  France’s Yellow Vests even protested the idea of spending one billion Euros to rebuild Notre-Dame while they struggled to pay their monthly bills in an unequal society.  One commentator even complained about people “whining over an old church.”

This begs a basic question: why such an outpouring of grief over this fire?  Why so many Facebook posts proclaiming a broken heart?

It has taken me more than a week to name why.  The answer is less objective but no less real. Global communications frequently gives us horrific images of tragedies happening halfway round the world, but that suffering and loss--even the deaths--mainly touch those who know the people or places involved.

Notre-Dame is different:  as a simple matter of fact, millions of people took it personally. They took the fire itself as a personal emergency, took the prospect of losing the whole building as a personal tragedy, and took the building’s final rescue as a personal existential relief.  And even so, for millions the sight of the smoking ruins remains heartbreaking. As one American Paris resident put it: “I felt as if I were losing a loved one, member of my family.”

Such global personal reactions are rare.  In my memory, only a sudden shocking loss of life has triggered such widespread heartache:  The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  The death of Princess Diana.  The collapse of the twin towers on 9/11—not because the buildings were destroyed, but because of horror for the people inside.

How could a simple “building fire” have a similarly profound emotional impact on millions?  What is this building’s power?  Why did its threatened loss provoke such personal grief?

For French Catholics, of course, the answer is obvious: Notre-Dame is the center of their nation’s faith life.  For other French, the cathedral represents their national identity across centuries--no other building rivals it.  For others, the reasons are more varied.  No one visits Paris without visiting Notre-Dame.  Few people return to Paris without returning to it. It attracts some by its history, others by its symbolic power, still others by its sheer beauty. For some it is an expression of faith, and for others a marvel of medieval construction and creativity.  As one observer said: “No one encounters Notre-Dame and walks away in different.”

For me too, the fire caused a heartsick reaction echoed by only a few moments in my life.  But in my case a personal attachment to the cathedral is easier to explain.  As a student in France, Notre-Dame de Paris became my home church (it was a ten-minute walk from my school) and it has left me with a parade of personal memories. 

My first Mass in Paris was at Notre Dame, a 6:00 p.m. liturgy following a concert by the world-renowned organist Pierre Cochereau. His playing drew a near-capacity crowd, and I was chagrined when, after the music, most people promptly exited to avoid Mass. I suddenly found myself surrounded by a scattered remnant of worshippers, mostly little old ladies in black. Not only that, the Mass itself was in French (the recent fruit of Vatican II’s liturgical reforms)—I still did not know how to worship in French.

Overall, this first visit reinforced my sense of shifting values: the Church was become more pluralized, and the culture was becoming more secular. I also saw that church beauty was not limited to the white-steeple, plain-glass Protestant churches I grew up with in New England.

My second visit was an entirely different matter, an affair of state. My landlady was a WWII widow, and in October she received an invitation to celebrate the Solemn Mass and Te Deum marking the 50th anniversary of the 1918 Armistice with President Charles De Gaulle on November 11. Since she planned to spend the holiday at her sister's in Caen, she gave me the invite, and I invited a classmate along.

We entered Notre Dame by the south transept door, walked entirely around the backside of the altar, and squeezed into a spot on the other side, against the main column at the intersection of the transept and the sanctuary (one of the four columns bearing the weight of the spire that collapsed!).

There happened to be a spare wooden barrier leaning against the column, and I climbed atop it so see over the masses assembled for the Mass.

When De Gaulle arrived up the nave through the arched swords of the Garde Républicaine, he was enthroned against the column diagonally opposite us.  Several moments during the ceremony, de Gaulle, who faced us squarely, was looking directly at me—a young student perched on a barrier mere weeks after the protesting students’ barriers had been removed from the streets of the Quartier Latin! He did not look amused.

At ceremony’s end dignitaries recessed beneath the arched Garde swords. I noticed the sanctuary gates to the nave remained open, so I led my classmate across the sanctuary to the head of the nave and WE passed under the arched swords to the amazed stares of many lesser dignitaries still in their seats.

Needless to say, the experience left a permanent mark, and 11-11 remains a significant date for me. I regret not making it making it to Notre Dame this past November for the 100th anniversary--but I regret more that the US now observes "Veterans Day" as a generic honoring of soldiers, rather than observing the historic moment, on "the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” in 1918, when the world began to think that the real enemy is war itself. What was begun as a day to reject war has become, for us, a day to praise warriors. Which makes this memory that much more precious: for me, November 11 will always be about the ending of war. And my lasting image will always be of Notre-Dame on November 11, 50 years ago.

Over the years I have returned many times, often for the pleasure of introducing Notre Dame to those close to me. I brought Anne there during Christmas break 1971-1972. In 2003 we brought our son Tim into the city during his birthday break from studies in Barcelona. Exiting the metro station I deliberately chose the stairway that made the facade of Notre-Dame his first sight of Paris. He never forgot that moment, nor the tour we made around and inside, and he recently returned with his own girlfriend to share his pleasure as I had shared mine.

In 2005 I brought my brother Jay and his wife Janice there. Later Jay said he found Paris more charming than expected (high praise from someone then working in Venice!), in no small part thanks to Notre-Dame.

In 2010 I organized a reunion of Paris classmates, and my visit ended with dinner on the Ile Saint-Louis with the widow of my old school’s director. Walking away afterward, Anne and I found ourselves directly behind Notre-Dame. The photo conveys some of the cathedral's contagious glow.

In 2011 I returned for November 11, but instead of the traditional Armistice ceremonies, I found the cathedral jam-packed for the annual Paris celebration in honor of the French overseas dioceses of Antigua, Martinique, and Guadalupe. The congregation was largely black, mostly women, and many in the bright colors of traditional tribal garb. This was the first time this Mass was celebrated at Notre Dame, and the Archbishop of Paris presided.

The main area was blocked off, so tourists could only pass around the side aisles. I made my way up the aisle with the tourist flow, circled counter-clockwise round behind the altar, and stopped on the far edge facing back across the sanctuary to the nave.

It was exactly the spot I had occupied on November 11, 1968!

The entire Mass was punctuated by the loud, rhythmic, drum-driven music of a large choir singing upbeat multi-part hymns in both French and the creoles of their respective countries.  Most of the hymns were high energy island melodies, with the exception of a gloriously harmonized Creole lyric set to the tune of “Amazing Grace.” The “honor guard” consisted of women bearing breads and fruits typical of their native lands.

The tourists flowing around the side aisles looked puzzled and even a bit stunned to witness the cathedral full, and in active use, and literally vibrating with the pulse and clapping of this “world music” version of folk Mass

As Mass ended, three bishops rose to briefly address the crowd.  The first drew loud applause and warm laughter by noting that, without doubt, this was the first time a black bishop had spoken to his people from the sanctuary of “This beautiful cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris.”

As I listened to these bishops—just minutes after holding black hands on both sides of me during the Our Father, exchanging signs of peace with these French Africans, and filing up with them to receive Communion in this great monument to Catholic faith—I found the moment almost unbearably moving. This cathedral is no museum—it is a living house of faith!

This cathedral is, after all, the crowning product of medieval Christendom, an era when Catholic tradition achieved a remarkable integration of imperial customs (inherited from the Roman Empire) and popular culture.  The resulting Gothic architecture created spaces that soar heavenward with impossibly “light” stoneworks in which walls and pillars are but bit players supporting the real stars: the fragile, flamboyant stained glass windows covering most surfaces. Notre Dame and its sister cathedrals across Europe are thus among the chief glories of Latin Christendom.

On this day I got to witness something new: a vibrant liturgical celebration from three third world cultures--here, in this bosom of Christendom!  Far from violating the wondrous gothic beauty of Notre Dame Cathedral, this heartfelt celebration lifted hearts much as the flying buttresses lift the stone--and the brilliant bright costumes seemed fitting reflections of the brilliant blues and reds, yellows and greens of the cathedral’s great rose windows.

Imagine: this space, built eight centuries ago, embracing anew these resurgent people still crafting a home-grown expression of their faith in the 21st century. In all its years Notre Dame of Paris had never witnessed anything quite like this. 

In 2013 I toured the cathedral with my daughter Melissa and in 2017 with Anne, her sister Patti and her boyfriend Fred. I planned our walking tour so we turned a street corner to suddenly reveal the cathedral in full sunlight.

Patti gasped with sheer pleasure, and Fred marveled (from his longtime work in construction) that such a building could even exist before steel girders and iron frames. After their tour, over dinner, he proposed marriage.

No surprise that for all these people, and for millions of others, the sight of Notre-dame in flames provoked rare pain. For them, Notre-dame matters—and the matter is personal.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2019