Why is the word 'Easter' now an embarrassment?
Byline: Ron BeadleODAY'S commentators excel in the art of premature evaluation.
TWithin an hour of the news that Notre Dame had caught fire, Radio 5 reported claims that the cathedral's artefacts were lost, that the Rose Window would melt and that rebuilding would take decades; none of these would later prove accurate.
Within three hours, the BBC Evening News reported that the Prime Minister had been criticised for not having issued a statement quickly enough. Within four hours, the story had moved on to examining the public reaction.
Twenty-four hour news requires its commentators to jump to conclusions rather than reach them. Habits of mind that once encouraged us not to rush to judgment, to gather and weigh evidence, to prefer extended argument over soundbite, are as extinguished as the embers of Notre Dame's spire.
But instant wisdom is not all that commentators share. A second defining feature is the kind of secular world-view that regards faith as an embarrassment. As I write this, Kirsty Wark, has wished Newsnight viewers a happy 'long weekend'; the word 'Easter' being sacrilege.
Of all the statements made by public figures in the aftermath of the fire, only Archbishop Welby alluded to the cathedral being a place where people come to meet Jesus Christ.
By contrast, the fiercely secular commentariat was challenged to account for an emotional response they could not share. One of their finest representatives, Stig Abell, appears on Sky's Press Review. He has edited both The Sun and the Times Literary Supplement, a stellar career demonstrating that apparent polar opposites are better understood as poles of the same secular world-view.
Whilst he charmingly condescended to the easily impressed twelfth century Parisians who built the Cathedral, he offered little understanding of their 21st century counterparts.
What was it that stood in need of explanation? In part it was their silence; one of the most notable characteristics of those who gathered to witness. That there are some occasions whose magnitude can only be diminished by words is barely an allowable thought in a culture of constant noise, one in which everyone must have an opinion.
On the day after the fire, Parisian believers returned to sing Psalms (note, God's words, not their own) and to play the music of reverence. The contrast between the faith community of the Cathedral and the elite community of the commentariat is not only one of belief but also of reaction, of the experience of time, of whether one speaks, to whom one speaks and how.
Events such as the Notre Dame fire not only bring conflicting world-views into sharp relief but also reveal truths to ourselves about ourselves.
Since the conflagration, social media has exploded with images and stories about visits to Notre Dame. Friends of mine and I suspect friends of yours have trawled their photo albums for pictures. It is almost a marker of a certain type of contemporary middle-class life that there are places one should have visited and connections that one should have made.
Not to post about one's trip to Notre Dame, who one was with, what it meant and so on, are admissions of failure.
The French Newspaper Liberation's headline, 'Notre Drame', captured this perfectly; every drama must be our drama, every public event a personal connection, our histories must speak to History.
In the days that have followed, expressions of connection have given way to expressions of critique. The money raised for the restoration is widely condemned. We condemn the rich whose benefaction may fund the restoration, the Church whose wealth could pay for the work and the faithful poor whose contributions would better be made to the hungry or to victims of Grenfell.
Such criticisms reveal an era in which we have no language of ethics other than that of numbers, the 72 dead of Grenfell, the $600m dollars raised for the restoration, the $30b wealth of the Church, the millions trapped in poverty.
And if numbers are the content of our ethical debate then shrillness is its tone.
'Don't give to Notre Dame' screams one oft-shared post, 'The Church should pay', another.
None of this claims hostility to faith, but this is both undertone and implication.
There are alternatives, exhibited by those whose lives are devoted to the service of the poor in the name of a God to be worshipped in a cathedral; but their voices are silent. Notre Dame will be rebuilt but what of that for which it stands? | Ron Beadle is Professor of Organisation and Business Ethics at Northumbria University
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| Publication: | The Journal (Newcastle, England) |
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| Date: | Apr 20, 2019 |
| Words: | 757 |
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