Cathedrals were funded by peasants, labor and $. Years to build. Can’t pay for upkeep today.
The Gothic cathedrals were built by builders, and architects from modest backgrounds, over periods of decades, as objects of communal pride. The motive behind them had much in common with the expensive football stadium built by my local high school, or maybe with Jerry Jones’, and most of all to the Temple in Jerusalem. As for today, more than two hundred years ago, the French Revolutionaries and then Napoleon destroyed the economic base that supported the Cathedrals. Today they are the property of the French State.