Rodricks: Seeing history in a burned and broken steeple in East Baltimore

I stood at the corner of Eager and Aisquith to regard the burned-and-broken steeple of a once-stunning East Baltimore church. I saw in the gaping wound the past and present — the decades of white flight from the old neighborhood, the diminished presence of the Catholic Church in the city and the loss of faith generally across the land. This mashup of history came from the gray sky over Aisquith Street, in the place where the steeple cracked apart in a fire caused by lightning in March 2020. No one has come to rebuild the magnificent steeple. Next door is the Institute of Notre Dame, founded in 1847, the Catholic girls school that closed a couple of months after the fire.