Catholicism has been dying in France since The French Revolution.
I fully agree with you—1600 might have been a little too on the long side, but I’d put the burning down the house moment in terms of the culture from 1789-1791. 1400 or 1500 years might have been a better choice of time.
Notre Dame is the fruit of the culture at its maturity, and it has stood as a witness as the culture decayed.
I hate to see it go, but in some ways it is poetically fitting.
We can build neither the buildings nor the culture that our forebears did. Sometimes it is good to be reminded of this.