Oh for the golden halcyon days of the collapsing cathedrals!

My yearning for those days is immense!

A good number of the Gothic cathedrals were functional failures and only stand today because of modern day technological engineering/problem solving.

A good number of Gothic cathedrals are an inheritance of experimental structural precariousness, of which the entirety of their completion was never achieved due to structural collapse, and today what remains of the whole is preserved through high-tech modern advances.

Living and learning as they went, a good number of high cathedrals collapsed - maybe more collapsed than stand today, I'm not sure - as they possessed no secret sauce medieval code back in the days of the collapsing cathedrals, which was the age of - checks notes - the age of the medieval age.

It can be argued that were it not for modern science/engineering/technology, many of those cathedrals would not be standing today, which falling would be par for the course for the Medievals. They were used to that, and they would just start building more. You live and learn.

I remember being up in the rafters of Holy Rosary Cathedral when I was helping to hang the new crucifix, and I was like, "This is it? Man, this is bare bones! Just one step too heavy to the side off this main beam and I'll go straight through the plaster and break my neck on one of the pews down below!"

That would make a great story in the spirit of Flannery O'Connor. And Pigeon Man peered down through the hole in the plaster and saw Paul sprawled with broken neck in the pews, and he said, "Coo, coo, he would've been a good man it was a church pew to break his neck every minute of his life."

Ha ha!

What a disturbing story!