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Traditions and Tourist Attractions

The December 8 reopening ceremonies of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris following a whirlwind restoration in the wake of the 2019 fire that nearly felled the famed Gothic edifice drew worldwide attention. Along with St. Peter’s Basilica, it stands as one of the most recognized and revered church structures in the world, as evinced by the outpouring of memories on social media channels during the fire. The rededication also notably took place during the Advent season (more specifically on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, a feast of Mary to whom the Cathedral is dedicated), when Catholics prepare to celebrate Christmas, the second most significant feast of the liturgical year and one celebrated lavishly both in churches and in households.

For many, Notre-Dame and Christmas both represent celebrations of traditions built up throughout the ages. Indeed, many may combine the two by giving or receiving the Notre-Dame LEGO set released earlier this year. Yet, in both cases, what appear to be perennial traditions represent a kind of pastiche reflecting centuries of accretions and deletions. Both have been in continuous, if uneven, development for centuries.

The restoration of Notre-Dame notably does not return it to its original medieval condition—if that could even be described or recovered with complete accuracy at this juncture—but rather to a 19th-century renovation (famous for the large spire that collapsed during the fire) carried out by Eugéne Viollet-Le-Duc in the wake of Victor Hugo’s celebrated novel Notre-Dame de Paris. Notre-Dame had famously experienced some tribulations in the previous centuries, including a stint as the Temple of Reason (and then the Supreme Being). Viollet-le-Duc’s Notre-Dame restoration was joined in monumental, tourist-attraction Paris by the street plan of Baron Haussmann, designed in part to eliminate spaces for the revolutionary demonstrations that had animated the city since 1789. Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre was built for similar political purposes. The new restoration raises Viollet-le-Duc’s renovation—enshrined by the rise of photography and tourism shortly after its completion—to a kind of canonical status. This was certainly the safest approach, and better than some possible alternatives, but raises questions about the vitality of Notre-Dame as the cathedral of a living, changing Catholic community.

Pope Francis notably declined the invitation to Notre-Dame’s restoration, choosing instead to take a trip to Corsica (a location with whose denizens the French have a fraught history) in part to emphasize the suffering of migrants who come ashore there in their crossing of the Mediterranean from North Africa. This approach does not reject the value of structures such as Notre-Dame but places them in the context of a faith whose core beliefs speak to the dignity of the human person and community.

Like Notre-Dame, our celebrations of Christmas have historical layers that sometimes go unnoticed. In the English-speaking world, Christmas celebrations famously went into abeyance for several hundred years following the Reformation; Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and higher-church Anglican liturgical developments helped to revive the holiday. Seemingly perennial traditions such as the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College in Cambridge are just over a century old. Santa Claus, beloved giver of gifts to children, merges the real-life Saint Nicholas, Coca-Cola merchandising and various European traditions concerning gift-giving figures. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this, but it is a helpful prophylactic to nostalgia to understand how our traditions are always in flux even as they might appear unchanging.

It is a common but facile argument to claim that because a tradition is constructed or a pastiche that this takes away from its meaning. We see this every Christmas when skeptics point out the relationship of its celebration to the Winter Solstice and the nature of Matthew and Luke’s infancy narratives as texts (and their deep inconsistencies with one another). Yet the true meaning of Christmas, to paraphrase many a TV special, stands or falls on the deeper reality the celebration signifies—the Incarnation of God as human in Jesus Christ—and on its connection to the Paschal Mystery (it is no coincidence that Christmas and Easter have historically had many overlapping musical and other motifs). Like any tenet of the faith, this is worth questioning and considering in its own right, but is stronger and more serious than mere “Christmas magic.”

Not far from its more famous namesake, on the outskirts of Paris sits the less famous church of Notre-Dame du Raincy. This church, built in 1922 as a monument to World War I, is built of concrete with large walls of glass. Its brightly lit interior evokes almost four decades in advance the “opening of the windows” that John XXIII hoped for from Vatican II. It anticipates buildings such as St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hartford, which takes a similar approach in less “pure” form. Yet its stark interior might evoke fascist architecture for some, and its steeply raised altar reinforces clericalism in the liturgy. Even the best modern designs and updates to the tradition are still waystations on a pilgrimage.

Tradition, then, is not a tourist attraction meant to be packaged and admired, but an evolving reality respondent to the signs of the times and the needs of the community. We can celebrate its past glories while being clear-eyed about the need for reform and renewal. Pope Francis has attempted to do this by focusing the church on synodality, but his reforms—especially on crucial issues like women’s roles in the church—have stopped short of even some seemingly modest reforms such as a female diaconate. In the U.S., snazzily packaged (literally) versions of the tradition—up to and including the documents of Vatican II—by outfits such as Word on Fire have attempted something parallel to what I would argue the French government has achieved: a Catholicism safe to consume for contemporary Americans.

This Christmas, as we reflect on our traditions and indeed celebrate Notre-Dame’s survival and restoration, we might well attend to the words of the prophet Malachi that make up my favorite aria in another Christmas tradition (though its totality is arguably more appropriate for Eastertide), Handel’s Messiah: “But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner’s fire.”


Daniel A. Rober is a systematic theologian and Catholic studies professor at Sacred Heart University.

Comments

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Paula Ruddy

Professor Rober, your description of the evolving traditions, the pastiche and packaging elements and elusive meanings, highlights for me what needs reform in our Church. Is there a coherent religion undergirding all this? I think we need a common 21st Century narrative that grounds us and gives us a sense of mission. Recently I have been looking to the work of theologian Roger Haight, S.J., in his book Faith and Evolution: A Grace-Filled Naturalism. His suggestion is to start with Creation theology, an evolving universe held in being by Divine Presence, with Jesus being the revelation of the creator to us and giving us the mission to co-evolve the Reign of God. I’d love to know what you and your readers on this blog think of this as an answer to the need for coherence. Here is a YouTube video of Robert Wright’s podcast, Nonzero, in which he talks with Roger Haight about the book’s vision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hImiKbr3fSI

Paula Ruddy

Would you say the "snazzily packaged" version of the tradition in the US church represents a pre-Vatican II scholasticism? I remember that while transitioning out of that version I regretted leaving behind the certainty and the tried and true language we shared along with Gregorian chant. I can now, with no regrets, go back to Aristotle and St. Thomas and see new light. However, we do not seem to be thriving with parishes and dioceses identifying with their own versions of the tradition. The USCCB has attempted to unite people with past traditional practices in 2017 and again in 2024, while lukewarm about Pope Francis's synodal effort. I'm thinking we do need a new coherent overview that brings us all together with a historical/ evolutionary worldview and a sense of mission. I may be wrong. Is this the right blog to talk about this?

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