Cardinal Ratzinger on Cathedrals

Where the spirit is not alive, where it is not effective and does not reign, cathedrals become museums, memorials to the past whose beauty makes you sad because it is dead. That is the warning, as it were, which emanates from this cathedral celebration. Faith alone can keep cathedrals alive, and the question the one-thousand-year-old cathedral is asking us is whether we have the strength of faith to give it a present and a future. In the end, organizations for the protection of historical monuments do not preserve the cathedral, as imoprtant and commendable as they area - only the spirit which created it can do this.

Cardinal Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord