In 1969, Kenneth Clark, the British art historian behind the BBC’s Civilisation series, stood in front of Notre-Dame in Paris and said he could not define civilization. He could only point to the building behind him. Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the Catholic apostolate Word on Fire, has spent a good part of his life trying to articulate what Clark saw. That is the purpose of his stunning new documentary, Heaven in Stone and Glass, which begins with the 2019 fire at Notre-Dame.
Barron was driving in California when a television producer called. Within minutes, he was on air with MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, worrying out loud about the three rose windows. He had first encountered those magnificent pieces of 13th-century glasswork as a doctoral student at the Institut Catholique. What stayed with him that night was how many others shared his pain, including many who presumably hadn’t been to Mass in years, or ever.
Comments