Hasn’t Notre Dame Been Through Enough?

When one of America’s oldest churches burned, the First Reformed Church of Astoria in Queens, New York, there were no immediate suspects. But many have their suspicions.

After all, Queens is one of the most Muslim-heavy parts of New York. The church is surrounded by dozens of mosques. It’s just one of literally hundreds of church burnings, arson attacks and desecrations across the West. All of which seem curiously to have coincided with Islamic mass immigration.

But who needs fanatical Islamic vandals to destroy churches, when the globalist elites of the West are apparently determined to do the job equally well?

Emmanuel Macron has been accused of “cultural vandalism” over a plan to replace Notre Dame’s stained-glass windows with modern art.

By ‘modern art’, of course, they mean ‘absolute shite’.

Campaigners have gathered over 340,000 signatories in a petition to block the new windows, created by French artist Claire Tabouret, who has recently returned to France after living in Los Angeles.

The artist's modern depictions of Pentecost scenes will replace existing windows designed by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc in six of the seven chapels on the south aisle of the nave.

To damn them with faint praise, at least they aren’t all pictures of morbidly obese black women, drag queens or Muslims. Thank the Lord for small mercies, I suppose.

But they’re still not very good.

More to the point, there’s just no need for them. The windows weren’t even destroyed – at least, not until the French government got involved.

Opponents have said the removal of the undamaged windows, added in a mid-19th century restoration, was breaching an international convention to preserve historic heritage.

After Notre Dame was nearly destroyed in a blaze in 2019, Mr Macron hoped to “leave a mark of the 21st century” in its reconstruction.

Indeed, why not have something truly representative of 21st Paris in the depictions? Maybe an African immigrant shitting in the street? Or how about a gang of teenage Muslims gang-raping an indigenous French girl? Perhaps a priest being decapitated by a ‘refugee’?

The possibilities are endless.

Opponents of the redesign have filed a legal challenge to annul the building permit issued by the Paris prefecture which authorised the immediate removal of the current geometric, mainly monochrome, floral patterned windows.

Julien Lacaze, head of Sites and Monuments, said: “Every artistic or historical element of a listed monument must be preserved.

“Viollet-le-Duc was not merely a restorer of the cathedral but a creator. His work is listed and holds significant heritage interest.”

The 1964 Venice Charter states preservation must “preserve and reveal the aesthetic and historic value of the monument and is based on respect for original material”.

Adding denigration to desecration, the ‘artist’ isn’t even a Catholic.

Ms Tabouret has admitted she was not brought up with religion, but said she came “from a place of love and respect and interest for the Catholic church” as she designed the six new windows.

Looking at her trite colouring-in pictures, I’m not entirely convinced of that.

Viollet-le-Duc’s windows are planned to be displayed in a museum in Paris, but critics of the project have said they must be displayed in Notre Dame.

In their petition, they describe the decision to display the old windows in a museum as “absurd”, as they are an “integral part of the architecture”.

“They would have no meaning outside the architecture, and would take up a very large space in the rooms of the Hôtel Dieu, preventing other works from being displayed there, without any benefit to the public,” the petition added.

But we’re dealing with poster boy of WEF globalism, here. So of course he’ll simply ride roughshod over opposition.

The French Government has overruled opposition to new windows from a committee of the Culture Ministry and also from the influential Academie des Beaux-Arts.

You will have shitty modern ‘art’ and you will be happy.