I’m not claiming the French people don’t care about Notre Dame. I’m merely observing that the analogy to the Declaration of Independence is significantly flawed. Notre Dame embodied ideas that modern France has repudiated rather than upheld.
History and culture are very important to the French people. Our Lady of Paris is one of the cores of the city.
The country and government being secular does not mean that the people left their Catholic roots behind. Atheist and religious French people share similar values and the past is very important to both.
While 39% of the population of France is not religious, 51% of the population is Catholic (2016). Even as an atheist French-Canadian I am hurt by the loss of this monument. I can't even begin to imagine how it feels to religious Parisians.
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Edit: Someone on Reddit wrote a very interesting comment about its historical significance:
"Napoleon's coronation is incredibly recent in terms of Notre Dame's age. The amount of time between then and now represents less than 25% of the cathedral's existence.
It was built in 1163, one year after Genghis Khan's birth (or at least our best guess of his birth). Notre Dame predated Marco Polo and the founding of the Ottoman Empire by more than a century. It predates the creation of Islam. At the time of its construction, the best estimates for the global population are ~300 million (less than the current population of the United States). The cathedral was almost 200 years old when the Black Death destroyed a third of the world's population. The USA is currently younger than Notre Dame was when the Forbidden City was constructed in Beijing. It was 3 centuries old when Machu Picchu was built and Leonardo Da Vinci was born. It was over 400 years old when Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was built. It predated the original King James Version of the Bible by 450 years."
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Among other relics, a piece of the Crown of Thorns was inside the Cathedral. I don't have a hard time picturing someone braving a blaze to save that.
