Post: #326

(04-18-2019 08:21 AM)Vladimir Poontang Wrote:  

Post: #327

(04-17-2019 10:28 AM)Aurini Wrote:  They rebel against God, and claim that every man can interpret scripture in his own way, creating a religion of man with the veneer of holiness.

Protestants have a thing called Hermeneutics. Scripture has specific meanings even if such meanings are multiple and multi-dimensional.

For if man every man can redefine what words mean. Words become meaningless.

So I have to disagree on that front if you are talking about Reformed Christianity.

Its not every man interpreting scripture in his own way unless they are proven to be genuine heretics courtesy of the holy word itself.

Post: #328

(04-17-2019 02:36 PM)Vladimir Poontang Wrote:  

Thank you for posting this!

Jones puts on a clinic, tying architecture to logos or irrationality, and gives definitions of styles from the Greek to the Roman to Medieval, Gothic, Brutalist etc..

He shows how the destruction of culture leads directly to inferior architecture.

I also like how he refers to the the reductionist rationality of the Enlightenment, that removes the sacred from sense.

He tears the shit out of Gropius and those modern architects who inflict their glass and concrete boxes on every continent without taking into account local weather and terrain, leading to energy wasted in cold climates and oven like conditions closer to the Equator.

He has special disdain for the Starchitects like Gehry and Pei, dismissing their work thoroughly.

This is one of those great rants that make you feel like you are going from ignorance to total understanding in about 50 minutes, and this video is extremely relevant to what should be done about Notre Dame.

He is the grumpy old man's grumpy old man, and this video reminds me of JF Gariepy laughing after interviewing him saying, this guy is twice our age and has twice our energy.

What a video.

Post: #329

(04-18-2019 03:25 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

(04-17-2019 09:24 PM)mikado Wrote:  No matter the cries of "Christianity! No muslims ! "Etc, Notre-Dame will be rebuilt according to the 21st century.

Meaning French culture, sensibility, and it will respect the French history and the French vision of the future. And as a Muslim I can say : It will be even more magnificent, and will magnify even more Christianism.

I dont believe in a God that has a son, but I can tell you that Neo- Notre-Dame will be even more marvelous. And that these crosses will be even more beautiful.

No matter the cries of "Islam! No christians ! "Etc, Masjid al-Haram will be rebuilt according to the 21st century.

Meaning Saudi culture, sensibility, and it will respect the Saudi history and the Saudi vision of the future. And as a Christian I can say : It will be even more magnificent, and will magnify even more Islam.

I dont believe in a God that doesn't have a son, but I can tell you that Neo- Masjid al-Haram will be even more marvelous. And that these minarets will be even more beautiful.

Thank you for this amazingly thoughtful and respectful post.

Except it's France you're talking about. So I'll double correct for you:

"No matter the cries of "Islam! No christians! " Etc, Masjid al-Haram will be rebuilt according to the 21st century.

Meaning Saudi Qatari culture, sensibility, and it will respect the Saudi Qatari history and the Saudi Qatari vision of the future. And as a Christian I can say : It will be even more magnificent, and will magnify even more Islam.

I dont believe in a God that doesn't have a son, but I can tell you that Neo- Masjid al-Haram will be even more marvelous. And that these minarets will be even more beautiful"

In any case, there is a new "official" narrative to explain the two separate origins of fire reported inside the cathedral within a twenty-minute time-frame. It is due to a "computer glitch". Sure, not to an arsonist starting 2 separate fires, one after the other, which seems the quite obvious explanation. No, it's now considered as a "computer glitch" that sent the firemen to 2 different spots. Might even be true actually, if there was nothing at the first spot...

Of course nobody will be held accountable though, and no official will retire over this. I mean, if it's indeed a computer glitch, why has the dude in charge of the computer security, not resigned? Nowadays, in the West, no official resigns, whatever tragedy happens. Establishment people cling to their golden seats and never accept responsibility, even a symbolic one.

Post: #330

(04-18-2019 09:26 AM)nomadbrah Wrote:  The problem isn't concrete but the materialist reductionism, like Aurini alluded to.

You can build with concrete and slap marble on top of it and make nice ornamentations and no one would be the wiser. Wouldn't be much more expensive either.

You know if concrete is made as good as marble but cheaper. That would be even better.

Post: #331

This is the best tactical summary that I have read yet:

https://www.firerescue1.com/internationa...nd-drones/

Notre Dame fire: Paris Fire Brigade deployed unmanned robots and drones Key tactics impacted command decisions related to saving iconic bell towersYesterday at 2:39 PM

On April 15, the world watched from their homes, businesses, college dorms and schools the catastrophic fire that enveloped the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

I was driving to our Fire Headquarters when I thought I heard the radio announcer say that there was a fire in Paris involving Notre Dame, but I wasn’t sure exactly what had been said. I switched to an all-news radio station and within seconds had that confirmed.

Like most everyone, I sought a television and switched to a cable news station to see the incredible sight of fire leaping through the roof of the cathedral structure near the ornate rear spire. The news anchor indicated that the fire had been reported approximately one hour before, and he kept saying that it appeared that the Paris Fire Brigade, or pompiers as they are called in France, had yet to arrive. Having visited Paris fire stations on several visits to the city, that statement seemed incredulous to me.



My wife, Diana, and I had also gone to Notre Dame on each visit to Paris, and I knew that it sits on an island in the middle of the Seine River along with several government buildings. Access to the island is always very restricted, with the bridges predominately designed for foot traffic. The island separates the famous Left and Right Banks of the Seine, with markets, restaurants and mercantile shops on the nearby Left Bank and a more typical Paris neighborhood on the Right. Access to the island by any motor vehicle is limited at best with bullards acting as barricades to keep safe the throngs of people, predominately tourists, who flock to see Notre Dame at all hours of the day or night.

NOTRE DAME FAMILY PERSPECTIVE AND CONNECTIONS

Taking all of this in, I texted my son, Todd, who was on duty as a fire captain at the Fishers, Indiana, Fire Department, asking if he was watching these events. Soon we were discussing strategies for attacking a fire in a nine-century-old building with a fire in a spire that sits at least 300 feet off the ground. From a firefighter’s perspective, those strategic elements included rescue of anyone inside and any of the artifacts not yet involved in the direct path of the fire that obviously had an incredible head start.

By this time, the news anchors acting as “armchair fire chiefs” had decided that the fire needed to be attacked by everything from an airborne water tanker to fire boats on the Seine. What we know now is the firefighters had done exactly what they needed to do – evacuate the remaining staff and construction workers from the cathedral, save as many of the artifacts and relics as possible, call for additional fire units, and attempt to cut off the fast-moving fire. As we know now, several relics, including the famed “Crown of Thorns,” were saved by the pompiers under the direction of their fire chaplain, Father Jena-Marc Fournier, who had secured the keys to the vaults where they were stored in a lower level of the cathedral.

About this time, my oldest son, Dale, also a certified firefighter but currently on a business trip for the U.S. government in Asia, entered our text exchange. He, too, was watching the same live video, but was in a time zone 12 hours ahead of both Todd and mine.

As the news anchors were lamenting where the firefighters were, we collectively spotted firefighters on balconies with hoselines, stretching additional lines to feed aerial appliances, and eventually entering the iconic twin bell towers in the front of the cathedral to protect them from the impending fire.

At one time, Dale texted that it would be a miracle if none of the firefighters suffered injury or worse from the risks they were taking. Within that hour, the media received the first report of a firefighter injury and that the firefighter was being taken to a nearby hospital. One unconfirmed report indicated the firefighter’s condition was critical, but no further update has yet to be released.


UNIQUE TACTICS EMPLOYED BY PARIS FIRE BRIGADE
In the aftermath of the fire, we’ve become aware of two tactics conducted by the Paris Fire Brigade during this extensive firefight: First, the use of an unmanned robot to enter the collapse area of the sanctuary and vestibule in an attempt to darken down the roof and some of the contents; and second, the use of drones feeding the command and control vehicle with overhead video to get a better perspective of what was involved, what was in imminent danger, and how the pompiers could attempt to cut off the fire’s extension. Obviously, these drones and the unmanned robot played a role in the decision that the bell towers could be approached and subsequently saved.

FIREFIGHTERS SAVE A NATIONAL TREASURE
The fire was both a national tragedy for France and an international tragedy for those of us who marveled at the grace and quiet dignity of an edifice that had withstood nearly 900 years of history. Already nearly $1 billion has been raised for its restoration. I, for one, hope there will be an area set aside reminding the citizens of Paris and the citizens of the world who visit it in the future about the strength, courage and determination of the Paris Fire Brigade whose members saved enough of the structure to see it eventually rise from these ashes to again take its place as an international treasure.

Stay safe!

Note: Chief Rielage will be presenting “The US Fire Service and Its Role in Disaster Preparedness, Response and Mitigation,” a look at the pertinent role of the fire service in disaster preparedness both in the United States and internationally at Fire-Rescue International on Aug. 10. Look for a preview of that presentation in a future article on FireRescue1.com and FireChief.com.

PS Scroll to the bottom of Fire Resue and check out the number 2 trending story on the site.

Post: #332

Quote:He tears the shit out of Gropius and those modern architects who inflict their glass and concrete boxes on every continent...

I can recommend reading Tom Wolfe’s short work “From Bauhaus to Our House”.

Post: #333

^^^great post DBG, yeah EMJ is the man.



Brutalism died out in the 1970s because of style fatigue, but also because by 1980 concrete had become pretty expensive, due to the costs of energy blowing up, so buildings became leaner, by necessity.

Concrete behemoths like the Olympic Stadium in Montreal that use a mountain of concrete would cost billions today:



Even the relatively smaller and leaner brutalist concrete-ribbed Parc des Princes in Paris would be too expensive today:




I kind of agree with Rigs, there are many interesting and gorgeous brutalist buildings, though the majority are drab, and yes, a bit oppressive.

Here are some of my faves:


Charles de Gaulle Airport, the original one (Terminal 1), locally known as "le camembert":

Post: #334

And more brilliant brutalism, from Canada's greatest architect, Arthur Erickson:

Post: #335

Let's have something nice for a change:

Post: #336

Even prefab concrete slab buildings don't have to be total abominations.

I suspect sheer autism is the cause of most of these slab-sided concrete tombs.



There's no reason that they can't be made just a touch more approachable. Some of these designs even look better when the wall is dirty which is the opposite of the standard blank facing which has to be kept meticulously clean to appear acceptable. Cleaning concrete is a self-defeating process. The more you have to scrub it the faster it degrades and the faster it becomes dirty again.

Post: #337

(04-18-2019 09:49 AM)Ouroboros Wrote:  

(04-18-2019 08:21 AM)Vladimir Poontang Wrote:  

Do you believe this could never become a reality?
The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul) dates back to 532, and was the most spectacular building in Christendom, probably the world. It would have been unthinkable that it would ever be turned into a mosque. Now it looks like this:




That's the Eastern Orthodox equivalent of St Peter's Basilica in Rome raising the star and crescent. Which by the way is more than likely to happen in the future.

As the demographics of Europe change and more Christian places of worship are turned into mosques, there's every reason to believe the possibility that in 100 years, the call to prayer will be broadcast from the minarets of a rebuilt Notre Dame.

Post: #338

(04-19-2019 04:41 AM)Horus Wrote:  

(04-18-2019 09:49 AM)Ouroboros Wrote:  

(04-18-2019 08:21 AM)Vladimir Poontang Wrote:  

Do you believe this could never become a reality?
The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul) dates back to 532, and was the most spectacular building in Christendom, probably the world. It would have been unthinkable that it would ever be turned into a mosque. Now it looks like this:




That's the Eastern Orthodox equivalent of St Peter's Basilica in Rome raising the star and crescent. Which by the way is more than likely to happen in the future.

As the demographics of Europe change and more Christian places of worship are turned into mosques, there's every reason to believe the possibility that in 100 years, the call to prayer will be broadcast from the minarets of a rebuilt Notre Dame.

Certainly it's possible. Plenty of churches/mosques/temples are built on the remnants of buildings dedicated to the previous dominant religion. Notre Dame itself was apparently built on the site of a temple of Jupiter.

I was amused at that post because it's just the sort of blatant act of self-abasement that one imagines when Macron speaks of rebuilding Notre Dame 'even more beautifully'.

Post: #339

Here is a brilliant article by the Croatian conservative columnist Marcel Holjevac - I ran it through Google Translate which did a pathetic job, but I manually trimmed, corrected and beautified some parts:

Marcel Holjevac Wrote:Is it necessary for the cathedral to burn down for us to notice that Christianity is in the foundations of our world?

There are many French - and not just those - only when Notre Dame cathedral burns has become aware of its meaning, even superficially. Made into a dumbed-down tourist attraction, neglected, even decayed long before this fire, it was actually condemned to slow death. Without enough money for repairs, the almost 900 years old state-owned building was doomed. The fire only accelerated what happened slowly and imperceptibly, and turned the world's attention to one of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals from the 12th century from the times when people made incredible efforts to celebrate God, and when these efforts have resulted in incredible achievements, and the Gothic cathedral is hardly more magnificient.

And it is not (only) the "cultural heritage of mankind," a dead monument of the past, but a living Church in which they continued to sing choirs, masses were maintained. It was not built to be a monument of culture, but a place of prayer; it was not built to be visited by tourists, but by Christians; her door was always open to all, but she was always Christian.

Christianity had burned down in France long before the cathedral

Eiffel Tower, they say, symbolizes Paris, but Notre-Dame symbolizes France. However, what no one states is that France of Notre Dame is not some random France without roots; it is Christian France, a proud and once incredibly powerful state that has given so much to civilization, which enriched our world with so much that it does not make sense to list it. In the fields of culture, science and art, France had little competition until the rise of the new world, the former colonies, new world rulers and its consequent transformation of the old world country into a glorified tourist resort for Arabs and Africans. And today France is ashamed of its magnificent past, while its past is proud of those who have no such things!

"Notre Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the site of our great events, epidemics, wars, our liberation, the epicenter of our lives," Macron said. That's new. Until now, however, we were only able to hear that European history, literature, psyche, culture and lives had nothing to do with Christianity. So at least it is written even in the EU Constitution (out of all places). After the long debates about the Union's fundamental document, the Christian roots of the continent did not manage to enter it.

Our Europe is secular, although many scholars of secularism do not even know what that word means. A secular state would have to treat atheism and every religion equally; in practice, the secular state is mostly atheistic. Believers are often mocked and humiliated and the media propaganda is systematically against them. We often hear every day that we would have already colonized Mars and discovered a cure for cancer were it not for church and religion, without questioning why it was not done by the Chinese who for five thousand years were mostly atheists, or even our local Roma people. And then, when such a fire happens, all of them are full of understanding, then the Christian cultural heritage is at the same time worldwide, then all cry crocodile tears for the cathedral.

Return of regressive ideologies of the nineteenth century

And many people do not know that our time is not the first such time. It is little known that the 19th century was extremely anti-religious, more than ours, and that the character of the French Revolution was primarily anti-Christian. It was expected that the liberation of man from "the bond of religion" would lead to total progress, but that did not happen. There was barbarism, so the Church of Notre Dame was then killed - not by fire or by the savages, but by the citizens of France, who started the revolution with the idea of ​​robbery of the ecclesiastical, then immense wealth.

As we know, "secular" France, established after the revolution, has abundantly violated all human and civil rights, as well as all the principles it has declared itself, giving humanity the word "terror". Immediately after the Revolution, all ecclesiastical property was confiscated, followed by the destruction of the crosses, statues, bells and every Christian iconography, and the establishment of "revolutionary and civic" cults such as the "Gold of Reason" and the "Gold of the Supreme Being" imagined to replace Christian culture and tradition. Of course, there wasn't even a trace of reason in there.

Under the threat of death or imprisonment, about twenty thousand priests agreed to abdicate and abandon Christianity, handing it in writing under compulsion. Six thousand have agreed, or been forced, to marry. Some kept on performing their priestly duties in secret. By the end of the last decade of the nineteenth century, some thirty thousand priests were forced to leave France and those who refused were executed. Until Easter in 1794, only a few of forty thousand churches in France remained open; others are closed, sold, destroyed, or overwhelmed.

Revolutionary terror

Terror took between 20,000 and 40,000 lives, and among those killed, it is estimated that eight per cent of the aristocracy members, six percent were priests, 14 percent of the middle class (bourgeoisie), and the other around 70 percent workers and peasants. Of all these social groups, the Catholic clergy suffered the most severe losses. The attitude of most historians is that the campaign of de-Christianization was primarily motivated by the plundering of church gold and property, but also by exploiting the low passions in the nation by new populist rulers.

At the Notre-Dame Cathedral, at the front, there are still traces of that past "activism", which would probably be called "anti-fascist" today. The tower that crashed during the fire was not the original tower from the 13th century. The one that collapsed last week is actually from 19th when the cathedral was restored following the damage suffered under Reign of Terror. Christianity, after the revolution did not result in the expected outcome, returned in a grand fashion, and the cathedral was restored. Likewise, as well as after communism in Eastern Europe: All promises of prosperity without the church and the clergy not only proved to be false, but showed that without our Christian foundations, our society can not function, at least in a humane way.

Immediately before the fire in Notre Dame, the media, indeed very shyly, began to write about the phenomenon of frequent vandalism of Catholic churches in France, mostly by frustrated feminists or various anti-something pushed by aggressive mainstream media. So we got double standards; while placing bacon on the mosque door, perhaps a shameless but still a joke that did not really harm anyone, resulted in a long-term prison sentence that had not ended a year or so after the perpetrator was murdered by an Islamist who long dominate, thousands of church vandalisms and burnings fly under the radar. Whether by Antifa or ISIL, there is, however, every week at least one church destroyed in France.

Churches do not have to burn to fall

To make it worse, more and more churches in France every year were set for demolition. Some of them are valuable, but there is no money for maintenance: the secular state has too many priorities, such as the integration of illegal immigrants. According to the French Senate's report, 2,800 churches across the country, many of them old for centuries, will be demolished because the cost of reconstruction will exceed the budget.

Since the number of Frenchs in France continues to decline due to record low birth rates, high emigration and Muslim immigration, the number of Catholics is declining, which is now historically the lowest. For many cities in France, especially cities where minorities are Christians, lack of interest and high ground prices where churches simply do not justify the cost of restoring churches. Many mayors chose a cheaper downturn over expensive restorations. Thousands of churches will be demolished over the next few years and will be replaced by shopping malls, shops, flats or such a defective parking lot. On the other hand, mosques are everywhere. The Great Mosque in Paris has recently received a modern, fully-movable roof, as is usually found only in football stadiums.

In addition, Catholic churches in France are often victims of firefighting, vandalism, scribbling statues and destroying the Eucharist. The attacks have been frequent since the beginning of the year. Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, where Da Vinci's movie was shot, was set ablaze in March. Firefighters and police said the fire was definitely arson, and that's just one in a row.

Is there any kind of revolutionary time coming back with today's aggressive secularism? Does it seek to remove Catholics from all public spaces, whether it is banning any public expression of any beliefs or any cultural identity, identity that is not related to sexuality? Do people who are currently reviving the methods and ideas of the 19th century really believe that they are so advanced and modern? And should we ever have a cathedral in the 21st century, when it is for most people only a part of our heritage, but not part of our lives?

Absence of appreciation for own cultural heritage

Young anti-fascist tweeters are disgruntled that money is being collected for a "building" while in Africa there are hungry and those who have no access to water or that the "overflowing" Catholic church asks for help from the state to maintain the cathedral, not knowing that this cathedral, like the rest of France, has long since been seized by the government that does not care about maintaining it, only pillaging it. They are shocked by the fact that somehow someone might suspect that a fire might be an act of arson, although only four days before that, three young Muslims were convicted of planning to burn a large amount of gasoline to Notre Dame. The media condemn "conspiracy theories" that a fire might actually be an arson, while at the same time seeing nothing wrong in the authorities knowing that it was not even before any investigation. As soon as the cathedral was burned, it was reported that the fire broke out accidentally, which was extremely inexcusable. Simply, this can not be reliably known at this time.

And there is obviously hostility to our own cultural and religious heritage, the same one that has enabled us to be where we are - far ahead of Africa, Asia and other parts of the world, from where immigrants flourish to Europe. This is a matter of perverted and unreasonable ways of thinking, which is emphasized by today's education, which is more appreciative of the cheap and keen sentimentality of ethics, the sophism of the argument.

The fact is that the symbols of old, Christian Europe are becoming less visible, while symbols of new ones, such as gay pride, burqa, and people with strange hair colors and tattoos or extreme excess pounds become more and more visible. What does it mean today to be a Europeans, except to have an EU country certificate? In a cultural sense? And should we ever have a cathedral, if most of its people can see only "a building" or "a pile of stones"?

Death of Cathedrals by Marcel Proust

It should be, but as a living cathedral, as a gathering place for Christians, not as a tourist attraction. The best answer to all the above questions, however, gave Marcel Proust in the essay "The Death of the Cathedral and the Rites for which it Was Built": It was published on August 16, 1904 in the Le Figaro magazine.

At that time, a great debate took place in the French political circles, as the atheists throughout the parliament chose to unilaterally abolish the Napoleonic Concordat and the complete secularization of the French Republic (which would become the 1905 Law of Separation of the Church and State, known as Briand's Law). Proust correctly concluded, and this can be seen today, more than a hundred years later, that Briand's law will ultimately lead to the very thing that led to the destruction of the cathedral, the church, and the attacks of the savage and progressive barbarians on them - and the decline of the spirit nations

Proust, a homosexual and agnostic, but who never denied or ceased to be proud of his Catholic roots and upbringing, could not remain silent. How much time has changed since then, and what agnostic would say that today, let alone a homosexual!

Today, it is impossible to deny that Proust was absolutely right.

https://narod.hr/hrvatska/marcel-holjeva...OQRwmOXCWI

Post: #340

Found a pic of the new spire:

Post: #341

(04-19-2019 06:43 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Here is a brilliant article by the Croatian conservative columnist Marcel Holjevac - I ran it through Google Translate which did a pathetic job, but I manually trimmed, corrected and beautified some parts:

Marcel Holjevac Wrote:Is it necessary for the cathedral to burn down for us to notice that Christianity is in the foundations of our world?

There are many French - and not just those - only when Notre Dame cathedral burns has become aware of its meaning, even superficially. Made into a dumbed-down tourist attraction, neglected, even decayed long before this fire, it was actually condemned to slow death. Without enough money for repairs, the almost 900 years old state-owned building was doomed. The fire only accelerated what happened slowly and imperceptibly, and turned the world's attention to one of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals from the 12th century from the times when people made incredible efforts to celebrate God, and when these efforts have resulted in incredible achievements, and the Gothic cathedral is hardly more magnificient.

And it is not (only) the "cultural heritage of mankind," a dead monument of the past, but a living Church in which they continued to sing choirs, masses were maintained. It was not built to be a monument of culture, but a place of prayer; it was not built to be visited by tourists, but by Christians; her door was always open to all, but she was always Christian.

Christianity had burned down in France long before the cathedral

Eiffel Tower, they say, symbolizes Paris, but Notre-Dame symbolizes France. However, what no one states is that France of Notre Dame is not some random France without roots; it is Christian France, a proud and once incredibly powerful state that has given so much to civilization, which enriched our world with so much that it does not make sense to list it. In the fields of culture, science and art, France had little competition until the rise of the new world, the former colonies, new world rulers and its consequent transformation of the old world country into a glorified tourist resort for Arabs and Africans. And today France is ashamed of its magnificent past, while its past is proud of those who have no such things!

"Notre Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the site of our great events, epidemics, wars, our liberation, the epicenter of our lives," Macron said. That's new. Until now, however, we were only able to hear that European history, literature, psyche, culture and lives had nothing to do with Christianity. So at least it is written even in the EU Constitution (out of all places). After the long debates about the Union's fundamental document, the Christian roots of the continent did not manage to enter it.

Our Europe is secular, although many scholars of secularism do not even know what that word means. A secular state would have to treat atheism and every religion equally; in practice, the secular state is mostly atheistic. Believers are often mocked and humiliated and the media propaganda is systematically against them. We often hear every day that we would have already colonized Mars and discovered a cure for cancer were it not for church and religion, without questioning why it was not done by the Chinese who for five thousand years were mostly atheists, or even our local Roma people. And then, when such a fire happens, all of them are full of understanding, then the Christian cultural heritage is at the same time worldwide, then all cry crocodile tears for the cathedral.

Return of regressive ideologies of the nineteenth century

And many people do not know that our time is not the first such time. It is little known that the 19th century was extremely anti-religious, more than ours, and that the character of the French Revolution was primarily anti-Christian. It was expected that the liberation of man from "the bond of religion" would lead to total progress, but that did not happen. There was barbarism, so the Church of Notre Dame was then killed - not by fire or by the savages, but by the citizens of France, who started the revolution with the idea of ​​robbery of the ecclesiastical, then immense wealth.

As we know, "secular" France, established after the revolution, has abundantly violated all human and civil rights, as well as all the principles it has declared itself, giving humanity the word "terror". Immediately after the Revolution, all ecclesiastical property was confiscated, followed by the destruction of the crosses, statues, bells and every Christian iconography, and the establishment of "revolutionary and civic" cults such as the "Gold of Reason" and the "Gold of the Supreme Being" imagined to replace Christian culture and tradition. Of course, there wasn't even a trace of reason in there.

Under the threat of death or imprisonment, about twenty thousand priests agreed to abdicate and abandon Christianity, handing it in writing under compulsion. Six thousand have agreed, or been forced, to marry. Some kept on performing their priestly duties in secret. By the end of the last decade of the nineteenth century, some thirty thousand priests were forced to leave France and those who refused were executed. Until Easter in 1794, only a few of forty thousand churches in France remained open; others are closed, sold, destroyed, or overwhelmed.

Revolutionary terror

Terror took between 20,000 and 40,000 lives, and among those killed, it is estimated that eight per cent of the aristocracy members, six percent were priests, 14 percent of the middle class (bourgeoisie), and the other around 70 percent workers and peasants. Of all these social groups, the Catholic clergy suffered the most severe losses. The attitude of most historians is that the campaign of de-Christianization was primarily motivated by the plundering of church gold and property, but also by exploiting the low passions in the nation by new populist rulers.

At the Notre-Dame Cathedral, at the front, there are still traces of that past "activism", which would probably be called "anti-fascist" today. The tower that crashed during the fire was not the original tower from the 13th century. The one that collapsed last week is actually from 19th when the cathedral was restored following the damage suffered under Reign of Terror. Christianity, after the revolution did not result in the expected outcome, returned in a grand fashion, and the cathedral was restored. Likewise, as well as after communism in Eastern Europe: All promises of prosperity without the church and the clergy not only proved to be false, but showed that without our Christian foundations, our society can not function, at least in a humane way.

Immediately before the fire in Notre Dame, the media, indeed very shyly, began to write about the phenomenon of frequent vandalism of Catholic churches in France, mostly by frustrated feminists or various anti-something pushed by aggressive mainstream media. So we got double standards; while placing bacon on the mosque door, perhaps a shameless but still a joke that did not really harm anyone, resulted in a long-term prison sentence that had not ended a year or so after the perpetrator was murdered by an Islamist who long dominate, thousands of church vandalisms and burnings fly under the radar. Whether by Antifa or ISIL, there is, however, every week at least one church destroyed in France.

Churches do not have to burn to fall

To make it worse, more and more churches in France every year were set for demolition. Some of them are valuable, but there is no money for maintenance: the secular state has too many priorities, such as the integration of illegal immigrants. According to the French Senate's report, 2,800 churches across the country, many of them old for centuries, will be demolished because the cost of reconstruction will exceed the budget.

Since the number of Frenchs in France continues to decline due to record low birth rates, high emigration and Muslim immigration, the number of Catholics is declining, which is now historically the lowest. For many cities in France, especially cities where minorities are Christians, lack of interest and high ground prices where churches simply do not justify the cost of restoring churches. Many mayors chose a cheaper downturn over expensive restorations. Thousands of churches will be demolished over the next few years and will be replaced by shopping malls, shops, flats or such a defective parking lot. On the other hand, mosques are everywhere. The Great Mosque in Paris has recently received a modern, fully-movable roof, as is usually found only in football stadiums.

In addition, Catholic churches in France are often victims of firefighting, vandalism, scribbling statues and destroying the Eucharist. The attacks have been frequent since the beginning of the year. Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, where Da Vinci's movie was shot, was set ablaze in March. Firefighters and police said the fire was definitely arson, and that's just one in a row.

Is there any kind of revolutionary time coming back with today's aggressive secularism? Does it seek to remove Catholics from all public spaces, whether it is banning any public expression of any beliefs or any cultural identity, identity that is not related to sexuality? Do people who are currently reviving the methods and ideas of the 19th century really believe that they are so advanced and modern? And should we ever have a cathedral in the 21st century, when it is for most people only a part of our heritage, but not part of our lives?

Absence of appreciation for own cultural heritage

Young anti-fascist tweeters are disgruntled that money is being collected for a "building" while in Africa there are hungry and those who have no access to water or that the "overflowing" Catholic church asks for help from the state to maintain the cathedral, not knowing that this cathedral, like the rest of France, has long since been seized by the government that does not care about maintaining it, only pillaging it. They are shocked by the fact that somehow someone might suspect that a fire might be an act of arson, although only four days before that, three young Muslims were convicted of planning to burn a large amount of gasoline to Notre Dame. The media condemn "conspiracy theories" that a fire might actually be an arson, while at the same time seeing nothing wrong in the authorities knowing that it was not even before any investigation. As soon as the cathedral was burned, it was reported that the fire broke out accidentally, which was extremely inexcusable. Simply, this can not be reliably known at this time.

And there is obviously hostility to our own cultural and religious heritage, the same one that has enabled us to be where we are - far ahead of Africa, Asia and other parts of the world, from where immigrants flourish to Europe. This is a matter of perverted and unreasonable ways of thinking, which is emphasized by today's education, which is more appreciative of the cheap and keen sentimentality of ethics, the sophism of the argument.

The fact is that the symbols of old, Christian Europe are becoming less visible, while symbols of new ones, such as gay pride, burqa, and people with strange hair colors and tattoos or extreme excess pounds become more and more visible. What does it mean today to be a Europeans, except to have an EU country certificate? In a cultural sense? And should we ever have a cathedral, if most of its people can see only "a building" or "a pile of stones"?

Death of Cathedrals by Marcel Proust

It should be, but as a living cathedral, as a gathering place for Christians, not as a tourist attraction. The best answer to all the above questions, however, gave Marcel Proust in the essay "The Death of the Cathedral and the Rites for which it Was Built": It was published on August 16, 1904 in the Le Figaro magazine.

At that time, a great debate took place in the French political circles, as the atheists throughout the parliament chose to unilaterally abolish the Napoleonic Concordat and the complete secularization of the French Republic (which would become the 1905 Law of Separation of the Church and State, known as Briand's Law). Proust correctly concluded, and this can be seen today, more than a hundred years later, that Briand's law will ultimately lead to the very thing that led to the destruction of the cathedral, the church, and the attacks of the savage and progressive barbarians on them - and the decline of the spirit nations

Proust, a homosexual and agnostic, but who never denied or ceased to be proud of his Catholic roots and upbringing, could not remain silent. How much time has changed since then, and what agnostic would say that today, let alone a homosexual!

Today, it is impossible to deny that Proust was absolutely right.

https://narod.hr/hrvatska/marcel-holjeva...OQRwmOXCWI

Thanks for the translation Handsome Creepy Eel, great work.

It's a good analysis by this Croatian guy and it's nice to be able to read it.

I've traveled through Croatia and was pleasantly surprised to see that they are really devout catholics. Every masses that I attended was full, with lots of young people, even on week days. They are also really red pill.
So that doesn't surprise me that such an analysis comes from a croatian guy.

It's sad that I didn't hear or read anything of that substance from a french person...

Post: #342

Just to show I am not a complete concretophobe, one of the most beautiful churches I have ever been in is the The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Berkeley, of all places, designed in 1910 by Bernard Maybeck, and it integrates exposed concrete into it exterior in a sophisticated way.

Still, it isn't as beautiful as the Wisteria and the wood that it complements.















If anyone is interested in architecture from the Arts and Crafts school, check out Bernard Maybeck, he is a home town hero around the San Francisco Bay that everyone should know about.

Post: #343

A concrete church done right:

Post: #344

DBG - Maybeck is definitely one of the greatest American architects ever. Julia Morgan was his pupil, she also studied at the Beaux Arts in Paris. Morgan designed the Hearst Castle:



Nomad - that church in Reykjavik reminds me of the Grundtvig church in Copenhagen, very austere in that northern Protestant ethos, but pretty neat nevertheless, halfway between modernity and classic lines:

Post: #345

(04-19-2019 09:53 AM)Deusleveult Wrote:  

(04-19-2019 06:43 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Here is a brilliant article by the Croatian conservative columnist Marcel Holjevac - I ran it through Google Translate which did a pathetic job, but I manually trimmed, corrected and beautified some parts:

Marcel Holjevac Wrote:Is it necessary for the cathedral to burn down for us to notice that Christianity is in the foundations of our world?

There are many French - and not just those - only when Notre Dame cathedral burns has become aware of its meaning, even superficially. Made into a dumbed-down tourist attraction, neglected, even decayed long before this fire, it was actually condemned to slow death. Without enough money for repairs, the almost 900 years old state-owned building was doomed. The fire only accelerated what happened slowly and imperceptibly, and turned the world's attention to one of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals from the 12th century from the times when people made incredible efforts to celebrate God, and when these efforts have resulted in incredible achievements, and the Gothic cathedral is hardly more magnificient.

...

Today, it is impossible to deny that Proust was absolutely right.

https://narod.hr/hrvatska/marcel-holjeva...OQRwmOXCWI

Thanks for the translation Handsome Creepy Eel, great work.

It's a good analysis by this Croatian guy and it's nice to be able to read it.

I've traveled through Croatia and was pleasantly surprised to see that they are really devout catholics. Every masses that I attended was full, with lots of young people, even on week days. They are also really red pill.
So that doesn't surprise me that such an analysis comes from a croatian guy.

It's sad that I didn't hear or read anything of that substance from a french person...

It sounds a lot like something Philippe Ploncard d'Assac (leader of the Cercles Nationalistes Français) would say, are you familiar with him?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLDRl9d...a0U2TpcCUg

Also Pierre Hillard, Lucien Cerise, Marion Sigaut, I presume you are familiar with their great work?

Post: #346

(04-19-2019 11:44 AM)911 Wrote:  

(04-19-2019 09:53 AM)Deusleveult Wrote:  

(04-19-2019 06:43 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Here is a brilliant article by the Croatian conservative columnist Marcel Holjevac - I ran it through Google Translate which did a pathetic job, but I manually trimmed, corrected and beautified some parts:

Marcel Holjevac Wrote:Is it necessary for the cathedral to burn down for us to notice that Christianity is in the foundations of our world?

There are many French - and not just those - only when Notre Dame cathedral burns has become aware of its meaning, even superficially. Made into a dumbed-down tourist attraction, neglected, even decayed long before this fire, it was actually condemned to slow death. Without enough money for repairs, the almost 900 years old state-owned building was doomed. The fire only accelerated what happened slowly and imperceptibly, and turned the world's attention to one of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals from the 12th century from the times when people made incredible efforts to celebrate God, and when these efforts have resulted in incredible achievements, and the Gothic cathedral is hardly more magnificient.

...

Today, it is impossible to deny that Proust was absolutely right.

https://narod.hr/hrvatska/marcel-holjeva...OQRwmOXCWI

Thanks for the translation Handsome Creepy Eel, great work.

It's a good analysis by this Croatian guy and it's nice to be able to read it.

I've traveled through Croatia and was pleasantly surprised to see that they are really devout catholics. Every masses that I attended was full, with lots of young people, even on week days. They are also really red pill.
So that doesn't surprise me that such an analysis comes from a croatian guy.

It's sad that I didn't hear or read anything of that substance from a french person...

It sounds a lot like something Philippe Ploncard d'Assac (leader of the Cercles Nationalistes Français) would say, are you familiar with him?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLDRl9d...a0U2TpcCUg

Also Pierre Hillard, Lucien Cerise, Marion Sigaut, I presume you are familiar with their great work?

I am familiar with Pierre Hillard and Marion Sigaut but not the others two.
I will look them up, thanks!


Also I don't understand how you guys see beauty in those concrete churches. The exteriors are fucking ugly!

Compared to these:

Post: #347

Attacking concrete is like attacking modernity.

Post: #348

Attacking concrete is a dogwhistle for racists.

Post: #349

(04-19-2019 02:14 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  Attacking concrete is like attacking modernity.

Well, who even likes modernity? Huh?

Post: #350

(04-19-2019 11:44 AM)911 Wrote:  

(04-19-2019 09:53 AM)Deusleveult Wrote:  

(04-19-2019 06:43 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Here is a brilliant article by the Croatian conservative columnist Marcel Holjevac - I ran it through Google Translate which did a pathetic job, but I manually trimmed, corrected and beautified some parts:

Marcel Holjevac Wrote:Is it necessary for the cathedral to burn down for us to notice that Christianity is in the foundations of our world?

There are many French - and not just those - only when Notre Dame cathedral burns has become aware of its meaning, even superficially. Made into a dumbed-down tourist attraction, neglected, even decayed long before this fire, it was actually condemned to slow death. Without enough money for repairs, the almost 900 years old state-owned building was doomed. The fire only accelerated what happened slowly and imperceptibly, and turned the world's attention to one of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals from the 12th century from the times when people made incredible efforts to celebrate God, and when these efforts have resulted in incredible achievements, and the Gothic cathedral is hardly more magnificient.

...

Today, it is impossible to deny that Proust was absolutely right.

https://narod.hr/hrvatska/marcel-holjeva...OQRwmOXCWI

Thanks for the translation Handsome Creepy Eel, great work.

It's a good analysis by this Croatian guy and it's nice to be able to read it.

I've traveled through Croatia and was pleasantly surprised to see that they are really devout catholics. Every masses that I attended was full, with lots of young people, even on week days. They are also really red pill.
So that doesn't surprise me that such an analysis comes from a croatian guy.

It's sad that I didn't hear or read anything of that substance from a french person...

It sounds a lot like something Philippe Ploncard d'Assac (leader of the Cercles Nationalistes Français) would say, are you familiar with him?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLDRl9d...a0U2TpcCUg

Also Pierre Hillard, Lucien Cerise, Marion Sigaut, I presume you are familiar with their great work?

Sorry, I've never heard of them... and sadly I don't speak French so I can't follow them. I only know how to say "Un whiskey, s'il vous plait"