NO CATHEDRAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 13, 15 July 1937, Page 10

NO CATHEDRAL

WELLINGTON'S LACK

DIOCESAN FINANCES

BISHOP'S APPEAL

The need for strengthening the central finances of thfi diocese and for the erection of a Cathedral in Lhis city worthy of the Church was urged upon the Wellington Diocesan Synod this afternoon by the Bishop of Wellington, the Right Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland. His Lordship suggested this double project as a fitting and necessary Centenary effort.

"The diocese," said Bishop Holland, "definitely could not go on as at present, with the great bulk of its very small central funds earmarked for subsidising parochial assessments, and only a minimum left for pressing and obvious central purposes. There was no fund from which grants could be made to help parishes to raise the stipend of a curate, ■to his mind the most urgent and clamant of all their needs. There was no fund to help parishes faced with the necessity of immediate capital expenditure on, say, a new church, or a new vicarage. Within the next generation half the churches and half ihe vicarages of the diocese would have to be pulled down and rebuilt; and as things were there was no help to be expected by the parishes from any outside source whatever. There was not even a fund out of which small compassionate grants could be made to clergy in sickness or distress, no fund out of which inadequate pensions could .be supplemented. There was no fund which could enable them to ' employ such essential officials as Sunday school advisers or-' moral welfare workers, or even to provide proper office equipment for the present staff. There was no fund out of which grants could be made to pay the passages of men they wanted to bring out from England to help them. There was no margin for any extra expenditure whatever. It was clear that they must make a brave and adventurous effort to raise a large capital sum, the income of which could be used for one or all of these purposes and so ensure the future stability and development of the Church within the diocese. They must either advance or perish.

CATHEDRAL BUILDING.

"Then I look at Wellington, the Capital City of the Dominion," continued Bishop Holland, "and see nothing that the Church of England has done to suggest that God is a permanent and necessary element in the life of this great Dominion. Please do not misunderstand me if I say that, when visitors come to Wellington, I feel I almost have to apologise to them for the Church of England. They see fine permanent buildings growing up on all sides to express the strength and stability of our corporate life; they see a city quickly awakened to a sense of dignity and greatness in its political, commercial, and business life. But they see nothing to suggest the majesty of God in a community that is expressing in its buildings the greatness of man, nothing to suggest the permanence and eternity of God in a world that is characterised by change. ...

"I have never once found a man in England, however lightly he sits to the Christian faith, who denies that the cathedrals of England have always stood and stand, today for something vital to the British character.

"GOD REIGNETH."

"I do not think we can hope to see New Zealand maintaining or recovering its Christian faith without some external reminder that 'God reigneth', and I believe that only a noble cathedral with its dignified and uplifting standard of ceremonial and worship can meet that need. From the national point of -view I am convinced that we shall be doing grievous wrong to this Dominion if we do not see to it that the Ecclesia Anglicana. the mother church of the British nation, has a building worthy of its tradition and its history." -

From the ecclesiastical point of view, said his Lordship, the argument seemed equally sound. There must be a centre to which every churchman in the diocese turned for inspiration and for the quickening of his loyalty. Without a worthy cathedral he believed they could never have that for which they longed so sorely, the development of a courageous and adventurous Christian witness in the parishes of the diocese.

MONEY IN HAND

He could not conceive that he should be fulfilling his episcopal responsibility for the future of the Church s life_ if he did not urge all to go forward with faith and enthusiasm to the erection of a cathedral, not perhaps on the scale contemplated twenty years ago, but on a scale worthy of the Church which gave them birth. They were blessed that former generations had this vision and had left them a sum of money which would encourage them to hope "that with sacrifices that would equal or excel theirs they might m 1940 lay the foundation-stone of the cathedral of the Capital City of New Zealand He was convinced that tnis was a call to the present generation. The cathedral project and the effort to strengthen the general finances of the diocese, he felt, were inseparably linked up in the forward march of Christ's army in the diocese and that they must both be tackled with adventurous courage and undaunted faith by this generation. His appeal was to the whole church to rise to unprecedented heights of sacrificial giving.