[Article from the National Catholic Register portal (May 22, 2026)]
The article by Kevin Di Camillo, published by the National Catholic Register, describes the architectural elements of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris—gargoyles, flying buttresses, and the open spire—emphasizing their functional and aesthetic roles. While the author acknowledges a superficial theological dimension (gargoyles casting out evil), the commentary ultimately reduces these sacred structures to mere engineering solutions and artistic flourishes, completely ignoring the profound Catholic theology of worship, the nature of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, and the absolute necessity of the supernatural orientation of sacred art. The article’s silence on the distinction between true sacred architecture and the modernist “barns” that have replaced it reveals a blindness to the liturgical and ecclesiological crisis of the 20th century.
The Functional Reduction of Sacred Symbolism
Di Camillo begins with a seemingly orthodox premise: gargoyles represent the casting out of evil from a consecrated space. He notes that they are never represented inside a church, save in depictions of Satan being trodden underfoot. This observation, while factually correct regarding the placement of grotesques, remains entirely superficial. The author reduces the gargoyle to a “physical representation of an exorcism,” a mere motif of “outside and away.” In doing so, he strips the symbol of its deeper theological reality: the perpetual spiritual warfare waged by the Church Militant against the powers of darkness, and the objective reality of sanctifying grace which renders the Church a fortress against the devil.
The author quotes architectural historian Janetta Rebold Benton, who describes gargoyles as “architectural necessities turned into ornament.” This utilitarian framing—while acknowledging the practical function of water diversion—betrays a modernist mindset that prioritizes form and function over the transcendental purpose of sacred art. For the medieval Catholic mind, there was no dichotomy between the functional and the sacred; the very act of building a house for God was a liturgical act, a participation in the divine order. As Pope Pius XI taught in Quas Primas, Christ’s reign extends over all human activities, including the arts, and the Church has the duty to ensure that these activities serve the supernatural end of man. To treat the gargoyle primarily as a “decorated gutter” is to strip it of its role as a signum sacrum (sacred sign) pointing to the reality of evil and its defeat by Christ.
Furthermore, Di Camillo’s historical tracing of gargoyles to the Roman engineer Vitruvius Pollio and pagan temples is presented neutrally, without any theological critique. The Church has always taught that while natural reason can discover truths about the physical world, these truths must be ordered toward the glory of God. The pagan origins of an architectural form do not invalidate its Christian use, but the author’s failure to emphasize the radical transformation of this form by Catholic theology—turning a mere water-spout into a symbol of demonic expulsion—reveals an inability to grasp the Catholic principle of the baptism of the senses, where material realities are elevated to serve divine worship.
The Engineering Triumph Overload
The section on flying buttresses further illustrates the article’s reductionist tendency. Di Camillo quotes Sir Kenneth Clark’s description of them as “one of those happy strokes where necessity has led to an architectural invention of marvelous and fantasy beauty.” While the aesthetic appreciation is valid, the focus remains stubbornly on the structural mechanics—the dispersion of weight, the enabling of thinner walls, and the subsequent explosion of stained-glass windows.
The author notes that the flying buttress allowed for the creation of the magnificent rose window at Notre-Dame, a window that “resembles a gigantic kaleidoscope.” Yet, he fails to articulate the theological significance of stained glass: it is not merely an aesthetic triumph, but a catechetical tool and a representation of divine light. The medieval cathedral was a Biblia Pauperum (Bible of the Poor), where the windows transmitted the truths of faith to the illiterate. The light passing through the stained glass symbolizes the light of Christ illuminating the world. By focusing solely on the structural “necessity” that made the window possible, the author misses the forest for the trees. The flying buttress is not just an engineering solution; it is a manifestation of the Catholic understanding that the material world, when ordered correctly, serves to lift the mind and soul to God.
This utilitarian perspective is symptomatic of the post-conciliar mentality, which has stripped the liturgy and sacred art of their supernatural orientation, reducing them to expressions of human community or artistic achievement. The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, has been abused to justify the destruction of sacred art and architecture, replacing the vertical orientation of Gothic cathedrals with the horizontal, anthropocentric focus of modernist “community centers.” While Di Camillo laments the fire that damaged Notre-Dame, he does not connect this tragedy to the broader spiritual collapse of the West, where churches are routinely sold off or demolished because they are deemed “impractical” by a generation that has lost the faith that built them.
The Spire: A Hollow Gesture to a Forgotten Heaven
The discussion of the open spire comes closest to a theological observation, yet it still falls short. Di Camillo describes the spire as a “clarion call” showing “the mixing of the heavens (the sky) and the artist (in the open stonework) into a whole: God is reaching into the church and the church is reaching to touch the heavens.” This is a poetic image, but it lacks the precision of Catholic theology. The spire is not merely an aesthetic illusion designed to make the building “look higher than it actually is”; it is a profound statement about the nature of the Church and the destiny of man.
The Catholic Church teaches that man’s ultimate end is the Beatific Vision—the direct contemplation of God in heaven. The architecture of the Gothic cathedral was designed to reflect this reality, drawing the eye upward, away from the earth and toward the divine. As St. Thomas Aquinas taught, the purpose of sacred architecture is to dispose the soul to prayer and contemplation. The spire, reaching into the sky, is a physical manifestation of the Church’s eschatological hope, the parousia (the second coming of Christ), and the resurrection of the body.
However, in the modern world, this vertical aspiration has been replaced by a horizontal, worldly focus. The post-conciliar “Church” has abandoned the transcendent orientation of the faith, embracing instead a theology of immanence, where the focus is on “human rights,” “social justice,” and “dialogue” with the world. The spires of the old cathedrals stand as silent witnesses to a faith that has been abandoned by the very institution that built them. The fact that only a handful of open-spire churches exist in America—and that the tallest is a parish church in Buffalo, not a grand cathedral—is a testament to the spiritual poverty of the modern age, where the grandeur of Catholic worship has been replaced by the banality of modernist architecture.
Di Camillo’s article, while appreciating the beauty of Notre-Dame, ultimately fails to grasp the full theological significance of its architecture. By reducing gargoyles to gutters, buttresses to engineering, and spires to optical illusions, he reflects a modern mindset that has lost the sense of the supernatural. The true tragedy of the Notre-Dame fire is not just the loss of a historic building, but the loss of a culture that understood how to build for the glory of God. As Pope Pius XI warned in Quas Primas, when Christ is removed from the public life of nations, the very foundations of society are shaken. The ruins of Notre-Dame are a symbol of a civilization that has forgotten its King.
The Silence on the Modernist Desecration
Perhaps the most glaring omission in Di Camillo’s commentary is any mention of the modernist architecture that has replaced the Gothic tradition in the post-conciliar era. The article speaks of the “artisans, masons, craftsmen” of the 12th century with admiration, but it is silent on the architects of the 20th and 21st centuries who have desecrated the House of God with their brutalist, functionalist designs.
Since the “spirit of Vatican II” took hold, thousands of beautiful churches have been destroyed or “renovated” beyond recognition, their altars torn out, their tabernacles hidden, and their sacred art replaced with abstract, meaningless shapes. The new “churches” are designed not to lift the soul to God, but to create a sense of “community” and “participation”—a horizontal focus that ignores the vertical dimension of worship. This is a direct result of the modernist heresy condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, which sought to strip the faith of its supernatural content and reduce it to a purely human experience.
The contrast between Notre-Dame and the modernist “barns” that pass for Catholic churches today could not be starker. The former was built by men who believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the reality of the supernatural world; the latter are built by men who have lost that faith and seek only to accommodate the comforts of the modern world. Di Camillo’s failure to draw this contrast reveals a blindness to the liturgical and ecclesiological crisis that has engulfed the Church since the 1960s.
Conclusion: The Necessity of Sacred Art in a Secular Age
Kevin Di Camillo’s article on the architecture of Notre-Dame is a pleasant appreciation of a beautiful building, but it is ultimately a superficial treatment of a profound subject. By focusing on the functional and aesthetic aspects of gargoyles, buttresses, and spires, the author misses the deeper theological reality that these elements were designed to express: the Catholic understanding of the relationship between God and man, the reality of sin and redemption, and the eschatological hope of the Church.
In an age when the Church has been hijacked by modernists who seek to drag her down to the level of the world, it is more important than ever to recover the sacred art and architecture of the past. The Gothic cathedral is not just a relic of a bygone era; it is a testament to a civilization that was built on the rock of Christ and that sought to order all things to His glory. As Pope Pius XI taught, the reign of Christ extends over all human activities, including the arts, and it is the duty of the Church to ensure that these activities serve the supernatural end of man.
The tragedy of Notre-Dame is not just the loss of a building, but the loss of a vision—a vision of a world ordered to God. Until the Church recovers that vision, until she repudiates the modernist errors that have led to the desecration of her sacred spaces, the spires of the old cathedrals will continue to stand as monuments to a faith that has been betrayed by those who were supposed to be its custodians. Let us pray that the restoration of Notre-Dame will be not just a physical restoration, but a spiritual one—a return to the Catholic faith that built it and that alone can save the world from the darkness of modernism.
Source:
Gargoyles, Buttresses and the Art of Building Heavenward (ncregister.com)
Date: 23.05.2026