“Notre-Dame Cathedral embodies symbolic resistance to global chaos” | EUROtoday

Ln December 7 and eight, the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral after the 2019 hearth went far past a easy non secular occasion. It was an actual scene of energy the place non secular, political and diplomatic dimensions intertwined that we witnessed, the occasion reworking right into a symbolic staging the place every actor – State, Church and worldwide group – performed a particular position.

As a world occasion, this reopening is a theatricality revealing how faith, politics and diplomacy feed off one another to claim their legitimacy. A cathedral that recovers can be a State that tasks itself and a world that remembers its symbols and customary hyperlinks. Much greater than a constructing, Notre-Dame is a sacred house loaded with non secular meanings.

Its reopening marked a key second for the Catholic Church in France, confronted with an period of secularization and inner crises. The restoration of the cathedral symbolized the resilience of a thousand-year-old establishment within the face of ordeal, the reopening ceremonies, wealthy in rituals and symbols, looking for to reactivate the connection between the sacred and the believing group, even the human group. .

The reopening of Notre-Dame, a theater of political energy

The inaugural liturgy was a spectacular act, designed to reaffirm the religious authority of the Church over an area that embodies each the divine and French cultural heritage. But the liturgy was additionally a spectacle additionally aimed toward non-believers, thus reworking the non secular act right into a common occasion.

This try at nationwide communion depicts the Church not solely as guardian of the sacred, guarantor of a “imaginary continuity” (D. Hervieu-Léger), but additionally as an actor of social unity, which she has not been for a very long time. But the reopening of Notre-Dame was additionally a theater of political energy, revealing the a number of faces of the protagonists.

President Macron’s promise to rebuild Notre-Dame in 5 years embodied a type of political performativity. The State took on this mission as a sovereign act, mobilizing architects, craftsmen and private and non-private funds. This apparently inconceivable mission turns into tangible proof of the effectiveness of the state equipment within the face of a nationwide disaster. Here, the cathedral turns into an emblem of France itself: wounded however standing, like a state able to overcoming crises.

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