Notre-Dame: the untruths of Archbishop Ulrich

Can you be an archbishop and lie? Clearly, yes, as Archbishop Laurent Ulrich has just demonstrated in an interview given to the newspaper Paris Notre-Dame, which distributes the good word of... the diocese of Paris, i.e. Archbishop Ulrich.

The interview deals with the question of Viollet-le-Duc’s stained glass windows. And we can see that it is indeed the voice of his master, because the question itself is already the answer: ‘Notre-Dame has given rise to its share of controversy; a lot of false information is circulating about what the stained glass windows are going to look like, about your alleged refusal to see the crown of light return... What is your answer?’.

We’ll come back a little later to the crown of light and the ‘alleged refusal’. What is the ‘false information about what the stained glass windows are going to look like’ about? Certainly not what the opponents of this project, who have already signed the petition en masse, are denouncing. Because we haven’t talked for a single moment about these contemporary stained glass windows - that’s not our subject. As we have already said, we are not opposed to contemporary stained glass windows in old buildings, but we are opposed to the removal of Viollet-le-Duc’s stained glass windows, which is a very different matter.
It’s true that grotesque images are circulating on social networks, mainly the work of conspiracy theorists or staunch opponents of the President of the Republic (Emmanuel Macron can sometimes be seen in grotesque positions in these so-called stained-glass windows), but no serious person can believe that these are the real plans (which, incidentally, we still don’t know). Those who want to discredit our well-reasoned and argued fight with the worst of Twitter are as dishonourable as those who disseminate these montages.

In his response, Archbishop Ulrich claims to have heard a lot of…