St Paul’s Cathedral has closed to visitors for the first time since World War II because of protesters camping on its doorstep, its dean has said.
The decision was taken with a “heavy heart” for health and safety reasons, said the Right Reverend Graeme Knowles.
Anti-capitalist demonstrators from Occupy London Stock Exchange have been in St Paul’s Churchyard since Saturday.
We can thank Giles Fraser, not so long ago made Canon Teletubby in charge of interesting talks at the Cathedral for this mess. As usual he mouthed off without engaging his brain or apparently asking anyone else before he told the police who were happy to keep things in order to buzz off. Now we see the results – the apparent proper purpose of the Cathedral, the pursuit of Mammon, has been interrupted, and no one can queue up to pay the extortionate entrance fees or else be herded through very nasty tapes which rope off the rest of the cathedral including the ‘Light of the World’ into evensong. Tsk tsk.
Westminster Abbey does it so much better; mind you, there were the Hindu snowmen one winter.
As for the protesters, they seem good natured, and I think reflect most peoples’ concerns about the rise in the basic cost of living – food, heating and transport, which people have no flexibility to cut back with Winter coming. I am afraid we are going to see more of this as people suffer more in the coming months. Please pray for us as for yourselves.
In any event, there was absolutely no reason to close the Cathedral; there are at least two other perfectly serviceable and accessible entrances to the North and South, although it would mean visitors would have to be channelled back to the gates and cash registers to have their money comprehensively extracted from them, but the Cathedral has plenty of its ubiquitous and nasty tape to channel them through, although it might mean that worshippers catch sight of Holman Hunt’s ‘the light of the world’ in passing.
Perhaps it will give the Dean and Chapter pause for thought about what they are doing and who they are serving in the money-making racket they have become.
The Dean and Chapter, and the Bishop round the corner if they were so minded, could also take the opportunity to share the Gospel with the mainly young, earnest and concerned people now sitting outside the rich man’s gate? Just a thought.
St Paul’s is in the City of London, a world centre of finance, banking and investment. Men and women from those industries go there to pray. Their companies donate enormous sums to the cathedral’s fund-raising drives, especially when it comes to repairs to the vast edifice. I would have thought that this chaplaincy role required building a relationship of trust and respect with the City and its institutions. Within such a relationship criticism can be made and heard. In this light the initial approval of the camp seems bizarre, premature and not a little unwise.
Sad, and prayers–my first thought when I read this was, “Where are the police”?!! But, now I see that “Canon Teletubby” told them to “buzz off”…Oy…
I toured St. Paul’s in 1988 but don’t remember paying exorbitant fees to do so–I guess too many things have changed.
Yes, PM, there/here/lots of places and more big prayers–the old saying that “things are tough all over”…I wish it was different. :-/
Ruth Gledhill has a report. I still have a sense that the church is missing a trick in ministering to this ready made congregation who have camped outside its doors, but maybe St Paul’s has the wrong sort of clergy to really engage with that ministry. Bit different to ministering to the good and the great who they usually welcome, and the tourists they are used to fleecing, to taking in the great unwashed who have come to their door from the slums of Sloane Square.
It is on such occassions that we are seen for who we have become as a church, and who exactly has been promoted in it.
Could do better has to be the report. Kudos to the young lady clergywoman at the end of Ruth’s report who seems to have got it.
“the great unwashed who have come to their door from the slums of Sloane Square”
Perhaps St. Paul’s could sell fair trade, shade grown lattes to the occupiers to raise funds.