My absence over the past few days from The Anglo-Catholic has certainly been noticed! I was at the wedding of my niece up in Yorkshire. The ‘non-conformist’ Christians seem to be less fussy about getting married in Advent and Lent than we are! My sister, brother-in-law and their children are Baptists, and the wedding took place in Baildon Methodist church near Bradford. My sister asked me to play the organ, and I was happy to find a good digital organ with two manuals and pedals, with a good speaker system and very pipe-like sound.
My wife and I had to travel on Palm Sunday, the first time since my ordination that it has been impossible to celebrate or even attend Mass, as we rushed to catch our ferry back to France from Dover. Checking our e-mail at a motorway service station, we discovered to our dismay that the boat was delayed for four hours because of a technical problem. We decided to negotiate the notoriously difficult M25, the London orbital motorway, and stop off at Canterbury. We took full advantage of the delayed Channel crossing.
We were late for Evensong (Canterbury has it at 3.15 pm, and it is at 4 pm in York), but arrived at the Anthem, which was a gloriously rendered Allegri’s Miserere. We sang the hymn O Sacred Head Sore Wounded to the Bach Passion Chorale tune and the Dean gave the Blessing. Following the choir for the outgoing procession, three women canons looked incongruous, as did the tall and gaunt – and slightly ‘camp’ looking – Precentor. At least it was a vestige of my Sunday duty rendered impossible by travelling. The usher gave us palm crosses as the organist played Bach’s chorale prelude on O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde groß. At least I would have something to attach to the altar cross of my chapel once we got home – 5 am on Monday morning, having spent several hours driving through heavy rain, thick fog and wind after getting off the boat at Boulogne.
After Evensong, we visited the spot where Saint Thomas was martyred, where there is a hideous modern art depiction of a cross and two swords. Below it is a cubic-shaped stone altar. However, this was the spot where the meddlesome priest, our favourite English Saint, gave his life for the independence of the Church from the King. We also visited the crypt where there are many altars, and I hear that it is not difficult to obtain permission to say Mass. I didn't ask, as it was afternoon and I did not have my own missal. I noted that Canterbury still uses Sarum-style Lenten Array, but the statues and altar crosses are not veiled.
Here are a few photos of the Cathedral gate and the Cathedral itself (the central tower, choir screen, place of St Thomas' martyrdom and the main crypt chapel).
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Thank you Fr. Chadwick for these photos. They bring back memories for me having frequently sung in the stalls in this Cathedral.
May we Anglicans remember our musical tradition and bring it with us in our reunion with the Apostolic See.
I too was in Canterbury recently, and also attended Evensong. As a native of the city I was dismayed to discover that you can't even get near the Cathedral nowadays during the daytime without paying; at all the entrances to the precincts there are ticket offices. If you live in the town you can apply for a pass, otherwise a full quarter of the city within the walls is now out of bounds.
(Another change for the worse is in the appearance of the buses, which have become vast in size and are painted all over in hideous colours, temporarily wrecking the good-mannered beauty of the ancient streets wherever they go. The old East Kent buses, in their restrained dark red and cream livery, with gold lettering, actually enhanced the view.)
"As a native of the city I was dismayed to discover that you can’t even get near the Cathedral nowadays during the daytime without paying; at all the entrances to the precincts there are ticket offices. If you live in the town you can apply for a pass, otherwise a full quarter of the city within the walls is now out of bounds."
Doesn't that put you in mind of Our Lord in the Temple casting out all that prevented people from entering to worship?
I went to Evensong in Canterbury Cathedral last Sunday, and was not asked to pay anything. There was no restriction on going through the gate, and the Verger let us into the quire even though we were late. The general policy of English Cathedrals (as I have seen in York Minster) is to charge only outside service times.
Charging entrance fees from people who are simply visiting the building as they would visit a museum seems normal considering that the maintenance of English Church fabric is not financed by the State, and Canterbury Cathedral is in quite poor condition.
However, it is true that turnstiles and cash registers introduce a foreign atmosphere to a church or a cathedral. So does mass tourism. The alternative is State funding, and that would do even more to 'persuade' churches to accept the modern agenda, litanies about which we read every day. The next step would be to exclude the Church from church buildings and keep them exclusively as museums and cultural centres.
I have seen worse in Lourdes with all the 'piety' shops, but at least access to the sanctuary is free, modesty and good-behaviour rules are imposed, and trading is kept away.
It must be a headache for those responsible for church maintenance!
Long ago they began to charge at the church door for entrance into the building itself and admission was free during service time (as it is now – anything else would be mad). My fury was aroused by the exclusion of people from a huge proportion of the mediaeval city, where we always used to be free to come and go, just to make it easier to get money off tourists who wish to look round the church. That is an excess of control-freakery.
"As a native of the city I was dismayed to discover that you can’t even get near the Cathedral nowadays during the daytime without paying"
Given the financial position of the CofE I'm not surprised. Not that we could truly afford them either, I would love to see some of the ancient cathedrals back in Catholic hands when the ordinariates are established. It could be proposed as an ecumenical endeavour to relieve the CofE of some expensive millstones!
Can the ordinariates afford to maintain let us say, York Minster?
See http://www.yorkminster.org/general/manging-the-minster/ and http://www.yorkminster.org/documents/405/accounts-for-year-ending-31-march-2008.pdf, the latter giving the financial account for 2009 with the exact amounts for their income and overheads.
The main sources of income are endowments, investments, voluntary contributions, admission fees from those not going to services but visiting the building, a shop, the choir giving concerts and recitals, and that sort of thing. The overheads are colossal: mostly maintenance of the fabric and paying the bills. The organ is expensive to maintain and tune. There are salaries to pay to the Minster Police (security guards, instituted in 1829 when a madman called Jonathan Martin committed arson and burned down the entire quire of the Minster), vergers, organist, assistant organist, choirmen, canons, dean, the Archbishop.
The website shows that keeping a place like that going is like running a business. You need some highly organised people and professional financial advisers.
Perhaps an Ordinariate could do it if all those competent people come over at the same time.
I too like dreaming, but I think the Church of England will be keeping York Minister for some time yet!
And don't forget, we'll need not only the Minster, but the Archbishop's Palace, the Minster Library, the canons' houses, the organist's house, the assistant organist's and songmen's lodgings, the choir school – and a heck of a lot of other real estate that lodges the people who make the plant work and keep going. There are also workshops for the stained glass window specialists and the stonemasons. Need I go on?