Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, is on fire

Discussion in 'The Signs of the Times' started by BrianK, Apr 15, 2019.

  1. HeavenlyHosts

    HeavenlyHosts Powers

    I actually agree with you on this, Richard.:D
    I think this card was for the Universal Church.
    IMHO
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2019
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  2. No Accident?
    Posted on April 25, 2019 by Baron Bodissey



    [​IMG]

    If the catastrophic fire at Notre-Dame de Paris was a simple accident, why has the French government forbidden state-employed architects to give any further interviews about the fire?

    Many thanks to Nathalie for translating this article from Riposte Laïque:

    No, no, no, the blaze that engulfed Notre-Dame cannot have been an accident, and here’s why:

    Article 1

    The Ministry of Culture is said to have forbidden the architects who work for the “Monuments Historiques” [state body in charge of preserving the architectural heritage of France] to give interviews on the subject of Notre-Dame.


    Article 2

    In this, our second article, we print a series of common sense questions and comments made by Yves-Marie Laulan, an economist and the director of the Geopolitical Institute.

    Whilst I do not wish to embrace the wild theories of “conspiracy theorists”, I cannot but ask myself a few intriguing questions regarding the blaze which engulfed Notre-Dame de Paris.

    1. How could those massive centuries-old oak beams go up in flames, like a humble matchstick? Everyone knows that seasoned oak timber dry with time and become as hard as concrete. By what means is it possible to set fire to that kind of centuries-old hardwood?
    2. The fire started at the base of the cathedral spire. What was the spire resting on? How was it anchored to the underlying timber framework?
    3. How could this gigantic frame of both wood and metal burst into flames without the help of some sort of highly combustible material placed either at its base or close by (wood shavings, dead leaves, the odd vegetable matter, or liquid accelerant)?
    4. How can we account for the speed at which the fire spread from the base of the spire to the whole roof if there was no highly combustible material present on the roof of the cathedral?


    5. How is it that some people could, without being hindered at all or encountering any difficulties, meander freely on the roof of the cathedral, as though they were on a public thoroughfare, climbing up the scaffoldings that had been erected against the planned restoration work, and this, just a few hours (or minutes) before the fire started. (Go have a look at the pictures online, especially the selfie of a blond young man, whose silhouette can be seen between the two towers.) Further to some enquiries, we learn that it might have been Simon Nogueira, who, we’ve been told is a professional “free runner”. And if this juvenile “hero” was able to climb up to the roof without being stopped, others less well-intentioned would have been able to do so as well. Food for thought.

    To make a long story short, this waste of cosmic proportions is only a reflection of the utter incompetence of the religious authorities who were officiating daily in the cathedral, as well as that of the state as represented by the pleasant Stéphane Berg, a man who was supposedly in charge of the preservation of our heritage. And let’s not mention the Paris City Council and the Ministry of Culture.

    This coterie of parasitical nonentities were prancing about and congratulating themselves on the day of the official inauguration, without, for one second, sparing a thought for the fire safety procedures that should have been in place in the sacred building, whose safekeeping was their responsibility.

    None of them could organise a piss-up in a brewery, not that this should come as a surprise.

    When all is said and done, this horrendous catastrophe, without precedent or real explanation, reflects the Wrath of God. (As the Serbs rightfully contend, who are, contrary to others, in permanent touch with Divine Power.)

    On the other hand, a foreigner of a less charitable bent will conclude that the French are incapable of safeguarding their own historical marvels.

    https://gatesofvienna.net/2019/04/no-accident/
     
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  3. padraig

    padraig Powers

    I also noticed on the media no one even once suggested that it was arson/ a Terrorist attack; not once. But it was the very first thing that sprang to my and I am sure most peoples minds. But no one even appeared to consider the possibility I still think the whole deal is very highly suspicious.

    May the Good God lead us to the Truth....for it is the Truth that will set us free. Not these endless lies we are fed.

     
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  4. Fatima

    Fatima Powers

    Also, the PC group of politicians were quick to say it was an electrical fire without one shred of evidence to the substantiate their claim. This is a cover up. You don't say it was caused by electrical short unless you can prove it. I suppose all the other church burnings and destruction in France at the same time was electrical too! Get used to it, much much more is coming to every Catholic church in the near future. It has been foretold.
     
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  5. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Although something Michael Matt said gives me pause. People who do things like burn down Cathedrals like nothing better than attention. Yet no one has claimed to have burnt Notre Dame. As Michael says they usually rush to claim stuff like this though no one has.

    Strange.

    I guess we will never really know.

    I remain very suspicious; but who knows really? We can only guess. I certainly do not trust the Media or French Government, but what can you do?
     
  6. lynnfiat

    lynnfiat Fiat Voluntas Tua

  7. Dolours

    Dolours Guest

    The burning church in the building can't be Notre Dame because it's a separate building. Do a search for Sainte Chapelle and you will see how similar it is to that church. Notre Dame's spire was behind the two towers. The burning roof and spire in the picture is a different building not attached to Notre Dame's towers which are on the left of the picture. As to the church with the dome, there's an awful lot of dome visible without any sign of the roof of St. Peter's where the statues overlook St. Peter's Square.

    Ste. Chapelle is the only church in the picture which is actually on fire. The other flames could be rising from commercial and domestic buildings in Paris.

    The members of the firing squad in the picture don't seem to be wearing uniforms, so perhaps they are meant to be Communards. It looks like one person has already been shot and is lying dead at the feet of the man with his arm raised. The murdered Archbishop of Paris forgave and blessed his executioners, so perhaps the man in the picture is the Archbishop raising his hand in blessing. The person behind him looks like a lady with her head bowed, possibly in prayer as she prepares to face the firing squad.

    I can't figure out who the lady in the foreground beside Jesus is meant to be. Could it be Our Blessed Mother?
     
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  8. One wonders if there is no claim on this internationally beloved spot it isn't because the inroads of the terrorists have already been made into France and the terrorist types don't want to have the world come down heavy on this very permissive Macron govt. That same govt. had already pretty much allowed all the rest of the attacks go w/o much attention given to them., It could be a major sign to their own (also a recruiting method) an that, after the many many other attacks/desecrations against the mostly unreported Catholic shrines, that they have succeeded in a major goal and succeeded in terrorizing even those in the places of authority. With Londonistan also throwing out the welcome mat will this lead to a major Christian church there, major monument like St. Paul's, be just around the corner?

    And what added to the unbelievability of the early excuses for such a fast and major destruction of ND was they were made while the fire was still growing and no one could at that point know anything about any real cause.

    One might assume that this current Pope would be the last one to make demands for an international inspection, by Catholic architects of faithful reputation, to better get at the truth. Too un-pc!
     
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  9. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Yes, I have been thinking of this. A child with a box of matches could do it.

    What if the reaosn that they do not claim Notre Dame is that they are planning to burn down a whole series of Cathedral's like , say , St Peter's in Rome of St Patrick's in New York. If they claimed Notre Dame these places would no longer be wide open. Better to burn the lot and then claim them all.

    Who knows really.
     
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  10. One can't really tell how far the fire from the middle positioned church might be burning in the background since those bell towers of ND in pic aren't on fire, but then they were saved from the major flames behind them in this current destruction. Could this pic be THAT prophetically correct?

    Seems like a warning that it won't be long after such structural destruction/desecration takes place that the local faithful will be martyred. And we're hearing from all parts of the world, simultaneously with this ND fire, about the targeting and slaughter of more and more Christians.

    Could such compromised and inept govts who serve up their best to slaughter be the cause for a renewal of the monarchy, esp. in France, and bring on the predicted holy monarch?

    This should bring on another discussion about those eligible, esp. in France!! Like the younger one living in Spain!

    Here we go again:



    Apparently this Orleans contender passed away this past Jan:

    [​IMG]
    FILE PHOTO: Paris Count Henri d'Orleans and his wife Micaela Cousino Quinones de Leon attend a ceremony at Paris Invalides
    Thomson Reuters
    PARIS (Reuters) - Henri d'Orleans, Count of Paris and pretender to the defunct French throne, died on Monday - exactly 226 years after his distant cousin Louis XVI was guillotined in Paris.

    Issue: Princess Marie
    Prince François, Count of Clermont
    Princess Blanche
    ****Prince Jean, Duke of Vendôme
    Prince Eudes, Duke of Angoulême

    Jean-Carl Pierre Marie d’Orléans (born 19 May 1965), who uses the title Jean, Count of Paris (French: comte de Paris), is the current head of the House of Orléans. The senior male descendant by primogeniture in the male-line of Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, he is, according to the Orléanists, the legitimate claimant to the throne of France as Jean IV.[2][3] Of France's three monarchist movements, Orléanism, Legitimism and Bonapartism, most royalists are Orléanists.[4] Prince Jean is the second son of Prince Henri, Count of Paris (1933–2019), the late head of the House of Orléans and his former wife Duchess Marie Therese of Württemberg.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 26, 2019
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  11. Beth B

    Beth B Beth Marie

    I thought the same...
    They would not want to create a revolution against them until they’ve burnt down as many as they can...then they’ll take credit.
     
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  12. Beth B

    Beth B Beth Marie

    I’d love to know the origins of this Holy card....it is a vintage card by the looks of it. If we knew, perhaps some of these mysteries would be solved.
    I wonder if there is any description written on back of it? Or if the card is at least dated..
     
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  13. padraig

    padraig Powers

    I think the angels who guard Churches are like the angels that guard people.

    If we fall into grave sin our Angel Guardians have less power to protect us. We become wide open to harm.

    If the community in a Church or Cathedral have fallen away then the angel guarding the building no longer is able to protect it.

    So I would worry , say about a place like St Patrick's...you have only to look Cardinal Dolan to see why..

    ..on the other hand generations of saints have prayed in these places, so that grants a lot of protection; but it can only last so long. If, say priests, Bishops, or Cardinals for instance are celebrating blasphemous masses...masses were they are in a state of habitual grace sin....well the protection would go very quickly.

    It is a bit like were Americans pray,' God Bless America'. Yes God will bless America when it is worth blessing. But He cannot bless something that has become evil.

    The same for Cathedrals



     
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  14. Jo M

    Jo M Powers


    Yes, I wonder too if there is a prayer on the back of the card. At any rate, the card is incredibly symbolic.
     
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  15. Carol55

    Carol55 Ave Maria

  16. HeavenlyHosts

    HeavenlyHosts Powers

    Of course, it is Blessed Mother. And I will agree to disagree with you, in a friendly way. Time will tell, though.
    Edited
    After I thought a little more, because I believe that is the Blessed Mother, that is why I think it is Notre Dame on fire.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2019
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  17. Now the Battle for Notre Dame Begins

    The ashes have cooled. The firemen did their jobs. Within hours they were able to stop the flames from consuming the building and minimize the damage to the structure and its treasures. But now the battle to save the Parisian cathedral of Notre Dame begins in earnest. Because now the building is threatened by something more dangerous than flames. Now it is threatened by ideology. And a dangerous ideology cannot be beaten back in a matter of hours.

    I was immediately worried when, upon reading some of the earliest reports—even before the fire was out—I saw comments about Notre Dame not being a “static” building. True, no building is entirely static. It weathers, and sometimes you clean it off or re-paint it, perhaps even add an extra room or two. But what particular relevance would that have to Notre Dame? Too often, this language about the dangers of treating something as “static” is just modernist code for, “We intend to change this.”

    Then I read comments about the building representing various eras in history, not just the medieval age when it was built, and so the re-building efforts should strive to represent this age. This is also modernist cant: the notion that buildings “represent the spirit of the age.”

    Norman Foster, one of Britain’s most famous architects, described the competition as an “extraordinary opportunity” and suggested that the new Cathedral’s spire could be “a work of art about light” and should be “contemporary and very spiritual and capture the confident spirit of the time.”

    Ian Ritchie, the creator of the Spire of Dublin, declared that he would enter the competition and proposed “a refracting, super-slender reflecting crystal to heaven.” “I think it would need to be perforated — at least 50 percent empty space to eliminate wind loads — and could be a beautiful contemporary tracery of glass crystals and stainless steel. It should get to touch heaven’s clouds in a piece of celestial gothic acupuncture.” One of the schemes even suggested placing a minaret on top as a memorial for the approximately 100 Algerian protesters killed by the French police in 1961 and thrown into the Seine.

    Finally I read comments insisting that we not “cover up” the history of the building, and since this fire has now become an important “part of the building’s history,” it is important that we not cover it up. Indeed there are certain ideologues among the modern so-called “preservationist” crowd who think that classical buildings should be left entirely untouched. Repairing them with modern materials is considered by some a crime. So, for example, if you go to Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous house Fallingwater, you will find that those famous cantilevered porches over the falls are now being held up by metal wires. But the wires do not restore the cantilevers to the way they were when Fallingwater was built. No, the modernist ideology dictated that the wires had to preserve Fallingwater the way the preservationists found it. So the wires hold the cantilevered porches at the exact angle they were when the preservers began their work. Talk about making a building “static”! But this is modernist ideology. Thank heaven those porches hadn’t fallen in the river. They would still be there.

    Remember how when the Vatican set out to clean Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a host of “elite” artists and art historians complained bitterly that this would “destroy” the art? Generations of people had viewed the work with all the soot, they said, so cleaning it would “ruin” the work. Fortunately, the Vatican under John Paul II went ahead anyway, and the results are stunning: a new and renewed gift to the world of art.

    The history of these disputes is an odd one — odd in the way that only ideological disputes with little or no foundation in reality can be. One of the people who generated the modern controversy over renovations was the man whose name has been mentioned repeatedly in connection with Notre Dame: Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.

    Viollet-le-Duc undertook a “scientific” renovation of Notre Dame in the nineteenth century. He made an exhaustive study of the Gothic style and all his renovation work was undertaken in what he understood to be in accord with the craft and character of that style. He had sculptures that had been damaged during the French Revolution recurved or repaired. And he was the one who designed the steeple that fell in the fire. An earlier version had blown down in a wind storm.

    But after Viollet-le-Duc’s renovations and similar renovations elsewhere, especially in England, a new consensus emerged among certain designers, such as John Ruskin and his disciples, contending that “renovations” to classical buildings shouldn’t be undertaken at all; rather, the buildings should be left as they are or, if renovations are necessary, the materials employed should be clearly discernible from the originals.

    We needn’t go into the details of this debate, but for a good history and as wise and perspicacious resolution as you are likely to find, may I suggest my friend Steven W. Semes’ superb book The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and Historic Preservation. I have included the cover here not only because the book is excellent, but also because the picture on the front — Chicago’s formerly-grand football stadium, Soldier Field, now with the alien space ship which landed on its top — will give you an idea of what I fear is in store for the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

    The French authorities (who own Notre Dame, by the way, and can therefore do with it what they wish) have announced an international competition to redesign the steeple that will sit atop the cathedral. It is important to understand that modernist architects and designers have taken the debate about renovations and turned it into their ticket to rebuild buildings in their own image. At least Viollet-le-Duc thought he was being true to the medieval spirit. He was at least trying to be faithful to something beyond himself. Modernist architects tend to be faithful to nothing quite so much as their own ego and their own vision. Often, that “vision” is described as somehow “emerging from” or “being an expression of” the spirit of the age, the community, the city, the contemporary situation, the history of the place — take your pick. But if you’ve ever heard or read any of these absurd disquisitions, you know it’s mostly smoke and mirrors.

    For a good example, you can read the description of what the Denver Art Museum, designed by starchitect Daniel Libeskind is supposed to “represent.”

    The new building is not based on an idea of style or the rehashing of ready made ideas or external shape because its architecture does not separate the inside from the outside or provide a pretty facade behind which a typical experience exists; rather this architecture has an organic connection to the public at large and to those aspects of experience that are also intellectual, emotional, and sensual. The integration of these dimensions for the enjoyment and edification of the public is achieved in a building that respects the hand crafted nature of architecture and its immediate communication from the hand, to the eye, to the mind. After all, the language of architecture beyond words themselves is the laughter of light, proportion and materiality.

    In a similar vein, Eric Parry, the architect who created the London Stock Exchange by St Paul’s Cathedral, said that Notre Dame’s spire “should touch the cultural pulse of today, uniting the ground and sky, and form a lens through which to aspire to the future.” Parry worries that the rebuilding might be “driven by a political agenda. That might taint it.” One presumes Parry isn’t worried about a “progressive” building project that would “touch the cultural pulse of today,” but about one that might hearken back to the Catholic character of France’s past.


    [​IMG]

    (cont'd below)



     
  18. (cont'd from above)


    If you want a foretaste of how this competition will go, think back on the controversies that surrounded the rebuilding of the Twin Towers in New York City. From the beginning, the one thing that became clear was that the doyennes of taste would not allow the Twin Towers to be re-built as they had been but with updated materials, nor would they accept any “classical” designs. The winner of the competition was an absurd design by the aforementioned Daniel Libeskind. There were better designs, but all of them were rejected because they didn’t fit the slick, super cool, avant-garde, modernist, globalist urban design chic deemed necessary for such an important, “sacred” site.

    In a similar spirit, expect designs for the cathedral of Notre Dame to be completely contrary to the logic and meaning of the building. Imagine Frank Gehry’s metal shards on the top of the cathedral or one of those wing-like structures Calatrava likes so much. Someone will want to rebuild the entire roof of Notre Dame the way the Pompidou Center in Paris was done. And trust me, there will be buckets of ink spilled justifying this absurdity with the usual Modernist cant about “honest architecture” and about “revealing the structure of the building” the way the Gothic did with its stone vaults and flying buttresses. Indeed, Norman Foster has suggested that proposed submissions to the project should embrace the boldness of the original builders, who pushed the limits of the technology of their day with their flying buttresses. And since this fire is now “part of the building’s history,” expect someone to propose simply placing a large cantilevered rain shield over the top that looks like the Olympic Stadium in Munich (and innumerable “modern” airports and stadiums since) to preserve the building as is.

    The last thing that starchitects will allow is for the building to be rebuilt the way it was built in the Middle Ages. The problem isn’t that there isn’t the historical and architectural expertise currently available to do this — there is — or that there aren’t skilled craftsmen who can do the work — there are. And make no mistake, all of them would give their eye teeth to be involved in an amazing restoration project like this. The problem is that the modernist ideology that came to power in the post-World War II period is not going to step aside and allow a major monument such as this one to go “unmodernized.” Right now, both architecturally and religiously, it is a stick in the eye of everything they stand for. And now is their chance to change that.

    George Weigel wrote a very fine book a few years back entitled The Cube and the Cathedral, on the cover of which were pictures on one side of the nave of the cathedral of Notre Dame and on the other of La Grande Arche de la Défense, “one of the grands projets of the late French president, François Mitterand, designed by Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, a Danish architect of sternly modernist sensibility,” Weigel tells us, “a colossal open cube: almost 40 stories tall, 348 feet wide, faced in glass and 2.47 acres of white Carrara marble.” “Which culture would more firmly secure the moral foundations of democracy?” Weigel wondered. “The culture that built this stunning, rational, angular, geometrically precise but essentially featureless cube? Or the culture that produced the vaulting and bosses, the gargoyles and flying buttresses, the nooks and crannies, the asymmetries and holy “unsameness” of Notre-Dame and the other great Gothic cathedrals of Europe?”

    Good question, one worth reflecting on at length. But I fear the answer will be given when that glass cube (or its close cousin) ends up on top of the cathedral, a perfect artistic representation of how the state currently views its relationship to the Church.

    What to do? I have modest suggestions, but they’re hardly worth mentioning since I am not anything like a “global” personality or a “public intellectual” of the sort the news media would turn to for “expert” commentary on this question. And in truth, I really am not any kind of expert at all. So I have no specific suggestions about the building, other than that they might consider just putting it back the way it was when it was built, since we don’t live in an age that can handle the task of adding to it. But I don’t imagine that’s a recommendation anyone would take seriously.

    So there are two groups I would turn to in this time of sorrow. The first would be all those people on the streets of Paris who bowed their heads and knelt on the cold, cobble-stone Parisian streets singing and saying the rosary over and over, praying that their beloved church would not be destroyed. Nothing which displeases them should even be considered. But there are also architects who have experience designing, renovating, and building Gothic-style churches (including hundred-year ongoing projects such as The National Cathedral in Washington DC, The Cathedral of St. John The Divine in Manhattan, and La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona).


    They have studied; they have practiced the craft; they have learned from their mistakes. You need to find architects and designers of this sort who respect the work of their forebears, who understand what those men and women worked and sacrificed for all those years, and who have shown by the fruits of their labors that they can be trusted to work with those people in those Parisian streets to produce something that truly represents the history, the culture, and the Catholic population of Paris, not just in empty words or as an objet d’art, but as an actual church the architect wants to see filled with both the prayers of the faithful and the Spirit of the Risen Lord.

    But I don’t imagine that’s a recommendation anyone is going to take seriously either.


    https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/04/25/now-the-battle-for-notre-dame-begins/
     
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  19. padraig

    padraig Powers

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