Wren's Dome

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 10, 18 March 1925, Page 29

Wren's Dome

Rightly exercising its function as primate of the British press and gratefully remembering that its own life has been lived under the shadow of Wren's mighty pile, the Times newspaper has opened a fund for repairing the piers and dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. At the moment of our going to press, this fund already amounts to over £BO,OOO, and it is still growing. After the first spate of gifts has abated, the fund will be swollen over and over again by affluents of generosity from beyond the seas, and we may take it that the success of the appeal is assured. As Englishmen, as Londoners, and as admirers of Wren's genius, we thank the Times and we rejoice over the generosity of the public. ) Whenever it is possible to do so, Catholics yeagerly associate themselves with national f and imperial movements. The Great War y found us ready, and the blood of our sons was poured out as freely as any. In all charitable enterprises which are soundly conceived and justly administered we take our part; and if ever the part thus taken seems to the Protestant public to be smaller than

(From the London Tablet for January 17.)

our numbers demand, it is because our nuns and other workers are already covering much of the same ground, with a thoroughness which moves non-Catholics to wonder. Sometimes, however, it comes about that -we cannot join with the majority of our .fellowcountrymen in a public effort, simply because principles which we regard as sacred are involved. The restoration of St. Paul's Cathedral is a case in point. Several readers of the Tablet have asked whether they may properly contribute their guineas or their shillings to the Times fund, on the ground that St. Paul's is not merely a Protestant place of worship, with a Dean who minimises and even denies some of the major Christian doctrines, but is also one of London's chief architectural glories, and a masterpiece of aesthetic importance to the whole civilised world. In our opinion, Catholics are not justified in sending money to this work. That they should, as public-spirited citizens, contribute their fair share towards preserving the monuments of the past and towards enriching our towns and villages with new

works of art, we freely admit. But surely Catholics are doing this all the time; and they will not be shirking their civic duty by standing outside the movement for restoring St. Paul's. Critics who may be disposed to challenge our argument should do us the justice of recalling what Catholics have accomplished since the abrogation of the penal laws. Mostly from the pence of very poor people, assisted by the pounds of old Catholic nobles and gentlefolk who had been nearly bled to death by fines and confiscations on account of their religion, the Catholics of the nineteenth century gave England hundreds of stately buildings. After putting aside the far too many gaudy statues from? inferior shops, the sacred vessels and stained-glass windows designed by commercialists, and the meretricious altars in which some of our people have delighted, there remains a noble bulk of dignified and fine work which has helped to set our country in the forefront of the decorative arts. Our Pugins have had worthy successors; and the tradition goes on, under the enlightened patronage of our bishops and with the selfsacrificing aid of our people. In comparison with what Catholics have done, the wealthy Nonconformist bodies make but a poor show.

There is, however, another ground on which Catholics could, without shabbiness, claim exemption from the Times appeal. The Church of England enjoys the use of many stately cathedrals and thousands of massive parish churches built before the Reformation by Catholic hands, with Catholic money, for the exercise of the Catholic religion in conmunion with the Holy and Apostolic See of Rome. With admiration we grant that the Anglicans of to-day are most generous in adding to the number of these buildings, and that they have often shown better taste than our own in furnishing and adorning them. But they have had to build hardly any cathedrals. Liverpool, with its Catholic architect, is the only Anglican cathedral on a grand scale built since the Reformation, with the exception of St. Paul's, which stands on an old Catholic site and is partly constructed of materials from Old St. Paul's, a vast and famous Catholic temple. Seeing that we are having to build, at the cost of painful and heavy sacrifices, our cathedrals and parish churches and abbeys and convents and school houses all over again, we are notit the expressive word may be pardoned—''bilking" anybody by leaving Anglicans and Xonconformsits to repair W-'en's Pome. More-no,, we are doing our bit towards the architectural splendor of the metropolis of the British Empire by building Westminster Cathedral and by enriching it with marbles and mosaics which already rank amdng the, sights of London and are visited by hundreds of thousands of travellers every year. ' The city has Wren's Dome, Westminster has Bentley's Campanile; and we must not be called mean if Ave look after the Campanile and let nonCatholics look after the Dome. In any event, we should have to refuse to. take a hand in repairing an auditorium for schismatical gatherings. But, in view of all Ave have done and are doing in other ways, it cannot fairly be said that we are making a, theological excuse for unpatriotic meanness.