Around 40 people gathered at the cleared demolition site on the fringe of the city’s red zone cordon to hear the official announcement of the city’s $5 million temporary cardboard cathedral.

The Anglican Church today revealed plans for the “transitional” cathedral designed by a top Japanese “paper architect”.

While debate rages over the decision by the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch to demolish the crippled city centre landmark, work will start on the temporary A-frame building in nearby Latimer Square next week.

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The decision to deconstruct Christ Church Cathedral is supported by Canterbury church leaders.

An open letter of support from 70 churches and Christian organisations was presented to the Anglican Bishop of Christchurch, Victoria Matthews, at St Peter’s Church in Upper Riccarton yesterday. The letter affirmed that the Anglican Church had the right to decide the fate of its cathedral.

“God’s real Church is the people, and people matter more to God than any building,” the letter reads. “We pray for the bishop and other leaders as they face the challenges this brings.”

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Speaking to a media conference in the Botanic Gardens on Friday afternoon, Bishop Victoria said no bulldozers or wrecking balls would be used in the deconstruction.

She acknowledged “the high level of community interest and sense of ownership as the cathedral was both an iconic building and a place of regular worship by many.

“However, this is now a very dangerous building that needs to be made safe….”

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A Christchurch councillor believes legal action could be taken against the decision to partially demolish ChristChurch Cathedral.

The Bishop of Christchurch, Victoria Matthews, announced on Friday the 131-year-old building will be deconstructed down to two or three metres.

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On Wednesday the Anglican Bishop of Christchurch Victoria Matthews said the proposal, mooted by owners of buildings in the Square, could help make the earthquake-damaged area “welcoming and engaging” again.

“People [are] saying, ‘What would happen if this became a place of creativity and not a ruin?’ ”

However, residents and city councillors did not warm to the idea yesterday.

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“The Anglican Diocese is facing a hard reality – the Cathedral is the revered “Mother Church” but is not the only church in the diocese to have sustained damage, in some cases irreparable or too costly to repair,” Bishop Victoria Matthews of the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch said.

She said it would be deconstructed with “the utmost care and respect” to a level of 2-3 metres for safety and to retrieve heritage items.

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The Christ Church Cathedral is slowly “rocking herself to pieces”, according to its project manager.

Last night, the cathedral’s project manager, RCP’s Marcus Read, told TV3’s Campbell Live every aftershock was bringing the end of the building closer.

“She’s actually done pretty well as a building. The engineer says she continues to rock back and forth with every event and she’s slowly rocking herself to pieces,” he said.

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Auckland’s most provocative church is at it again with a billboard showing Jesus’ mother Mary staring at a positive pregnancy test.

St Matthew’s, also responsible for the well-known Gay-Dar billboard and another suggesting God was good in bed, has placed the new version outside its central city church in a move, it says, is designed to highlight the fact that Christmas is a tough time for many people.

Erected yesterday, it shows Mary staring at a home pregnancy test which reveals she is pregnant.

In a statement, Vicar Glynn Cardy and priest associate Clay Nelson said Christmas was about “a real pregnancy, a real mother and a real child. It’s about real anxiety, courage and hope”.

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Update: Lyndsay Freer, a spokesman for the Catholic diocese of Roman Auckland, has responded:

“Once again, St Matthew’s shows us that they have moved away from traditional Christianity, even though their hearts might be in the right place,” she said.

“It is true that Christmas is real and celebrates a real pregnancy.

“It is also true that the anxiety and needs of young solo mothers today need to be addressed with compassion and care.

“But in making this point, St Matthew’s ignores the gospel account of matters surrounding the pregnancy and birth of Jesus, in which Mary is not a shocked solo mother but a young woman who has given her assent and trust to God.”

According to the sources, [Dean] Beck and [Bishop] Matthews disagreed on the vexed and complex issue of what to do about the severely damaged cathedral, one of New Zealand’s most instantly recognised and loved buildings.

They say Matthews appears to favour demolishing the cathedral and building a new church, either on the same site or elsewhere. Beck, it is said, wants to repair the cathedral and restore it to its former glory.

They also disagree over the distribution of fundraising money ”“ the bishop wanting to scatter the money among all of Christchurch’s parishes. The bishop is said to have taken full control of all decisions, leaving Beck out in the cold.

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The Maori Anglican Bishop in Bay of Plenty, Ngarahu Katene, will be among about 150 people who are expected to attend centennial celebrations on 3 December at St Matthew’s church north west of Taupo.

The tiny Maori Anglican church in the small settlement of Oruanui was built in 1911 from pit sawn totara and features traditionally woven tukutuku panels and kowhaiwhai or scroll paintings.

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Anglican Diocese of Otago and Southland manager Bronwyn Miller said the New Zealand Anglican Insurance Board was working frantically to determine a way forward.

While Ms Miller could not speak for other denominations, she said all Anglican churches, and she expected all other churches in the Otago and Southland region, would be affected.

Anglican Insurance Board chairman Don Baskerville said cover would likely be found, but he was wary of the price of that cover. “The prices will be ugly,” he said.

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The Anglican Covenant is all but dead in the water as far as this church is concerned. This follows a crucial vote by Tikanga Maori at its biennial runanganui in Ohinemutu today.

The Covenant will still come before General Synod in July, but a decision to accept it requires a majority vote in all three houses ”“ lay, clergy and bishops ”“ and by all three tikanga.

Today’s runanganui decision effectively binds all Maori representatives on General Synod to say no.

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Dr Halapua acknowledges that Tuvalu’s present plight has been brought on by drought.

It rained in Tuvalu last Thursday for about three minutes ”“ and that’s the first rain they’ve seen during their rainy season. There’s no more forecast for the next three months, either.

There are, as far as Archbishop Halapua knows, very few ”“ if any ”“ Anglicans living on Tuvalu.

But that doesn’t mean he didn’t need to go there.

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ChristChurch Cathedral ”“ the icon of that quake-crippled city, and the most recognised church in New Zealand ”“ is to be deconsecrated ahead of partial demolition.

Bishop Victoria Matthews confirmed in a press conference in Christchurch today that the cathedral would have to be partly demolished, and further engineering measures taken to make the rest of the building safe.

Until the demolition work is actually underway it won’t be clear how much more of the cathedral will have to be brought down.

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Christ Church Cathedral leaders could have to find up to $50 million to rebuild their quake-damaged building.

The cathedral will be deconsecrated and partially demolished at the cost of $4m to make it safe, Anglican Bishop Victoria Matthews announced yesterday.

A final decision would be made once the controlled demolition and temporary holding measures were completed.

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…today the Diocese of Christchurch issued a statement saying it is considering all options for all of its churches, buildings and other facilities following the recent quakes.

“This is a challenging and complex process and extensive consultation is required with a range of stakeholders along with the need to commission expert analysis and technical reports,” said Bishop Victoria Matthew.

“With all sites, including the Christchurch Cathedral in the central city, safety is the first priority.

“A final decision won’t be made until all of the information and reports are received by the various church entities and the options and ramifications considered.

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New Zealand’s largest insurer of churches and heritage buildings announced yesterday that it would stop offering earthquake coverage throughout the country.

The British-owned Ansvar Insurance suffered $700 million worth of losses in the Christchurch earthquakes, including losses on the Anglican and Catholic cathedrals and the Christchurch Arts Centre.

It is the first insurer to stop offering earthquake coverage nationally since the disasters, which are expected to cost insurers more than $15 billion.

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The Auckland Diocesan Synod has decided that people in same-sex relationships should not be excluded from ordination.

After a debate lasting much of yesterday, Synod also agreed that sexual orientation should not be an impediment to ordination or any other offices in the church.

The mover was Rev Glynn Cardy, and the seconder Margaret Bedggood.

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Philosophers, scientists and theologians have sought to define the relationship between faith and science (somewhat unsuccessfully) since the earliest of times. Emerging biotechnologies of the 21st century serve to further demonstrate the complex, and unavoidable, interplay between science, faith and ethics. The issues emerging from the advent of reproductive technologies, stem cell therapies and genetic engineering technologies, for example, are not trivial, and are issues faced
increasingly by members of our congregations and society in general. The challenge of pastoral leadership lies in both discerning the times in which we live and providing guidance rooted in sound scholarship and faith. Our conference this year thus seeks to explore the challenges of ministering in a scientific world, and the theological, social and ethical issues relevant to such an enterprise.

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Guest speaker Alan Roxbugh said he would be educating the clergy about what they could do to go forward.

He said that, as ordained ministers educated at a seminary, most clergy “have been trained in a certain way”.

Dr Roxbugh said it was like his peers had been taught how to repair bicycles and, now the car had been invented, people were unsure what to do.

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A cardboard replacement for the earthquake-damaged Christ Church Cathedral could become a permanent feature of the new city.

Designs for the proposed temporary “cardboard cathedral” were unveiled in Christchurch yesterday by world-renowned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban.

The Anglican cathedral would be built with locally produced cardboard tubes erected in an A-shape, with shipping containers used as foundations.

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Bishop Tom [Brown] was then elected to succeed Archbishop Davis, and he was installed as the 10th Bishop of Wellington in February 1998.
He hit the ground running.
In his charge to his first diocesan synod Bishop Tom declared that change was on its way ”“ and he’d start that by disbanding the diocesan standing committee.
When he outlined that move, he says, applause broke out in the cathedral ”“ led by the clergy.
“The standing committee had swollen to 27 members,” Bishop Tom recalls, “and it acted like parliament. There was a left wing, a right wing, liberals, conservatives ”“ catholics, evangelicals and charismatics, all fighting for their own patch.”

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Bishop of Christchurch Victoria Matthews says Christchurch Cathedral has sustained significant new damage, with the famous rose window and most of the western wall lost.

She says it is now more likely that the cathedral won’t be restored to its original state, but built in a new modern form. However she says the cathedral will be at the heart of the city, wherever that is.

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Holy Trinity Anglican Church, [where the Rev. Neil Struthers serves]… is 141 years old…[and] had been condemned after February’s quake;… it completely collapsed on Monday “with this tremendous noise”.

His vicarage next door will almost certainly have to be demolished because the land it is on has been left unstable by the most recent quakes.

Although he admits “I don’t know where we go from here,” Mr Struthers is confident the church will be rebuilt soon.

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A multi-faith rebuild of the quake-shattered ChristChurch Cathedral is unlikely, says Anglican dean, Peter Beck.

“It’s a holy place, a sacred space for people of all faiths, [but] at the heart of it, it is a Christian church. It’s the Anglicans’ cathedral.

“The Anglican Church was part of the foundation of this city and has been a living part of its growth and heritage for all these years and we have no intention of doing anything other than continuing to contribute to the life and spirit of our city.”

He said Christchurch was a multi-faith society, and the Anglican Church would work with other religions “in all sorts of ways ”“ but the cathedral will continue to be the cathedral”.

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[Sunday] Suva’s Holy Trinity Cathedral…[hosted a service in which] fifteen candidates to Holy Orders were ordained ”“ six to the diaconate, and nine to the priesthood.

The new priests included Brenda Reid Sio of Samoa, who became the first Pacific woman ordained to the priesthood in the Pacific.

And the deacons included Feteleni Havea, who is pioneering a congregation of Tongan Anglicans in Christchurch. They meet once a month at St Barnabas Fendalton.

The service also marked the launch of the 34th synod of the Diocese of Polynesia, and later in the afternoon, Archbishop Winston Halapua, the Bishop of Polynesia, delivered his charge, which was entitled: God’s mission-shaped diocese and moana leadership.

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A new billboard outside Auckland’s St Matthew-in-the-City aims to prove you can’t put all Christians in the same box, the church’s priest-in-charge says.

In response to recent Hell Pizza billboards advertising its hot cross buns with the tagline: “For a limited time. A bit like Jesus”, the latest St Matthew billboard reads: “Hell no, we’re not giving up pizza for Lent”.

Priest-in-charge Clay Nelson said the idea for the billboard came after reading a Herald story where Anglican Church media officer Lloyd Ashton said the billboards were “disrespectful to what a lot of people hold very dear…”

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Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant George Augustus Selwyn, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the peoples of New Zealand and Melanesia, and to lay a firm foundation for the growth of thy Church in many nations. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land evangelists and heralds of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

A pizza company has upset people over an advertising campaign that compares its limited-edition hot cross buns to Jesus.

Hell Pizza has put billboards around Auckland’s CBD that advertise its hot cross buns with the tagline: “For a limited time. A bit like Jesus.”

Anglican Church media officer Lloyd Ashton said the campaign was disrespectful to many religions and the people who followed them.

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