So, thereโs a lot of discourse about whether people should donate to Notre Dame fundraisers or not.
Personally, I would never tell anyone what to, or not to, give money to, but I wanted to put out some facts which might help people make their decision.
The biggest one is The Catholic Church does not own Notre Dame.
Notre Dame does not, in any way, legallyย โbelongโ to the church. Like many French medieval churches, Notre Dame belongs to the people of France. Who graciously permit the Catholic church to use it as a place of worship.
The financial responsibility for repairing and restoring the church thus falls to the government of France. Not the church. The state. The building was not insured, which is fairly common for government-owned buildings. The Federal government tends to self-insure a lot too. Also, no insurer will cover it.
The construction companies working on the restoration may be found responsible, but their liability insurance will be a drop in the water.
If not enough money is donated, then the balance of the cost will come out of the French treasury.
The tl;dr - the people actually on hook for repairing Notre Dame, ultimately, are the French taxpayers. If you donate to help repair Notre Dame, youโre really donating to arts and culture and history funding in France in general.
Make your decision based off of that. The fact is, the church will be rebuilt regardless of how much money comes in in donations, but other parts of the French arts budget may suffer as a result.
Choose based off of your personal priorities. And donโt let anyone on the internet guilt trip you one way or the other.
Howeverย if you doย decide to donate, please, pleaseย send your money to the Friends of Notre Dame. This is the organization that pays for most of Notre Dameโs repair budget. They are registered as a 501c3 in the United States.
Do notย donate to random GoFundMes. Some of them will be scams.
If you would rather donate to the black congregations in Louisiana, who admittedly probably do need the money more, this GoFundMe appears to be legitimate and is hosted by a religious non-profit. Theyโre about 60% from their goal.
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