The article, seasoned with stultifying quotes from well-placed clerics, called to mind Victor Hugo's classic novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Tempor edax, homo edacior.
Time is blind, but man is stupid.
Hugo observed that the first two inroads to destruction of the cathedral devastated the edifice with impartiality and grandeur. Thus, Hugo is saying that the worst destruction was perpetrated not by the atheistic iconoclasts of the bloody French Revolution, as many historians have it, but by these school-trained architects, slaves to bad taste. Hugo accused these men, who assume the character of the architect, of willful destruction, perversion, and re-creation, all in the name of fashion. Even so, looking to Notre Dame de Paris, we understand there is hope. Despite the traces of destruction imprinted on this ancient church, Our Lady at Paris is still at this day a majestic and sublime edifice.