WHY NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL MATTERS

Rex Murphy:  We in the West are obliging amnesiacs of our greatest achievements. And it takes something like the jeopardy to Notre Dame to remind us of our common cultural and artistic heritage. That through literature, painting, sculpture, music and all the attendant arts the West has brightened and deepened the experience of life, and put in possession for generations past and to come creations that widen our souls. It is good, too, and of the essence of the near tragedy in Paris, to be reminded that from the power of religion in the so-called dim light of the Middle Ages, by the labour of hands and minds of a whole people, something as transcendent as the great vaults and towers of Notre Dame was given over to the world.