Canon Supplements His Criticism of Cathedral

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27096, 2 June 1949, Page 7

Canon Supplements His Criticism of Cathedral

NZPA Special Correspondent Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, June 1. Canon John Collins, who described St. Paul’s Cathedral in a sermon on Sunday “as a piece of Victorian furniture without relevance to modern life,” supplemented his criticisms further in an interview with the Daily Telegraph Touring the Cathedral he described some of the groups of memorial statuary as “preposterous,” and said that most of them "commemorated some military achievement about which nobody either knew or cared to-day “People get no inspiration from them now,” said Canon Collins. “ They want warmth and colour.” Canon Collins also thinks that modern religious music should replace some of the Victorian hymn scores used in "the Cathedral. “The sevenfold amen was all right in the Victorian era,” he said. “It belonged to the soupy • kind of religious music favoured then.” . .' Discussing the Cathedrals stained glass windows, Canon Collins said they should be subjected to strictest tests by modern artistic standards before being retained. “I think we are fortunate that some of the old ones were Tost during the war,” he said.