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Who Do We Blame When Cathedrals Burn?
On Notre Dame, God, and scapegoats
I have a specific, but vivid, childhood memory of Mass. The church I attended growing up was built in the 1960s, a minor dark age of religious institutional design. The building was octagonal. The colors were earthy. A stylized crucifix hung from the ceiling. The altar sat in the middle, surrounded by pews, like a theater in the round. It was vaguely futuristic, the Holy Starship Catholic Church.
The priest, deacon, and altar boys would emerge from a door behind a fan of organ pipes and begin their procession, holding up the gospel and processional cross. Anyway, I remember thinking “God lives in the back.” Look, I was very young and Mass is intense, with all the incense and chanting and golden goblets. But it was a nice feeling — and for a short time, I may have believed it. There, in the other room, was God, the Almighty Creator.
I think of this when churches burn down. Does he watch those infernos from the outside or the inside?
Three predominantly African-American Baptist churches burned down in Louisiana recently. The police caught the perpetrator, the 21-year-old son of a local deputy sheriff.
It’s a sad story that didn’t get enough coverage. The South has an ugly history of white people putting black people in…
