Cathedrals and us

The Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in the nation’s capital is a magnificent Neo-Gothic structure, based on 14^th-century English models, that calls itself “Washington National Cathedral”: a non-sequitur repeated by many others.

There is, however, no such thing as a national cathedral. Recently restored Notre-Dame de Paris is the cathedral church of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris; it’s not “Paris National Cathedral.” Ditto for St. Paul’s in London; Christopher Wren’s masterpiece is the cathedral church of the Anglican Diocese of London, not “London National Cathedral.”

A cathedral is the seat of the bishop of a diocese, and there are no national dioceses, even in small states like Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, where diocesan boundaries are coterminous with national borders. That Washington Cathedral is the seat of both the Episcopalian bishop of Washington and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States changes nothing because the latter is no more a “national bishop” than the Episcopal Church is America’s national church.

To call the great edifice on Mt. St. Alban in the District of Columbia the “national cathedral” thus falls into the category of Washingtonian hyperbole, ecclesiastical subdivision. That’s not the only odd thing about Washington Cathedral these days, however. For, like Anglican cathedrals in the U.K. that have become venues for helter skelters, “Princess Proms,” and miniature golf courses, Washington Cathedral has become an “event space” where just about anything goes — including corporate “holiday parties” for clients, during which the nave of the cathedral is filled with drinks bars and food stations, a light show plays off the ribbed vaults, and a band performs in front of the chancel near a prefabricated dance floor.

That crass secularization of sacred space suggests that what calls itself a “national cathedral” has sadly become a witness to the real absence.

In glass and stone fashioned by craftsmen of faith, great cathedrals once embodied a tight synthesis of culture, society, and Church. That synthesis rarely exists today. All the more reason, then, to be reminded of what the great cathedrals teach us when they’re allowed to do so. Pope Benedict XVI did that in his singularly lucid way in a homily at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2008:

Archbishop John Hughes, who…was responsible for building this venerable edifice, wished it to rise in pure Gothic style. He wanted this cathedral to remind the young Church in America of the great spiritual tradition to which it was heir, and to inspire it to bring the best of that heritage to the building up of Christ’s body in this land. I would like to draw your attention to a few aspects of this beautiful structure which I think can serve as a starting point for a reflection on …the Mystical Body.

The first has to do with the stained-glass windows, which flood the interior with mystic light. From the outside, those windows are dark, heavy, even dreary. But once one enters the church, they suddenly come alive; reflecting the light passing through them, they reveal all their splendor. Many writers — here in America we can think of Nathaniel Hawthorne — have used the image of stained glass to illustrate the mystery of the Church herself. It is only from the inside, from the experience of faith and ecclesial life, that we see the Church as she truly is: flooded with grace, resplendent in beauty, adorned by the manifold gifts of the Spirit. It follows that we, who live the life of grace within the Church’s communion, are called to draw all people into this mystery of light.

…The unity of a Gothic cathedral, we know, is not the static unity of a classical temple, but a unity born of the dynamic tension of diverse forces which impel the architecture upward, pointing it to Heaven. Here, too, we can see a symbol of the Church’s unity, which is the unity – as St. Paul has told us – of a living body composed of many different members, each with its own role and purpose. Here too we see our need to acknowledge and reverence the gifts of each and every member of the body as “manifestations of the Spirit given for the good of all” (1 Cor 12:7).

The beauty of Catholic faith — the truths of which express the one Truth who is the Thrice-Holy God — is best understood “from inside.” That is why those of us privileged to experience that beauty are called in Baptism to invite others “inside,” so that they, too, may bathe in the radiance of the sublime beauty that is the divine presence in the world. A true cathedral, functioning as such, is a summons to evangelization.