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….”
If the Frauenkirch in Dresden could be rebuilt from a heap of rubble, Christ Church’s cathedral could be as well. And personally, I think Coventry Cathedral’s rebuild is awful.
The danger from earthquakes is quite a bit greater in New Zealand (The country is on the edge of the Rim of Fire) than it is in central Europe, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the cathedral can’t or won’t be built. If the people of New Zealand are determined enough, it probably could be rebuilt. I do have problems with their brand of theology, though (God knows I had a problem with their abominable Book of Common Prayer!), and I really question the need for a new cathedral in the first place, when a church designated as a pro-cathedral should do just as well, if that’s what they want.
#1 That is certainly true – one can rebuild anything safely given the will and the money, but at the moment the rebuilding costs fall on the diocese and such insurance recoveries as there may be. If the community, meaning the government and the city are so keen to see this iconic building rebuilt then that answer is to start digging in their pockets. Bishop Victoria is coming in for a bit of flack, having been abandoned by the agency who apparently told her that the building was unsafe and had to be taken down, but who are now coy about publicly stating that; although it does rather sound as if she has set her face against a restoration some time ago.
I think there are a variety of NZ Anglicans, just as there are in the UK and US, though their prayer book does tend towards the loopy, which fortunately we avoided in our trial services.
There really wasn’t anything much of Coventry Cathedral left, including any of the internal historic items and glass, so rebuilding would have been a pastiche – I quite like the new cathedral, and it is certainly better than the other rebuilding that went on around it. What jars is its juxtaposition with the old ruins – but that is part of the point – it is light and insubstantial tacked onto the jagged wreck of the bombed cathedral. It is also of its time, and probably the most poignant war memorial we have here.
There are other cathedrals [we have 42 cathedrals as far as I know] and a great many churches which are cathedral-sized, many of which are in urgent need of care and funds, so although I would not have wanted the new Coventry Cathedral, now it is there, I certainly wouldn’t want that changed, and out of all that, influenced no doubt by the physical setting, Coventry has developed a ministry of reconciliation which has among other things spawned the ministry of Canon Andrew White in the Middle East. Perhaps that is a better legacy than if the cathedral had been restored as though the war and the bombing had never been.