There are times when one defers from commenting. However, in light of the fact that Dean Robert McCarthy now has published correspondence received over recent public criticism of his ministry and vision for St Patrick’s Cathedral, this opinion piece which was written early last week and consciously withheld, is now being published.
A number of years ago at the Church of England’s annual Deans’ Conference, the speaker giving the devotional addresses recalled an incident from French literature. An author had taken a friend to Chartres to visit the cathedral. He expounded that “Cathedrals are always windy places”. He continued by adding that he was not just referring to the winds created by the elevated sites of many cathedrals or the fact that the very bulk of the building could create its own effects with winds swirling around it, but to the spiritual reality that cathedrals would appear to attract malevolent winds of evil.
Set against my own experiences and from observation of life at times in several cathedrals, this story from France has travelled with me and resonated.
Cathedrals have much to offer and especially in the great cities where spiritual emphases can struggle to survive. Most English cathedrals for some time have been reporting increases in numbers worshipping as parish church attendances wane. Formal worship without the ties of compulsory attendance at a range of mid-week activities in what one American theologian has christened “the addictive church”, has an appeal to many people who are busy in their own Monday thru’ Friday ministries in their own hard pressed places of work.
However, beyond the commendable witnessing of cathedrals to modern society, there have been too many indications that cathedrals can be places of arrogance, intemperance, power struggles and psychotic personalities both lay and clerical. To put it bluntly, cathedrals attract disfunctional people.
I have immense sympathy and empathy for the recently-resigned Dean of St Paul’s. The Dean was widely liked as Dean of Carlisle and as Bishop of Sodor and Man. He succeeded Dean Amos and came with a wider range of skills in his portfolio than most who have been appointed dean – even to less prominent cathedrals. He also oversaw the completion of the extensive scheme of maintenance and helped raise a significant part of the finance which was required – much of it from the City’s financial sector.
One factor which hasn’t been given any in-depth comment, is that the dislocated protest which came to a stop outside St Paul’s, came hard on the heels of the Dale Farm protest which most definitely was soundly penetrated with hard core agitators some of whom had well-established records of violent physical confrontation. It would not be irresponsible to consider the possibility of the impact of such people taking over St Paul’s and turning it into an immense citadel in the city’s centre which would be virtually impossible to regain without a high scale of conflict and potential damage to the building and its furnishings. It would have been well beyond the situation at Dale Farm which was certainly no picnic for the police or the council involved. And if a reader thinks this is stretching it too far, one could point to the same anti-capitalist movement in the USA which has shut down Oakland, that country’s fifth largest port. One could also point to the student protests in London in March of this year which were infiltrated by anarchists who ensured violence towards police and civilians and immense damage to property.
Furthermore at St Paul’s, it would appear that the staff member charged with health and safety issues, and now off on sick-leave, had advised that the cathedral be closed. This raises the area of litigation. If the Dean ignored his own in-house advisor, and subsequently there was an issue in this area, not only could the cathedral have placed its insurance cover in jeopardy, but it could also be faced with criminal, as well as civil law proceedings.
In my mind, the Dean of St Paul’s was damned no matter which course he adopted. His situation was certainly not helped the cathedral’s Chancellor, who seems to be a non-shrinking violet regarding self-publicity. Then there were the unhelpful comments of a suffragan bishop and the ‘hokey-cokey’ role of the Bishop of London who wasn’t in and wasn’t out, at least until he saw which way the wind was blowing! But that’s a form of episcopal leadership for you – as one French revolutionary leader said on seeing a crowd moving through the streets – “Ah, there go my people, I must see where they are going, so that I may lead them!” Alas, too many modern bishops will never give their clergy covering support or the benefit of the doubt, because they are too busy covering their own hides, and securing their own ambitions, sadly this is not confined to the other side of the Irish Sea.
Sadly too, I know I would not need to travel to the C of E to find a canon whose involvement in cathedral ministry seems to focus on disowning the dean in the press or on other occasions. I rather liked the Dean of St Patrick’s concept of the national cathedral becoming precisely that by exercising a ministry of hospitality for the mainstream churches in Ireland. What a magnificent witness for a church which is in a substantial minority in both parts of Ireland! And how appropriate that it be placed before each candidate for the Presidency of Ireland.
This was totally in keeping with an aspiration which some of us of an earlier generation of The Chapter of St Patrick’s Cathedral held in common with Dean Victor Griffin, who did not consult the chapter on his public pronouncements.
The response of the Canon Critic of St Patrick’s reminded me of yet another conference story. The lecturer to my group of army chaplains was a scientist who was one of the mainsprings behind the development of the Open University. He was also church warden of a parish in St Alban’s diocese in the era of Robert Runcie who was a personal friend. So, he knew how the church “does business” from the grassroots to General Synod. His biggest complaint about the church was that it always wanted the results of the experiment without the risk and discipline of conducting the experiment.
The Dean of St Patrick’s presented a vision. The Canon Critic wittered on in a public act of knicker twisting about the Constitution and the fact that the Chapter and the Board had not been consulted.
Thoughts of Scribes and Pharisees concerned about the Law, with all “the jots and tittles” in place came to mind, versus a visionary with a concept on a much larger scale.