In
England
we have many magnificent cathedrals, rising from the centres
of towns across the country. I have often marvelled at these immense structures
and wondered what it would have been like to watch them slowly rise from the
surrounding landscape, finally to dominate all about them. Gathering round the
building site there would have been a community of craftsmen, the wood carvers,
the stone masons, the artists and designers, living cheek by jowl month in,
month out, as their work progressed.
Given that they were built
without the aid of modern technology, both in their design and construction,
their very existence is amazing. Accidents can’t have been infrequent but the
outcome of their endeavours is still there for all to see. Truly magnificent.
Also scattered across the
towns and countryside of our small island are the numerous parish churches, some
from as far back as Norman times, others part of the industrial growth that gave
rise to our larger towns and cities in the 19th Century. Functional
yet uninspiring they met the needs of a growing catholic population, often
immigrants, whose community life centre round the parish church, its school and
its priests.
They were followed by the
concrete and glass designs of the 60s, light, bright and functional. One of them
has the status of cathedral, the Metropolitan cathedral of Christ the King in
Liverpool
. It stands as a beacon at the top of
Mount Pleasant
over looking the city, a short walk along
Hope Street
from the Anglican cathedral.
Another
modern cathedral, St. Michael’s stands in
Coventry
, adjacent to the older cathedral. It replaced the older
building reduced to a burnt out shell during the November blitz of 1940. The
medieval nails that littered the floor with the collapse of the wooden roof
became the symbol of reconciliation as they were wound together in the form of a
cross and distributed across the cities of a war torn
Europe
. On the remaining wall behind where the high altar stood are
now inscribed the words “Father, forgive”.
The new cathedral, designed
by Basil Spence, was consecrated in May, 1962, in the presence of the Queen. The
huge tapestry, measuring 23M x 11M, hanging on the wall behind the high altar
– Christ in glory – was the work of Graham Sutherland, an imposing and truly
stunning work of art in the service of the Church.
Standing against the ruined
wall of the nave under an open sky, is the carving of Ecce Homo, by Jacob
Epstein. I first came across this brooding figure of a captive Christ in the
Fifties, when it was on display in
Battersea
Park
in
London
. Then it was white, clean and stark, a silent presence, the
work of the sculptor Jacob Epstein. It was carved during 1934-5 from a block of
Subiaco marble. But no-one would give it a home until when, after Epstein’s
death, it was offered to Coventry Cathedral by Kathleen Garman. It was there
that I came across it again, many years later, still imposing, majestic in its
silence, a haunting presence indeed.
In
London
, the frontage of Westminster Cathedral is now fully revealed
and walking up
Victoria Street
, the open Piazza welcomes you to the Mother Church of
English Catholicism, the seat of the cardinal archbishop. An open space, a
meeting place, a place of welcome.
There are many and varied
faces to church buildings, all them contributing a physical presence for the
gathering of Christian people, who are actually ‘the Church’. I mentioned a
couple of weeks ago, the ramshackle church building that had emerged among the
refugees gathered at
Calais
. In spite of assurances given by the authorities it has now
been bulldozed away, as has a nearby Mosque. Centres of faith, pitiful and poor,
levelled and lost.
People become attached to
their local church, often the place of their baptism and the home of their
family. They treasure its surrounding grounds, care for the churchyard and the
burial plots that go back many years. It has an importance in their lives.
But then the difficult
question. With population movement, the size of the community diminishes. With a
lack of priests to minister, we begin to talk of amalgamation of parishes. That
is painful in two respects for not only are the people unwilling to break the
ties of many years, but also for a priest who suddenly finds himself with a
pastoral and administrative task beyond the capacity of his years. And if it
does go ahead, what happens to the now-redundant building and its surrounding
spaces? No solution is easy, every solution brings its own problems. It raises
again that disarmingly simple question ‘what is parish?’. We need to answer
it.
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