A $15 million rebuilding effort lies ahead for the Washington National Cathedral, and questions remain about whether that amount is sufficient, said Andrew Hullinger, the cathedral’s senior director of finance and administration.
Extensive earthquake damage to the stone cathedral on Aug. 23 includes fallen hand-carved angel and cherub carvings and stone chunks, cracks, crevasses and fissures, Hullinger said at a forum at All Saints Church in Chevy Chase, Md. A $2 million stabilization program made it possible to reopen the cathedral Nov. 12 for the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde as the ninth Bishop of Washington.
“The earthquake shook with such force and such violence it just blew these stones apart,” Hullinger said, adding that he does not want to imagine the damage if the brief quake had lasted longer.
The Washington Cathedral was like a house built upon solid rock that has been (like a frog being slowly boiled) transformed into a house built on shifting sand.
And now that cathedral supposedly built on the ‘rock’ of the “…Faith once given…” to us through Christ, the Apostles, the Church Fathers, and the prophets is no longer a cathedral that can be claimed as a cathedral that proclaims Christ as The Messiah to all the nations of the world and as the sole path to Salvation.
But instead, as the news from Washington, DC indicates, it has been transformed into house supporting a faith without foundation, a faith built upon the shifting sand of temporal fads that has drifted away from “…the Faith once given….”
I ask, why then spend the money to rebuild a cathedral that is the cathedera of revisonists who have so successfully attacked that Faith?
I’m struck by the lack of priorities of the national church: “(The Episcopal Church has donated $10,000 to the rebuilding effort.)”
That money could have been used to buy 12 hours of Beers firm’s litigators…
AnglicanFirst: Why? Because it is a national, regional, and metropolitan landmark of staggering beauty and cultural value. You may not know this, but the vast majority of the people who care about this building neither know nor care what’s going on in the Episcopal Church.
I would urge a more charitable approach … the $500 gift from +Beck (Christchurch) speaks volumes.
“I would urge a more charitable approach …”
such as the charitable approach of Solomon toward the syncretism tolerated in the Temple in Jerusalem during his reign?
That sort of “charity” brought calamity upon the Jewish nation.
I actually look to the top of the National Cathedral for the metaphor. The capstones of the key arches depict the Apostle’s Creed. Since the leadership of TEC has recarved and revised these beyond recognition it should be no surprise when because of their weakness the ceiling gives way.
Metaphors, allusions to stories from the Bible: all very good. But I trust you understand my point that only a very few care about such things. And even fewer want to see the building in ruin. That’s all I’m saying.
I guess what disturbs me is that the majesty of its construction is used to give a patina of respectability for a tissue of lies. Since the unknowing are susceptible to being influenced by that I think it calls for caution on our part and perhaps giving to other worthy projects instead. How else will the leadership get the message?
A “…patina of respectability for a tissue of lies…” has been
the goal of the revisionist within ECUSA all along.
They want catholic rites and sacraments(?) for things that are not catholic and aren’t sacred.
This then will bring out into the open what has been occult because it is not sacred and not blessed (and indeed can be righteously claimed to be profane/heretical) under a highly public spotlight of that shines with ‘respectability.’
Then of course, there is the broader long-term revisionist agenda of attacking American and Western Judeo Christisn culture until that culture is destroyed as a relevant influence in personal and political life.