After the massive fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral, an elderly woman who lives in the vicinity said: “I’m devastated. It’s a symbol of Paris. It’s a symbol of Christianity. It’s a whole world that is collapsing.”

The burning of the iconic cathedral is a portent of the ruin that will befall the Roman Catholic Church some day in the future.

The civilisations and religions of ancient Egypt and the Near East lasted for thousands of years. Now they lie in ruins.

“There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods and any man who doubted his power was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? What has become of Assur, Amon-re, Anubis, Astarte, Baal, Cybele, Dagon, Enki, Enlil, Inanna, Isis, Ishtar, Marduk, Osiris, Tammuz? All these were once gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. Men laboured for generations to build vast temples to them.

“Yet, in the end, they all withered and died and today there is none so poor to do them reverence” (H.L. Mencken, Memorial Service). After the memorial service came ‘God’s funeral’: “Framing him jealous, fierce, at first, we gave him justiceas the ages rolled... Tricked by our own early dream and need of solace, we grew self-deceived, our making soon our maker did we deem and what we had imagined we believed” (Thomas Hardy, God’s funeral).