I say this with a heavy heart. But there is no other way. The entire edifice that was once the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris should be dismantled. The Gothic rubble of its façade and towers can be sold to curious Saudis and history-minded collectors. The site where the Cathedral once stood should be left a gaping crater in the ground, preferably reeking of brimstone.

And the Catholic church in France should be prevented by the government from building anything new. Or even designating some other existing church as its cathedral. Paris should have no cathedral, not now nor for 500 years.

French voters, whose government has controlled church buildings since the French Revolution, should rally behind this proposal. Let Marion le Pen campaign on it. Every believing Catholic in France should support it. Plenty of Muslims voters would too, perhaps enough to see it prevail.

Call the empty site “Place of Penance.”

Better an Absence than a Blasphemy

There is no other fitting way to respond to the abomination that the anti-Christian French government and the disgraced Archbishop of Paris (on his way out thanks to exposure of his longtime sexual affair) have proposed for the new interior of the fire-wrecked cathedral. I will quote at length from the Daily Telegraph’s report on what these official conspirators propose to do with the hundreds of millions of dollars honest people sent them to rebuild the cathedral exactly as it was. But the neopagans and vandals who control both church and state will never permit that. I knew they wouldn’t, which is why I sent no money.

Paris’s fire-ravaged Notre-Dame cathedral risks resembling a “politically correct Disneyland” under controversial plans for its renovation seen by The Telegraph.

Critics have warned that the world-famous cathedral will be turned into an “experimental showroom” under plans to dramatically change the inside of the medieval building.

Under the proposed changes, confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures will be replaced with modern art murals, and new sound and light effects to create “emotional spaces”.

There will be themed chapels on a “discovery trail”, with an emphasis on Africa and Asia, while quotes from the Bible will be projected onto chapel walls in various languages, including Mandarin.

The final chapel on the trail will have a strong environmental emphasis.

“It’s as if Disney were entering Notre-Dame,” said Maurice Culot, a prize-winning Paris-based architect, urbanist, theorist and critic who has seen the plans.

“What they are proposing to do to Notre-Dame would never be done to Westminster Abbey or Saint Peter’s in Rome. It’s a kind of theme park and very childish and trivial given the grandeur of the place,” he told The Telegraph.

A senior source close to the renovation said that the plans risked turning the global beacon of Christianity into an “experimental showroom” that would “mutilate” the work of Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, the celebrated architect who restored the cathedral following the ravages of the French Revolution in an effort to recapture the spirit of Medieval Christianity.

“Can you imagine the administration of the Holy See allowing something like this in the Sistine Chapel?,” said the senior source with access to the latest plans. “It would be unimaginable. We are not in an empty space here.

“This is political correctness gone mad. They want to turn Notre-Dame into an experimental liturgical showroom that exists nowhere else whereas it should be a landmark where the slightest change must be handled with great care.”

Pope Francis, Vandal

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. The leadership of my own Catholic church has profaned virtually every other sacred thing that came under its control. Pope Francis has trashed the authority of the papacy — at every level short of the rare infallible decree — by prostituting his pulpit to promoting leftist politics. He revoked the biblical Covenant of Noah, which binds the whole human race, by proclaiming capital punishment always evil. Francis has condemned national borders, winked at adultery, encouraged promoters of same-sex “marriage,” and embraced abortionists.

Francis has ordered every Catholic to receive a vaccine tainted by the cannibalistic abuse of unborn babies’ organs. His right-hand man, Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, who presides over Catholic social teaching, praises Red China as an exemplar of Catholic principles. Sorondo flattered the Chinese regime at a meeting of its official organ thieves, who cut the lungs and livers out of Uyghur Muslims and dissident Christians.

Francis is busy suppressing the ancient liturgical rites of the Catholic church, and closing down contemplative monasteries and convents. Not since the Russian Revolution, and the French, have we seen such a vicious attack on fundamental elements of the Catholic faith dating back to the early Church.

The Epcot Cathedral of Mammon

And now in the place of a magnificent cathedral, Francis’ appointee and France’s bureaucrats want to build a multicultural theme park that teaches Pantheism for Dummies. No, it must not be permitted. The plan proposed for Notre Dame is worse than profanation. It’s more offensive to Christians than the worship of “Reason” that took place there at the blood-soaked height of the Jacobin terror. It is worse than turning Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia into a mosque. At least that preached monotheism.

It was better that the Temple in Jerusalem got destroyed by the Romans, than that it be turned into a pagan shrine where pigs were offered. It’s better to see what’s sacred disappear than watch it get transformed into spiritual pornography. If the architects and craftsmen who constructed Notre Dame had any say, they’d choose demolition too — just as Bach would prefer that his sacred music be forgotten, than that it be used exclusively as “mood music” in abortion clinics.

Better that Paris have a vast hole in the ground, like a missing front tooth, to mark the absence of Christ from its society, than set up some idiot’s theme park for banal tourists who are “spiritual not religious.”

Maybe that crater in the city will remind people of the hole in their hearts where faith once found its home.

Samson Had the Right Idea

What I say here of Notre Dame I say as well about every Catholic institution that has lost or sold its soul, from religious orders to colleges, from hospitals to archdioceses: better they disappear than continue as staggering, brain-eating zombies. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of a “smaller, purer church.” He had no idea how small it’s likely to turn out to be.

Perhaps the death of Notre Dame can bring new life. The loss of Penn Station in New York City broke 7 million hearts, but it led to the protection of countless lesser buildings, including Grand Central Station. Maybe the sacrifice of one cathedral will save Sacre Coeur, Saint Denis, and other priceless landmarks from the vandals’ greedy fingers. That’s for God to decide.

But Christians around the world should unite and speak as one in response to the crassly blasphemous plan to turn Notre Dame into a temple of Caesar, Mammon, and Sodom.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”