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Editorial: Trying to rebuild history

Money for rebuilding Notre Dame could be better spent
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In all the talk about rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral, the question of should it be rebuilt needs to be answered first.

There can be no argument that Notre Dame is, or was, an important building from religious, historical, architectural and artistic perspectives. The April 14 fire was a great tragedy.

The immediate and emotional reaction is that it must be rebuilt. But that is no easy task if it can be done at all.

The promise that it will be rebuilt within five years, made by French President Emmanuel Macron, is unrealistic. It’s likely to take that long just to stabilize the building and create the plans to restore it before work can even begin on getting the lady back up on her flying buttresses.

It won’t take 200 years of construction like it did the first time, but the rebuilding effort is more likely to take a decade or two. And it’s going to cost. The billion or so euros already raised is likely to be just a portion of the final bill. Given the scope and nature of the project, it’s hard to even guess what that final bill might be, though $5 billion wouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

Taking that as a low-end figure, try to imagine what kind of good that amount of money could do in the world instead of being poured into rebuilding a church.

One food bank estimates their Christmas hampers cost about $70 to prepare, not including the volunteer time. The $5 billion that might be spent on restoring Notre Dame, then, equates to about 71.4 million hampers.

That’s a lot of hungry families that could be fed for the amount it would cost to rebuild the cathedral. It’s also a lot of clean drinking water, a lot of homes, just a lot of help for people who need it more than Paris needs its tourist attraction back.

Yes, it is more than a tourist attraction. It is a place of worship. But so is that church, synagogue, mosque, temple or green space down the street from you. The quality of worship doesn’t change based on how fancy or old the church is. Worship doesn’t really require a church at all.

But worship, in the Christian tradition and most others, does place a high value on helping others.

Which do you think your god would prefer: another expensive building raised up in their honour or 100,000 people off the streets, fed, clothed and on their way to a better life?

–Black Press