That church and the work involved in building, maintaining and lately visiting it probably put food on the plates of more people in Paris than almost anything else has in the history of the city. The Catholic Church is a vile organization with a shameful history, but one of the very few positive legacies it has left us are those buildings, most of which were built by the local community anyway.
In fact, if you wanted one reason why the Church didn't face even more opposition than it did through the centuries then the effect those buildings had on people would probably be it. You could be appalled by the corruption, by the violence and the hypocrisy but walking into one of those cathedrals, looking down the nave and seeing the sunlight come through stained glass windows is a breathtaking sight even now.
