Trustees of Canterbury: We Need £50 Million

Trustees say Cathedral is
"Once Again Under Attack"

The trustees of Canterbury Cathedral, never exactly known for mincing words, recently reached new heights of stewardship (if not chutzpah) when they launched a "worldwide programme" to save Canterbury Cathedral.

Declaring the Cathedral "under attack" from dirt, children, tourists, the gargoyles, a woman with a red hat, and various balls of dust collecting in the yards since the days of Alphege, the trustees hope to excite the worldwide Anglican Communion to pony up more than £50 million desperately needed to repair several pipes, some missing bricks, and the wheelchair ramp in the back.

Coming as it does at a time when the Anglican Communion is deciding if it wants to be a Communion anymore, the dire missive sent out over the Anglican Communion News Service (which apparently anyone can send anything over no matter how galling or inaccurate) tends to prove that Archbishop Rowan Williams does indeed have his eyes set on a bright future.

"This great Cathedral is home for everyone in the Anglican Communion wherever they may be around the world," Rowan Cantaur said. "It is also a place of welcome where visitors from every continent, regardless of belief or creed, can come to experience this unique centre of worship, of education and learning, of craftsmanship and heritage, of music and culture, and of friendship and understanding."

In news unrelated to the drive to remove every penny from their parishioners' pockets, the Church of England recently reported that attendance at its churches had continued to level off, but at a pace slower than before.

One idea floated to improve attendance, especially amongst the children (in the CoE this is anyone under 47) is the insertion in weekly bulletins, of seek-a-word inserts under the rubric, "Now What Did He Say."

Under the plan, the mystery words would be selections of Dr. Williams' uncannily dense pronouncements on this or that current matter of burning Anglican issue, which the plan's advancers see as the makings of a puzzle for the ages, or at least as unsolvable by end of service time. The key to the success of this plan would be to collect each insert from each parishioner, so that they would have to return the following week in order to complete it. The plan is currently being discussed at the highest levels, but not on the Internet, in order to avoid confusion and any possibility of schism over the precise ordering of the word clues.

The full appeal for the Cathedral can be viewed here.