In Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus returns to Ithaca, disguised as a poor wanderer, he is given food and shelter by the swineherd, Eumaeus. The ancient Greek code for providing hospitality to strangers, xenia, was considered a sacred obligation overseen by Zeus. Eumaeus’s obligation would be to take the stranger to the house of his lord to be cared for. But he knows that the suitors who have invaded Odysseus’s house will treat him badly — a violation of xenia that could bring upon them the wrath of the gods. So he cares for this man himself, pronouncing those magnificent lines: “Stranger, it is not right for me to turn away any stranger, even one in a worse state than you are, for strangers and beggars all come in Zeus’ name.”
But the scene, as touching as it is, makes very clear that something is amiss; there is a fundamental disorder in Ithaca. A swineherd is taking upon himself the obligation of the lord, and the lords in the palace are acting like swine. The pen for pigs holds the noblemen, and the palace has become a pen full of pigs. The disorder of places reflects a deeper moral disorder.
Consider how a similar disorder of place is expressed and experienced in the modern world when a structure built over centuries by artisans and laborers as a place for sacred worship is used as a bar and discotheque (as in several recent British cathedrals). Some people may enjoy it. The suitors in Odysseus’s palace were enjoying themselves. But they were living in a disordered state of affairs, and that disorder should have alerted them to their own corruption.
It’s not only that the bar and discotheque fail to respect the sacredness of the space, although this is also true. The deeper problem is that the arrangement fails to respect the human spirit’s yearning for a transcendent Source that surpasses the troubles and messiness of day-to-day life.
Bars and discotheques can provide a temporary relief from one’s troubles, but they do little more than anesthetize people against the darkness and despair that arise in a seemingly meaningless life, especially since we bloom only for a short time, and all of us must eventually die. This is why bars and discotheques soon close, but cathedrals and other places of worship last for centuries.
So, given the dearth of understanding among some of the Anglican clergy of what a church is for, I have a “modest proposal” – not as gruesome as Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, but likely no less provocative. If the Anglican hierarchy has no more need for the Catholic churches they appropriated during the reign of that misogynist tyrant, Henry VIII, perhaps it is time to give them back. This would be a grand ecumenical gesture.
There is precedent. The Catholic cathedral in Utrecht, St. Catherine’s, housed a Protestant congregation from 1580 to 1815, when Catholicism was outlawed in the Netherlands. It was returned to Catholics in 1815 as a garrison church. In 1842, it was permitted to become a parish church, and when the Catholic episcopal hierarchy was re-established in 1853, St. Catherine’s was chosen as the cathedral. St. Martin’s, which had been the cathedral before the Protestants took over, is still in Protestant hands but it was hit by a tornado in 1674 causing the nave to collapse, which has never been rebuilt.
Even in England there have been examples.
St. Etheldreda’s Church in London, built in the late thirteenth century, was “absorbed into the Church of England in 1534” by Henry VIII. It was purchased at auction by the Catholic Rosminian Order in 1874 and restored. Mass returned in 1878.
The Black Abbey in Kilkenny, Ireland, was built in the thirteenth century for the Dominicans but confiscated by the Crown under Elizabeth I in 1558. The Dominicans managed to lease the property back in 1776. It was finally opened for public Catholic worship in 1864.
Why Catholics had to buy what was theirs in the first place, built by them for them, is puzzling. But basically, if there is any Catholic church in England in a building built before 1580, it was once a Protestant church when Catholicism was outlawed.
And as long as Anglicans are going with what’s fashionable, a little research shows that returning antiquities to their original owners is all the rage these days. Take a glance online, and you’ll see that hundreds of antiquities are being “repatriated” these days to Egypt, Italy, Greece and places all around the world. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before the famous “Elgin Marbles,” which used to adorn the Parthenon, are sent back to Athens.
So, it seems a small thing to ask the very open-hearted, open-minded Anglican hierarchy – so open-minded that they awarded a major prize to a Muslim cleric who had praised Osama bin Laden (they had to withdraw it several days later when the truth emerged) – to exercise that open-hearted, open-mindedness toward restoring some underutilized Anglican churches and chapels to another of England’s persecuted and marginalized “faith communities”: Catholics.
I’ve often said that if a group wants to leave the Catholic Church, it makes me sad, but God bless them. It’s just that, when they leave, they shouldn’t keep the church building built by Catholics for Catholics. They should build their own churches.
So look, if the Anglicans want to use St. Paul’s in London as a dance club, go right ahead. It’s your building; you can do with it what you want. But if it is a church you “appropriated” from Catholics, well, again, if you’re not using it, you might as well just give it back. Although an estimated 582,000 people attend weekly services in the Church of England, roughly 575,000 people attend Catholic Sunday Mass in England and Wales. So we could use the space.
And rest assured, if any Anglicans want to visit for prayer or to attend Mass, we’ll leave the tabernacle light on for ya’.
