Despite being a card-carrying atheist, I have an endless love affair with churches; those monolithic testaments to men's faith in stone or brick. From the small Norman churches of rural England to the architectually-mixed giant cathedral in Seville; to the baroque village churches in Bavaria to the giant, towered edifices of the late-gothic flowering in Europe, such as Cologne (Koeln) or Chartres.
I was at Vicoria Station in London on Wednesday for a meeting over coffee (boy, did the Victorians know how to build a railway station) and I had the a sudden urge to visit the Army & Navy store in Victoria Street. It is alas no longer the 'Army & Navy', merely another in the long line of 'House of Fraser' clones, but still. It was, as expected, nothing special and certainly not as I remembered it, little is, but on walking back to the station, I passed Westminster Cathedral.
Now Westminster Cathedral should not be confused with Westminster Abbey, much older and a cathedral of the protestant church, as all churches became after the reformation. Westminster Cathedral was built in the late nineteenth century following the return of the Catholic Church to England. (It was not however the first, that goes to St Patrick's in Soho, but it is certainly the biggest.) What struck me, as I walked past, was that I could not recall ever having been inside. I was not even sure that it was Catholic.
Now in bear in mind that nearly all of the great churches in Europe were (and in many cases still are) Catholic. Either they were built prior to the Reformation and only later got 'turned into' Protestant churches or they were the product of the Counter-reformation and resolutely maintain their Catholicism to this day. Just as importantly, Catholic churches are, by their very nature, celebrations of the 'Glory of God' in architectural form. Chartres Cathedral, perhaps, is the best example. Built entirely by artisans and penitents from the surrounding villages over a period of more than two hundred years, the cathedral stands testament to the people's faith. Most of the workforce would never live to see its completion; and knew it.
I think I was always repelled by Westminster Cathedral owing to its brick faced exterior 'skin', which somehow jars. It somehow never fitted my idea of a Cathedral. However, on checking that it was truly a Catholic church, times of Mass and Confession on the noticeboard are a dead giveaway, I went inside. I have never been so disappointed in a church, much less a Cathedral, in all my life. True, it was big; it had marble in all the right places; it had all the all the little niches, altars, so beloved of the church. The places dedicated to the most little-known saints; St Jude the Obscure, St Joan the Burnt; St Pancras, patron saint of railway stations. But it had no soul! It was as if two thousand years of history, two thousand years of tradition, at least a tousand year of architectual brilliance had been flushed down the toilet! Horrible place! And I'm never going back!
Something else happened that day. I'd forgotten the feeling that I get, as an atheist, in entering a Catholic church, almost like I'm intruding on something personal. Someone's home, someone's living room, uninvited. Catholics, for the most part, visit Catholic Cathedrals and all perform the same ritual on entering; the sign of the cross, on bended knee, before the altar. I don't, but I often wonder whether I should. Make me less of outsider. But perhaps that's just my paranoia!
Besides which, it would make me (very) hypocritical, no? To do something in which I don't believe, just because everyone else does. And would it not be insulting to any bona-fide Catholics?
Probably.
I just can't get over the fact that I should!
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