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If I told you that I visited Notre-Dame de Paris in March of this year and that, while there, I had begun to get this strange feeling that something warm and new was stirring within the French Catholic Church, you might smile at me and point out that nothing is more clichéd than spring in Paris, and I would have to admit that this year on Ash Wednesday, the weather in Paris really was on its best behavior.
But I might counter: “Yes, but things are happening!”
“Like what?”
“Like 800 people attending a weekday Mass on Thursday in Lent. Or 2,000 people attending one of the three Masses on Ash Wednesday. Like young people coming to Mass and saying the responses and singing out loud and kneeling on those really hard stones, and asking tourists not to take photos during the consecration.”
“Shouldn’t those things happen in church?”
“Sure, but do they happen in our suburban parishes? Anyway, there’s more.”
“Go on.”
“For instance, I saw an Italian woman, standing in front of the 14th-century ‘Virgin of the Pillar,’ weeping after Communion. At other times, on the same spot, I saw a Black French woman stretching out her arms in front of the statue of our Lady and, later, a woman with Asian features hiding behind a column but praying as well. And the priests stop their procession to say the Angelus in front of the statue at noon. I saw French families on their knees praying after Mass and solitary people leaning their heads on the wooden chairs in front of them, even after the organ postlude died away. The celebrant told us on Ash Wednesday that we had come here because we had the desire to repent, and on the following Friday, the celebrant enthusiastically preached, ‘Jésus se donne à nous dans l’Eucharistie! Jésus se donne à nous dans l’Eucharistie!’ And did you know that Notre-Dame de Paris has Eucharistic adoration Fridays in Lent? Something felt different this time. Of course there were the usual tourists, whose photos, somehow, seemed even more narcissistic. But it’s almost like La Cathédrale de Notre-Dame de Paris feels young again, almost—dare I say it?—holy.”
“But this is Paris. And you’re talking about Notre-Dame. Shouldn’t it feel ‘holy’?”
“But that’s my point! To understand why these sprigs of hope are so exceptional, we have to remember that this is Paris and this is Notre-Dame.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me back up.”
Back From the Dead
In the mid-20th century, after World War II, Europeans were convinced that European culture was almost dead. Grumpy Evelyn Waugh, for instance, wrote the Sword of Honour trilogy to explore how the protagonist, Guy Crouchback, from an old, recusant English Catholic family, wanted to go to war in order to rekindle the dying coals of his family’s chivalry. What he found was a world of calculations, bureaucracy, waiting and paperwork. The modern machinery of war grinds up chivalric impulses. Waugh has one of his characters say to Guy: “Can’t you understand men aren’t chivalrous anymore…?” And if chivalry was dead across Christendom, the Jesuit Karl Rahner was convinced that piety had also entered a “wintry season.” Rahner said that while our ancestors might have been able to enjoy the “luxury” of “elaborate systems of devotion,” we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that “in this wintry season, the tree of...devotion cannot be expected to bear such an abundance of leaves and blooms in the form of the various devotions and pious practices of the past” (“Christian Living Formerly and Today”).
It is difficult to deny that France is now in such a “wintry season” of piety. Official statistics report that only 29 percent of French citizens now identify as Catholic, and, of those, only 8 percent are “practicing” (which, for the government, means attending Mass once a month). That means that only about 2 percent of French people now rise even to the level of a tepid Catholicism. To put this in context, there are now—again, according to governmental statistics—more practicing Muslims than practicing Catholics in France.
This winter has been a long time in coming, in part due to the centuries-long inimical relationship between church and state in France. There was the persecution of Catholic priests after the Revolution and the closing of the monasteries during the reign of Napoleon; but then there was the Law of Association (1901), which led to the dramatic expulsion by the military of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse. France has its own sexual abuse scandals, too. An English-speaking religious I met with during my stay in Paris told me that on his first day in the city, he came up out of the Metro, wearing clerics, and within five minutes, a man approached him and spat on him. “I never figured out why. Maybe a victim of abuse? Or maybe centuries of anti-Catholicism? I don’t know.” Welcome to the wintry season for the faith in Paris.
In the midst of wintry conditions—those of us from cold climates know this so well!—any sprig in the springtime is cause for rejoicing. In Waugh’s novel, Guy receives a letter from his father, which he carries with him at all times in his pocket. His favorite lines are these: “The Mystical Body doesn’t strike attitudes or stand on its dignity. It accepts suffering and injustice.... Quantitative judgements don’t apply.”
Perhaps this explains—at least in part—the shock and horror of the burning of Notre-Dame in 2019, because it felt to many that this was more than an architectural emergency; it was a symbol that Catholicism in France was on the verge of collapsing. A college professor, Philippe (mid-30s), a native Parisian of several generations, adds this: “It was the symbol that our whole country was burning.” Another young Parisian (mid-20s), Max, a bilingual journalist in the U.K. and France, told me something I had never heard on the news. He said that while Notre-Dame was on fire, thousands of concerned, young French Catholics spontaneously assembled in front of the cathedral to pray the rosary. I asked him: “Why? Did it feel to them, almost, that the spiritual heart of the country was on fire?” He answered: “That’s exactly how they felt.” He said the young people there, who assembled spontaneously, were moved by a sense of shock, but also hope. They felt that they were ready to reaffirm their spiritual heritage.
Whatever the reasons, the numbers are interesting. As the English-speaking religious told me, “France has always been a country of piety and pious practices. So you’ve got to look for signs of revival there.” For instance, there is an annual pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres, as well as daily pilgrimages to Lourdes. These are growing. The Dominicans sponsored a rosary procession during the summer. It was much larger than all expectations. Then in 2024 there was a 30 percent nationwide increase in Easter baptisms (the time for converts): 7,000 adults and 5,000 teenagers. And a surprising number of those entering into the Catholic Church were former Muslims, who face alienation from their families and, in some cases, are threatened with punishment for apostasy. The Diocese of Paris has set up charities to help converts to Catholicism.
Young, Devout and French
After a weekday Mass at Notre-Dame, I spoke to three Parisians in their mid-30s. I had noticed one of them, Fitzgerald (a native Parisian, but named after the American who loved Paris so much), asking tourists around him to stop taking photos during the consecration. They talked to me about what it felt like to be young, devout Catholics. Alexis, a tour guide, told me: “There are few of us, but we believe. And I also believe in reason. John Paul II says that faith and reason are like two wings, upon which we can fly. The French tried to live by reason alone during the Revolution, but man is a spiritual animal.”
I asked them what they would say to someone who speculated that Catholicism is going to die out in France within 20 years. Aurélie passionately shook her head: “No! You cannot predict what happens in the heart.” I don’t think she meant to echo Pascal, but she did. Then she added: “I know this. Because it happened to me. I came back to the church 10 years ago.” Fitzgerald, an affable actor and comedian, gave me a passionate explanation: “People in their 30s and 40s are coming back. We try to be engaged, to pray every day and to speak to others. Some of us even dare to share our faith publicly by participating in a movement called Anuncio.This is a time of renewal.”
There are other signs of renewal, they told me, like the charismatic movement Emmanuel. They told me they had witnessed healings. I went to a vigil Mass at Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs on the Saturday before I departed, and although I didn’t witness anything miraculous, I was impressed by the quiet devotion of the priest, who uttered the words of the consecration, word by word, and held the host exalted for almost 60 seconds. A simple print-out of the face from the Shroud of Turin hung from the altar, the priest told me, to replace the usual flowers. When I asked him if there were any signs of renewal, he said: “Well, today 639 people presented themselves at the cathedral, formally requesting the sacrament of baptism this Easter.”
My friend, Philippe, admits to having more traditional tastes, although he hastened to add, “I am not schismatic, and I understand that there are many sensibilities.” Nevertheless, he tells me, the traditional Latin Mass is rapidly growing in popularity in France. Philippe—who was trained in theoretical physics—explained the appeal: “God is outside of time. He is eternal. Thus, for me, the church should not bother too much about being current. Ancient things, because they are old, feel more like eternity.”
When I asked Fitzgerald, Alexis and Aurélie if this renewal had anything to do with the burning and restoration of la cathédrale, I got a surprising answer: “Before the cathedral caught fire, I thought of this church as a place for tourists. It was only a national symbol. But now it has a ‘taste.’” I asked him to explain what that “taste” was: “We feel so honored and privileged to be here, where it is new and clean and light. The image of Notre-Dame on fire was an open wound, a trauma. But people can now feel that a place like this has been a house of prayer for 800 years. Prayer has accumulated within these walls.”
Fitzgerald is right to emphasize how bright and young the cathedral feels now. French restorationists sprayed a liquid latex on the walls, which, after coagulating over several days, was then peeled off, like a sticker in a children’s book. It took all the dirt and grime with it, revealing the creamy white limestone from 800 years ago. It’s so clean and brilliant that the light coming through the windows in the clerestory casts its changing patterns along the opposite walls. In addition to this, restorationists found layers of paint on columns that had grown dull. They freshened up those colors, too. The whole cathedral feels bright, colorful and playful, but in a way the organ music is both joyful and serious at once.
Almost losing the cathedral to the fire helped draw attention to details that might have previously passed unnoticed. I had forgotten, for instance, the logic of the sculptures on the facade. On the rightmost of the three great portals, there is a carved image of the Nativity, told in comic-book style, in a narrative band, but without frames. Above this lintel, on the tympanum, we have another image of Mary, seated on a throne and holding Christ (the Throne of Wisdom). But this is a Mary who is outside of time, although hovering above an image that took place within time. Above the Throne of Wisdom, an angel seems to peel away the mist that separates our vision from heaven, temporarily emerging into our space, from eternity. It looks as if he’s coming from inside the cathedral to the outside, into our secular, outdoor space.
Above the left portal, we have an image of the Coronation of the Virgin, where yet another angel is “emerging” from the cathedral, into our space. And high above the central portal, of course, is the great rose window—miraculously undamaged during the fire. From outside you cannot see its color, only the intricate patterns of the stone tracery. And yet, a statue of Our Lady, standing on top of the triangular pinnacle, is in the direct line of sight between us—on the ground—and the rose window of eternity. She has been elevated, lifted up beyond the world of time, and pulled up into an Eternity. In other words, the whole facade feels like a T. S. Eliot poem carved in stone, playing on the paradoxes of inside and outside, eternity and time, inwardness and outwardness. The facade acts like an iconostasis—or in the medieval West, an altar screen—where mysteries from deep time make discreet manifestations into ours, while the lowly and holy are pulled up and into it. “Quantitative judgments don’t apply.”
Restoration and Renewal
I asked Fitzgerald if he thought the restoration had anything to do with the renewal: “I’m sure that people have been converted because of it. They suddenly realized what all this is.” He pointed to Our Lady of the Pillar: “That statue right there, of Notre-Dame? Paul Claudel converted, suddenly, on the spot. And now this statute has been preserved. Even though stones and molten lead were falling all around it, it wasn’t damaged. It was a miracle. In fact, Notre-Dame should have collapsed. It was about to. Yes, the firefighters helped, but it was the prayers made by those outside to Our Lady to preserve her cathedral that saved it from total collapse. This place is not a reconstruction: It is a resurrection!”
He was pointing to the statue of Mary in front of which I had seen so many people devoutly praying. Here again, you can note that, at its base, an angel is, yet again, emerging from some deeper world into ours. Mary is very young and graceful, but also grave. Though serious, it feels as if she could burst into a smile at any second, looking at the infant. Her face is stylized and has a beauty that could be Asian, African and European, somehow at once.
Not everyone is quite so optimistic. The English-speaking religious reminded me that “you have to remember that Notre-Dame feels to many in France like the Statue of Liberty feels like in America.” And yet, if you thought the stump was dead, you tend to be excited over any new sprigs that it puts out in the spring. The English-speaking religious put it like this: “A historian I admire makes the distinction between ‘intention’ and ‘motivation.’ The reality is that most of the time we don’t live up to our ‘intentions.’ We’re motivated by something else. And yet, it’s only our intentions that we can actually control. But if we do, we might, retroactively, transform our motivations. I think something like that is happening here. Everyone in France is telling the young people: ‘We tried that already. It doesn’t work. The church is compromised. It’s lost its voice.’ But then they do it anyway, they go out and engage in those practices of public piety, despite the utilitarian calculations and despite contemporary perception. They don’t do this with a sense of heroism, but they do it against the pragmatists.”
Notre-Dame de Paris felt to me almost like a giant hospital. When I attended Mass, there were nearly 2,000 people who came, as the celebrant put it, because they were moved with a desire to repent. The procession was made up of about 20 priests—needed to take ashes and the Eucharist among the people—following behind a simple, silver cross, elevated above all of our heads, as the tourists turned from photographing the building to making videos of the procession. If the burning of Notre-Dame was a fitting symbol for the de-Christianization of France, could the restoration of Notre-Dame be a hopeful omen for an unlooked-for springtime, in which the young are leading the way?
