The American newspaper The Herald Tribune recently called Europe 'the most godless quarter on earth’.
However, it may be that the situation in Britain is more complex than that. The Archbishop of Canterbury has begun to mount a critique, saying that we are 'a deeply, dangerously bored society, and we are reluctant to look for the root of that.' He argues that we have created a culture which seems to be more in love with fantasy than reality - with things like the national lottery, gambling and soaps on TV. He also says that we have abolished sacred time, with Sundays given over to shopping and picnics. In fact, another senior churchman, the late Cardinal Basil Hume, said that shopping was the new religion, to which its customers were devoted.
There is also a good deal of disquiet over the new European Constitution whose preamble discusses the sources of the values that produced European culture.
The text refers abstractly to the ‘cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe’ which is vague enough, but the draft preamble droned on about the influence of Greece and Rome and the Enlightenment, airbrushing the Christian heritage out altogether.
The new culture seems to be one of 'I'm a spiritual person, not a religious one’. Accordingly, The Tablet, an influential Catholic newspaper, has set to work on trying to analyse the spirituality of Britain. The main conclusions seem to be that the Christian faith in pluralistic societies can only be successful if the problems in those societies are appropriately addressed.
Yet there is disquiet that the modern liberal and democratic world is actually ahead of the Church in human rights, racial tolerance, the role and equality of women and a toleration and acceptance of homosexuality. The Church constantly excoriates modern society. If it looked more closely could the Church not see something of its own future within that changed, and changing, society?
After Christmas, most people will have seen or heard the 'Christmas Story' and probably noted the usual critique of its historicity. One hardy annual is the problem of 'no room at the inn’. St Luke's account in Greek says ouk én autois topos en to katalymati, that is properly translated as ‘no room in the living-space’ (which is the upper story of a building in which the animals lived below). All very correct, but it takes away a good deal from the primary school Christmas play which relishes the innkeeper's histrionic refusal of accommodation. But then things getting lost in translation is a general problem. I recently heard of HM Customs getting in a flap over a consignment of goods from a West African country stencilled with the word 'GRENADES'. They were about to call in the army when fortunately someone pointed out that the boxes were from francophone Africa and only contained pomegranates - or grenades as the French call them.
One of the great landmarks of northern England is the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool. It has had a surprising history. An original design by Sir Edwin Lutyens (18691944) was to have a great 168 feet dome and was to tower to 520 feet to contrast with the Gothic Anglican Cathedral of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott which was rising at the other end of Hope Street (to a moderate 330 feet).
In the end, only the crypt was ever finished. In 1960 a competition to design a ‘Cathedral for our time’ was won by Sir Frederick Gibberd (1908-1984). Work began on Pentecost Sunday in May 1967 and was this time finished in just five years. Since then, this building ‘for our time’ has suffered from leaks, fires and even vandalism and has had to be repaired many times.
But it now has a new cafe-restaurant in the piazza and a good bookshop. The latest addition, which completes the project, is a grand staircase linking the cathedral to Hope Street. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan cathedral has always attracted the affection and humour of scousers. It was christened ‘Paddy's Wigwam’ early on, and when repairs were needed to the leaking roof some years ago, one of the architects found himself on top of the building looking into the street below. As he looked down, a shout came from a passer-by: ‘don't jump, mate - your giro's in the post.’ Michael Morton is a Catholic Priest of St Winefried’s Parish, Sandbach ‘You, Bethlehem, are by no means least...’ Oh, no?