THE P RTAL


February 2011


PORTAL NEWS Westminster Cathedral


by David Chapman


BRITAIN HAS AN amazing collection of cathedrals. Perhaps you would like to try a little game with them. Put one cathedral into each of the following categories: ancient, dramatic, small, modern, too big, eccentric, forbidding, welcoming, ugly, beautiful - the list could go on.


Now did you put Westminster Cathedral into any


of those categories? Most of you reading this will be Catholics of one sort or another, so it is quite likely. Aſter all, even rather stuffy writers on English Cathedrals usually manage to include it somewhere towards the back of their books - perhaps because it begins with W, though I‘m not certain that is the reason. What is it about this curious building - run up on the cheap, in brick rather than the traditional stone (or the later concrete!), unlike any other building in Britain, only half-finished inside and on a cramped site at the unfashionable end of one of the ugliest streets in London?


Defining Moment Westminster Cathedral


holds a defining moment in my Christian journey. By Holy Week 1995 I had been a Roman Catholic for just a few months. I attended the Mass of the Chrism, always held in Westminster on the Tuesday of Holy Week, and was sitting at the back. Te huge procession of clergy entered - it took some time as distances in this building are vast. Bringing up the rear was the tall, dignified figure of Cardinal Basil Hume. Eventually he raised his hand in the sign of the cross - “In the name of the Father….” - and it was at that moment, when every person in the building made the same simple gesture that I suddenly realised “Wow! I really am part of all this!”


You always meet friends in the Confessional queue


It is perhaps in making people feel “part of all this”


that Westminster Cathedral excels. You can wander in from the bustle of Victoria Street - no one will necessarily speak to you, no one will ask you to pay or if you are a Roman Catholic, there is no aggressive selling of guide books or cards, no audio-guides, and even if Mass is being celebrated at the distant high altar no one will mind if you stroll in and then stroll out again. Does all that sound a bit laid-back, a bit casual or even a bit disrespectful? Perhaps it does, but this great building holds a very special place in the hearts of tens of thousands of people who visit each year. Te Catholic writer Joanna Bogle summed it up recently when she wrote “A


Traditional


in London has for


Advent...


Westminster Cathedral. Went there


confession -


to include you


always meet friends in the confessional queue and this was no exception. Always vaguely reassuring - and the Sung Mass was beginning, with its glorious music and solemn procession…” To so many it is the most natural thing in the world to drop in to the Cathedral, to say a


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