Compass Rose Members Visit the Diocese of Liverpool and Liverpool Cathedral

While my travels to England over the years have taken me to many cathedrals through the country, this was just my third visit to an English cathedral with the Compass Rose Society -- we'd been to Canterbury Cathedral for a board meeting several years ago and to Salisbury Cathedral on a previous study visit. At each of these magnificent places we learned a great deal about the cathedrals, about Anglicanism, about The Church of England and its liturgy and about English history, and our visit to Liverpool Cathedral and the Diocese of Liverpool continued to expand this knowledge.


     View of the Cathedral from the North

Liverpool Cathedral, for example, is the largest Anglican Cathedral, the largest cathedral in England and the fifth largest cathedral in the world. It is a modern edifice. Designed in the Gothic style by the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott with its foundation stone laid in 1904 by King Edward VII, its third and final phase was completed in 1978.


     Interior views of the Cathedral


What's really striking about it is that from the west entrance to the reredos there is only open space. There's not a column to be seen down an enormous open nave with its two transepts and "Central Space", a ceiling 175 feet above it (at its apex)


     Top-down and bottom-up views of the interior of the Cathedral



and a 331 foot central tower topping it off: ride two lifts up to the bell chamber - 14 bells reside there; the heaviest and highest peal bells in the world --then walk 108 steps to the top of the tower and a magnificent view.


     The Lady Chapel is as large as many parish churches

But as it turned out, this spectacular cathedral was but one part of a broadly educational and spiritual visit to the Diocese of Liverpool.

Lynne Butt, the travel manager for the Anglican Communion Office in London who along with Clare Kerrigan on the Cathedral staff looked after our arrangements flawlessly, described the scope of our visit well:

"Liverpool was an excellent visit. I assumed that as a study visit we would be hearing a lot from both sides about the relationship between Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church in the diocese. Relationships are obviously very cordial, as our welcome dinner with Dean Justin Welby was held in the Catholic cathedral [the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King]! We also attended mass there.

"But it turned out to be more of a mission visit, as our visits were to various community projects in the diocese -- schools, children's centre with parenting classes, a half-way house for women prisoners, and a community centre offering art classes


    Our group photo at the Wagan Art Centre

and we met some truly inspiring people (mostly women!) who were doing so much with virtually no funding at all.


     Fr. Lord presents the Compass Rose tile to St. James in the City


     Christ's Church in Ince, a local parish

"Liverpool has some of the most deprived boroughs in the whole of Europe, a mix of unemployment, drugs, lack of educational attainment, alcohol and underage pregnancies - the works.

"The basic theme of our visit was regeneration, and the city centre and waterfront are very impressive, but it's hard to see how it will continue to the very poor areas with all the government cuts they are experiencing."

We came to the Cathedral at a transition point in its life. Dean Welby has been elected Bishop of Durham and was in the midst of his leave takings as he assumes his new post at the end of November. Nevertheless, he was most gracious and generous with his time as he introduced us to the history of Liverpool and the Cathedral, accompanied us to several stops on our program, led an Evensong for our group and, with his wife Caroline, hosted us at a final dinner in the cathedral's on-site refectory, Couture.


     Dean Welby presides at Sunday Eucharist


A presentation by Mike Eastwood, Diocesan Secretary, Diocese of Liverpool and Director of Operations of the Cathedral, taught us about the mission of the Diocese of Liverpool and how the activities of its Cathedral in are integrated into that mission.

The Diocese see its mission as: "To see a sustainable, led and transforming Christian presence in every community to enable all people to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God" and the Dean characterizes the Cathedral as a "safe place to do risky things in Christ's service."

Mary Donovan reported, "I was impressed by the way in which the Diocese had analyzed the basic social and economic problems confronting the clergy, developed the Bishop's Growth Agenda and then translated that agenda into specific goals for each congregation. Obviously a great deal of thought has gone into helping clergy deal with the problems they confront. "

After this briefing, we were well prepared to visit local parishes and the institutions that Lynne mentioned above. (Recall that a parish in the Church of England refers to a geographic area and that the clergy in the parish support the schools and social agencies within it as well as the congregations in the parishes. The Liverpool Diocese and the Cathedral are strongly focused on ministry in the local community.)

A subsequent tour of the city with Ken Pye, a most knowledgeable local historian, helped us understand the city's past, its current ongoing renaissance and the challenges that the Diocese faces. Mary Donovan provided an insightful summary of our visit to city and its suburbs:

"This trip had such a powerful effect on me because it forced me to confront the difficulty of adjusting to life in a post-industrial age. All around us were the remnants of the industry and commerce that had made Liverpool a great city: the extensive dock system, the huge tobacco and sugar warehouses standing empty and literally unusable today, the elaborate collection of locks within the harbor, even the Cathedral itself, a monument to a system of pomp and ceremony that is largely gone out of people's lives today.


     The Liver building with its two iconic birds atop

"The work of importing and distributing goods continues--but it is accomplished largely by mechanized systems. The huge number of teamsters who had formerly moved those goods are simply not needed today. All the people we talked to told us unemployment is the biggest problem they deal with. Unemployment and all its effects--apathy, lethargy, alcoholism, family brutality, and poor health--were so pervasive, both in Liverpool itself and in the outlying village of Wigan. And no one could really see ways to put people back to work.

"I came away with a tremendous admiration for the people we met in the various schools and social agencies who were so fiercely dedicated to instilling hope in clients who had so few reasons for hope. I was impressed with the imagination and energy with which programs were designed.

"The St. Francis of Assisi school [editor's note: this high school is a joint activity of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches in Liverpool], for example, painted their hallway walls with scenes from St. Francis' Canticle to the Sun to emphasize the school's focus on ecology.

"The art center in Wigan [a Liverpool suburb that we visited] actually hired a local graffiti artist to embellish its outer walls to make the place more inviting to the "toughs" of the neighborhood.

"Since the people of St. James in the City hadn't yet found the funding to restore the roof of the deserted church building they were reviving, they simply erected a tent inside and held services there.

"I was also impressed by the obvious spirit of cooperation between the Anglican and the Roman Catholic authorities--their joint support of various community centers and schools we visited and the evident working relationship between the two cathedrals and I was intrigued by the amount of church-state cooperation in the educational system--church schools funded by the state in a way that would never be allowed in the United States and religious classes in the secular schools.

"But at the end of the trip, the overwhelming question in my mind was why can't we figure out a massive way to put people back to work? We can send a rocket to the moon, why can't we regenerate our inner cities?"

Our visit ended with a spectacular twenty minute son et lumiere show inside the Cathedral following our farewell dinner with clergy representing other faiths in the Liverpool religious community and the Cathedral staff and diocesan clergy who had been so generous with their time during our stay.


     The sound and light show



As the Cathedral organist played an ever growing crescendo of classic pieces on the massive 9,765 pipe Willis organ, the lights flashed brightly around us in the deepest recesses of the building gradually bringing us from total darkness to brightest light.

This familiar Christian metaphor sent us home thinking about the renaissance we had seen taking place in the City of Liverpool and with its people, praying mightily that it would continue and most thankful to all those who made our visit so memorable.