The new altar of Notre Dame Cathedral
I found its inspiration, maybe
"As the altar is the church, as the altar is the reason for the existence of the wonderful fabric that has gradually developed into the most complex and highly-organized of the buildings of men [...]. To it, all things are tributary, and whether you say the church flows from it as from the center of life, or that the visible organism develops from it cell-by-cell [...], the result is the same."
--Ralph Adams Cram, Church Building, quoted here.
Some have said that this new altar at Notre Dame is an improvement over the old one. I think we can’t really choose — it’s like arguing about which train wreck you find most chaotic, but I’d have to say this one lacks even the admittedly morose, demoralizing reference to the natural world in the form of the droopy depictions of hazy human shapes on the old one:
And at least it was rectangular: “Scripture speaks of the ‘horns’--the corners--of the altar, and the round altar carries a whiff of the occult to it. The octagon is appropriate to baptisteries, not chancels. The Old Covenant's altars were rectilinear, and as the altar represents Christ, Christ calls Himself the cornerstone.” Matthew Alderman
I won’t deny it was awful — it seemed to pull the worshipper into a hopeless world. I was truly shocked when I saw it in person, so jarring a contrast did it make with the glories surrounding it. Though it would be unpleasant to encounter it in the local pub, to be honest.
But the new one! What can it mean? To what does it refer? The only meaning decipherable is its shape, which is a parabola — the stark image of stripped-down symmetry, a technical reference to a binary, mechanical symmetry, a life/death dynamic which leaves no room for any other reality — certainly not any heavenly reality.
There is something undeniably pagan about it.
Paganism had been like a pillar of marble, upright because proportioned with symmetry… In a Gothic cathedral the columns were all different, but they were all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and fantastic support; every buttress was a flying buttress. ~ G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
It’s a cold, dead solid.
The altar represents Christ. Is that our dear Christ?
When the furnishings of the Church are beautiful and fitting, they radiate goodness to the world, which then takes it up and translates it into ordinary things that, in their own way, also disperse beauty. A Christian society flourishes because, as it says in Revelation, the river of grace flows from the altar of the Lord.
In this case, we have an inversion. The world, bereft of the source of Goodness, left to flail about in darkness, darkly radiates its unfittingness right into the sanctuary of the temple.
You know what else got a makeover? The set of The View:
Same energy.
Which way does the river flow?
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Yes, the new curvaceous altar is overtly feminine and, as another observer pointed out, looks unstable. Much like the cast of The View.
So glad you're back to writing here! I find the similarity between the Notre Dame altar and the set of The View jarring. That thing is unfitting for any church, let alone Notre Dame. The only place an "altar" like that would look at home would be among the rubbish at the local dump.