Paris: Notre Dame Desperate Need of Make-0ver
 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/w...n.html?mcubz=0

and seeking your help!

Rather shocking the amount of disrepair Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral is in - most not apparent to its average of 30,000 visitors a day - who get free entry with a voluntary donation box.

Q- should visitors to the cathedral have to pay an admission fee? Of course folks coming for services would not - kind of like St Paul's in London?

I think an admission fee, if it helped to maintain the cathedral, would be a good thing. It does take money to keep the great buildings of the world, and we, the visitors, benefit.

I do not approve of an admission fee for any edifice used for religious services unless the concerned religion also pays a user fee. The use of begging baskets passed among the faithful during services should also be banned.

(Keep in mind that all religious buildings built before 1905 belong to the French government anyway, so it would be in its right to expel these (mostly Vatican controlled) freeloaders.)

Certainly the Church should help pay for upkeep of the cathedral they use or yes pay a rental fee - yes! Great idea.

Separation of Church and State comes to mind...

Of course, it will take 15 years for the Eiffel Tower to be repaired, and ticket costs will increase.

Separation of Church and State comes to mind...>

Yes and paying for church repairs and upkeep means State support for the Church?

I note the 1905 date cut-off -I guess France's many mosques thus do not get government paid upkeep?

The use of begging baskets?

<i>I note the 1905 date cut-off -I guess France's many mosques thus do not get government paid upkeep?</i>

Sacré Coeur was also built after 1905. That's why 'they' can say "no photos" there but not in the older churches.

Oddly enough, the Grand Mosque of Paris was built by the government in the 1920's. It received a special exemption from the law of 1905 which prevents government financing of new religious buildings. In return, the Grand Mosque accepts the presence of women, and it was also a sanctuary for numerous Jews during WW2.

More recently, in my own neighborhood, the city built the beautiful municipal "Institute for the Cultures of Islam" which has lots of avant-garde exhibitions of modern Arab and Islamic art. But it also left one floor of the building without attribution, and this floor was rented to a Muslim association to house a mosque. A second institute was supposed to be built in the Barbès area, but the mayor changed in the meantime and our new mayor decided that the law of separation had been broken and cancelled the entire project.

Religion of any kind remains a touchy subject in France.

>>>The use of begging baskets passed among the faithful during services should also be banned.

@kerouac

Different religious traditions have different ways of funding their ministries. It is typical in Christian churches to pass an offering plate through the pews at Sunday worship. The members of a church make contributions to pay their clergy, to fund their programs, and otherwise to fund their mission.

Whether contributions are made in the offering plate, by sending a check by mail, or otherwise, why would you want to ban the members of a church funding the ministry of their congregation?

If you don't like the offering baskets, don't put money in them. But (although I don't know about other religions) Catholic Churches need those to upkeep their parishes, for the betterment of their community.

I usually toss some money into the donations box of a historic building, doesn't matter what denomination. Because I don't find the article shocking at all. Old churches always have kind of project involving repair or preservation.

But no, I don't think they should charge an entry fee. I find it kind of disgusting St. Paul's and Westminster do, to be honest. Churches are places of sanctuary, should be open to all. Charge a camera fee, charge a fee for special tours, fine. But no entry fee.

Well, I have not attended any mass in this century, so I have been able to avoid the begging baskets. The last mass I attended was my grandmother's funeral in 1992, where I actually had to perform onstage at the request of the priest. Never again! (My grandmother was a local celebrity since my grandfather was mayor of the village for almost 40 years.)

To return dignity to such things, I fully approve of sending checks or giving money online. Even as a small child, I remember going to mass every Sunday and how everybody would look to see what the other people put in the basket as it made the rounds. I did not see much Christian charity in their eyes if they considered the amount to be insufficient.

"The use of begging baskets passed among the faithful during services should also be banned"

Poster is obviously unaware of the part the offertory plays and has played as part of Christian liturgy. No one is forcing him to give, it's part of the Eucharist and is celebrated as such. He's free to ignore it.

With the increased pressure on these historic structures new ways have to be found for their upkeep. Church as sanctuary or item on top ten list? Notre Dame will find a way to pay but many smaller churches no longer used but with historical traditions dating from the time of, for instance, Bernard of Clairvaux are almost past repair. What will happen to them?

Well, if they're not used any more, it's not the same issue. then some kind of friends of the church group can form and hold fundraisers, charge entry if necessary. It's a museum if it's not a church and I have no issue with museums charging entry. But active churches should not charge entry. goes against their charitable mission. You can donate if you support saving the building, the congregation can contribute if they want to keep the building, the state can close it if they don't want to maintain it.

Kerouac...you do realize that there are offering envelops to "hide" what you toss in the basket. But given that the only people who judge based on that are rude busybodies, I can't imagine caring about their opinions. Those are the same people who judge based on what you're wearing, and what service you attend and the frequency you attend. Life is too short to care what they think.

I'll leave those problems to the faithful.

Just like in Great Britain, quite a few churches have been sold to private interests or demolished. I saw a very appealing Mercure hotel in Poitiers that had integrated a church in its design. And in Abbeville, a church was recently demolished because it no longer served a purpose and repairing it was out of the question. There were protests... but why?

Of course we should not forget that after the Revolution, many churches were turned into warehouses, livestock barns or silos. Some of them were turned into "temples of reason."

However, the dechristianization of France came to an end before the beginning of the 19th century and most of the churches reopened. Nevertheless, France remains the 2nd most atheistic country in the world after Czechia.

"Well, if they're not used any more, it's not the same issue. then some kind of friends of the church group can form and hold fundraisers, charge entry if necessary."

We're talking about France here, where most churches are state owned and the state is responsible for their maintenance. This is not a fundraiser situation but deals more with the allocation of tax dollars.

Friends of Bernard of Clairvaux????

Why should the tourists or the faithful pay for the state's responsibility then?

I would think endowments and fundraisers would go further to repairing churches than taxpayer dollars. Historic buildings usually need an incredible amount of expensive preservation. Relying solely on tax payer dollars seems to be a good way to lose the church.

I don't understand the protests either. I never like to see a historic building get demolished but people want to preserve everything without funding anything. That's not the way it works. I support saving a building through repurposing. Otherwise we wouldn't have some truly incredible buildings or religious art like stained glass windows today.

Why should the tourists or the faithful pay for the state's responsibility then?

Precisely.

But then again,

Tourists want to visit Notre Dame, Cistercian monasteries etc. Of all the visitors to Notre Dame last year, what percentage do you guess were Parisian parishioners?

As pointed out above France is the 2nd most atheistic country in Europe making the faithful few and far between.

The average French person does not care if these relics fall apart. He/she doesn't want his/her tax dollar spent on them instead of roads, schools, sewer lines.

So, as I wrote earlier, new ways of keeping up these structures of historical interest have to be found. In some cases, universities are contributing. In some cases various types of admissions are being charged. Some are being left to crumble. This is an on-going discussion.

Fair point about the visitors.

But on the other hand, it's not tourists that protest demolition or drive fundraising efforts. It's locals. It's people who care more about preservation of heritage than roads and schools. They do exist. If Notre Dame closed today, most people of Paris would be a lot more outraged about that, I bet, than the American tourist who will visit it once because it's in the guidebook.

And there's the fact that people don't get to pay taxes for specific things. They pay taxes to pay for public projects, whether that is potholes or Notre Dame's gargoyles. I want my tax dollars to go to more transit but the lion's share goes to roads that tourists use more than I do. I pay taxes anyway. I willingly donate money for stuff I want preserved. Come to think of it, I'd probably "adopt" one of the Notre Dame's gargoyles before I'd adopt a state highway. There's possible stream of revenue paying for paying for repairs:) let me name him and send me a picture, and I'll give money to paste his ears back on...


It's not just in France. A friend used to work for a Monastery that runs a retreat center as a new source of revenue. The sisters are probably all over the age of 70 and the parish certainly does not have enough devout members to keep the historic buildings open So they've found a way to keep it open to the public without charging for entry to the chapel. I was impressed. They've stayed true to their community mission and it's very well run.

If the state is responsible for upkeep and the monument is one of the most recognizable in France and presumably one reason many tourists flock to Paris then it seems the government should pay for all needed maintenance - the article says specifically that they are looking especially for fat-cat American donors - like the Rockefellers who funded the reconstruction of Carcassonne I believe, etc.

Americans pay enough VAT taxes and hotel taxes and fuel taxes to French government - some of this money should be spent to fix up such tourist sites.