Fr Geoffrey's Newsletter Archive
Newsletter for July 2011
Marion Cantrell has had a lifetime working in church embroidery and vest-ment-making and has for many years been keeping a watchful eye on the diverse and, often very valuable or old, vestments in use at St Bart’s. A large proportion of these vestments have reached that critical stage where urgent conservation work has been needed in order that they can continue to be used. Unable to do all this work herself and crippled by a deteriorating eyesight condition Marion a few years back formed at St Bart’s a team of interested people called the Broderers Guild who meet roughly every month and spend their time stitching, mending, remaking, remounting and even, in the case of the recent green High Mass, creating new vestments. Our team is extremely small and, apart from two from our own congregation, includes ladies from the wider community who have an interest in such work. Marion directs their work and passes on her skilful knowledge. On my recom-mendation she has also created a similar group at Eastbourne Parish church where a larger group now meet every two weeks conserving their vestments.
With such a small group as ours and so much to be done the group is really unable to take up many new projects. They are however making a new white Low Mass set in addition to all their other work. This year Marion herself, responding to a request from me, has made two little bags, which hang from a cord around the neck, for carrying the sacrament and the holy oil to the sick or housebound. The second of these arrived last month with a letter from Marion reminding me how overstretched the group is and that it would not be possible or reasonable to commission anything more in the immediate future. I can understand that and St Bart’s is very appreciative and grateful for everything that Marion and her team have done.
What Marion was referring to, in particular, was the white Tabernacle veil on the High Altar. The one that had been used for many years came to the end of its life about six or seven years ago and Marion replaced it with a small piece of scrap material that she had available. It was temporary and it didn’t really fit and simply did the job of providing a white Tabernacle veil. However, for the past four years I have been trying to get Marion to ‘improve’ it. As this is the veil that is used for the festival occasions, when we try to look our best, I have chatted many times over the years about the possibility making it either larger or, by finding an embroidered motive that could be applied to it, making it look better. Marion has often pointed out that it was made of a scrap of material that she had left and it had cost nothing.
Earlier this year Fr. Trevor MacDonald, one of our honorary priests, died. He held a high position in industry and, in retirement, set about giving himself totally to the work of a priest and being exceptionally generous to the churches he was associated with. When he died it was discovered that he had, in fact, given away (and in some cases been defrauded) of all his once considerable financial resources. He couldn’t help but give wherever he saw need even if, it seems, some took advantage of his generosity. His executors brought the remainder of his vestments and clergy robes to me to find worthy homes and use for. Some therefore have been added to our own collection and some given away.
Michael Gentile, a retired Italian tailor and a regular member of our congregation has been doing a lot of work for me personally refitting my cassocks to accommodate my growing size and re-working some of my albs that have not hung properly. As many of you know Michael is extremely gifted and I have been constantly thrilled by the skilful work that he has produced. On one such ‘fitting’ in mid June my eye fell upon a cotta with gold embroidered bands around the middle and the sleeves that was one of those left my Fr. Trevor’s executors. My thoughts turned to the white Taber-nacle veil and I asked him whether he thought he could do anything with the embroidered bands to create a new veil. He took it away and came back soon afterwards with the pieces of material and we discussed how they might be joined together to create a veil. Two days later, on the very day that Marion’s letter arrived telling me how overstretched the team was, Michael walked in with the pieces joined together in masterly fashion and having created a veil that I had not expected to be possible with the scraps at his disposal. It was as if this was meant to be and, when we hung the veil on the Tabernacle, it was without any doubt a superb fit needing no other motif or fringing to be added to it.
So on the last Sunday of June the new veil was in place and widely appreciated. As I stood before it during the High Mass and looked at it I was thinking that this was the best memorial that Fr. Trevor MacDonald could have. The priest who had given away all his money and who had been left almost penniless was now remembered here at the centre of St Bart’s on our Festival days in a white/gold veil created from four scrap gold cotta bands that Michael Gentile had put together with exceptional skill. What is more, Michael has done it without charge as a gift to St Bart’s and in appreciation of Fr. Trevor.
The veil covers the famous and enigmatic female figure on the newly restored silver Tabernacle door. This newly re-crowned figure was once termed the ‘Figure of eternal youth’ but I suspect that this was only a way of getting such a startling composition approval from hostile church authorities. Why put a figure of ‘eternal youth’ on the Tabernacle? It is entirely inappropriate. When we look at the plans and drawings that Wilson drew up in the early twentieth century for the east end of St Bart’s we see that the dominant mural figure was to be Mary enthroned. It is startling even today and one wonders whether it would ever have passed wider church approval. Perhaps he knew that and expected it to be rejected. If so then he achieved the same dramatic statement on his silver Tabernacle door where the female crowned figure guards the way to the reserved sacrament. Is this really meant to be Mary, who is the Virgin, who is Wisdom of the Old Testament, whose bread (the shewbread) the priests ate each week in the Temple? That bread, says Jesu, is ‘my body’ and all of us are invited to eat it week by week and become part of his life and be made holy.
The silver door is hidden behind the curtain and therefore not so contentiously obvious to hostile authorities. Wilson’s grand scheme for the east end won many plaudits but was, in the end, rejected unceremoniously. He was very grieved by his treatment according to a book written about him but his central idea of Mary at the centre has still been executed, in a veiled form, in the central tabernacle door.
With my love and prayers,
Fr Geoffrey
Newsletter for May 2011
So the weeks and months gallop by and now we have completed the great season of Lent and the spectacular and moving services of Holy Week and Easter Sunday. As expected St Bart’s did not disappoint and the services from Palm Sunday to Easter are as impressive and spiritually moving as you would find anywhere in Christendom. St Bart’s is at its best on these big occasions when the great weight and authority of past tradition bears down upon us and somehow shapes and enables everything we try to do.
I can only admire the way in which the High Mass on Easter Day was celebrated. There was no one person responsible for this magnificent occasion but tradition and St Bart’s collegiate leadership team each minutely organised and oversaw that part of the day that was traditionally theirs. We can only marvel at the way in which so many different people, working alone, brought about a service that is almost without parallel in today’s Church of England. I mention some names not in order to single them out and particularly thank them but simply in order to show how they represent so many more who quietly did their organisational ‘bit’ to ensure that it all came together.
The orchestra has been a St Bart’s tradition for over a century and, we are told, derives from the days of the Palm Court Orchestras which led the music in the great hotels on the sea front. A tradition grew up of them coming and playing at St Bart’s for Christmas, Easter and St Bart’s Patronal Festival in August. Nowadays, with these orchestras non-existent there has to be a reassembling of a new orchestra on each occasion and Delia Spink is here breathtaking in the way that she manages to get a balanced orchestra together. Some are regular players on these occasions but many are not and it falls to Delia to find out about gifted local players and then to contact them and ask them to come and play for us. The result is a superb sound which fills this great church and stirs the hearts of everyone who enters through the doors.
Then there is the choir. Derek Barnes has one of the most stressful jobs of anybody in our church in that the choir is almost entirely voluntary and he has to rely upon good will and individual commitment for the music to be performed. Sometimes he is playing the organ just before a service at which an important Mass is to be performed and there are few singers assembled. During the first hymn they arrive in dribs and drabs and fill the stalls. In recent months he has abandoned the Friday choir practice in favour of a brief practice in the half hour before the service but even so it is a very tense period of worrying whether the music was achievable. With the great Gounod St Cecilia Mass sung on every Easter Day at St Bart’s since the nineteenth century there has been added worry. For some it is too flowery and operatic and there have been rumblings of mutiny in the choir and talk of not attending if the Gounod is to be sung. Derek has had to tread with great diplomatic skill to coax unwilling choir members to sing the Gounod and mediate between the grumblings of the choir and the churchwardens’ insistence that the tradition should be maintained. This year I thought the Gounod had been lost but suddenly it was back on the programme and the choir and orchestra gave it such a memorable performance that I was immediately converted to the traditionalist side. This great operatic Mass is so much a part of the St Bart’s Easter service that to ditch it even for one year in favour of the Coronation Mass or other standard Masses that we sing with the orchestra on St Bart’s Festival and Christmas would be an irreparable loss. I began to think of the ravens at the Tower of London. If the Gounod, for all its superficial emotion and operatic nature, is lost to St Barts’ then it will be lost forever and that would mark the beginning of the end of the St Bart’s that people travel so far to experience. This Easter Day the music of the Gounod was simply superb and I counted myself very fortunate to have been present at one of the greatest occasions of St Bart’s long history.
So, without detailing the many others who contributed to bring this great service to perfection – the organisers of the Serving Team, the washing of robes, filling of the lamps and candles, arranging flowers and the recruitment and organisation of the great banner parties which so movingly circumnavigated the church in that long unsingable hymn which St Bart’s alone – by tradition – insists on inflicting on every Easter congregation. Even this hymn which begins with the wondrous drum roll seems to be a part of tradition that we would ditch to our considerable shame and poverty. It precisely covers the time taken to get around the church and is so apt and special to St Barts.
Now for the most moving thing of all. When this great service, which lasted one hour and a half, had concluded with the singing of Handel’s Halleluya Chorus, the congregation just sat as though unwilling to break the atmosphere or leave the experience behind. I stood at the door and watched as a great stillness fell upon the place and then slowly people began to come out. I have never in all my years as a clergyman been greeted with such deep-felt emotion and appreciation by so many people. A few left in tears. Many said they had been moved almost beyond words. Everyone agreed and were so thankful that they had made the decision to be in this church and had been rewarded with a religious experience which exceeded anything that they expected. So St Bart’s brought alive the experience of the Resurrection. The function of music and drama in the Jewish Temple was to invoke the presence of God in their midst and fill the Temple with his glory. That is what happened here in St Bart’s on Easter Day 2011. The great ceremonial and the wonderful music invoked the very real presence of the Living Christ here in our midst and many, many people felt that this time it was special and significant. I shall never again, I would think, have the privilege and joy of being able to lead such a wonderful event. If there is one thing about my ministry of the last forty years that I will cherish and remember it will be what St Bart’s achieved on Easter Day 2011. I do not believe anywhere in England – maybe even further – could have done this so well. It was an experience of the Risen Christ present amongst his people. There could be no finer way of celebrating Easter Day so thank you, everyone, performers and those who prayed in the congregation, for bringing our faith alive is so spectacular a form. I was so enthused by the morning that I couldn’t attend Festal Evensong at Eastbourne Parish church because, good though I knew it would be, it would be an inevitable anticlimax after St Bart’s.
With so much in our favour we should be holding our heads high and each one doing our bit to bring other people in to share this profound experience with us. We have a church of unparalleled magnificence and beauty and services that are performed to perfection. They are a foretaste of the glory of heaven. People should be queuing at the door to come in and they would be if every member of the congregation spread their enthusiasm to their neighbours and encouraged more to come and see for themselves. Our church needs to be missionary-minded, it is laid upon ever member of the congregation. At the end of High Mass the Deacon sings ‘The Mass is ended, depart in peace’. In fact the probable origin of that call was a call to arms. ‘This is the sending (Missa) – go out and bring God’s scattered people in’. It is a charge solemnly laid on everyone who comes to church. Now go out and find those people who are seeking for Christ and bring them into this church to share what we experience of his risen power invoked among us in our glorious services.
With my love and prayers,
Fr. Geoffrey
Newsletter for April 2011
On your donkey!
IT was the priest who gave me ‘my title’ (in those days that was the common way in which you described the vicar who gave you your first job which consequently allowed you to be ordained and therefore to take a title ‘Reverend’) who said to me ‘it is not your intended criticisms that will cause hurt, it will be your ‘off-the-cuff’ remarks that will go right to the target’. Over the years I have seen the truth of those words demonstrated time and time again. You may think that I would have learnt my lesson all those years ago in my curacy days but sadly not. Again and again I have found that a remark that I made ‘off the cuff’ has caused disproportionate reaction and comment. I suppose that means I would never make a politician, though I can think of many a politician whose casual remark has brought the house down on their career. Think of poor Edwina Currie remarking ‘off the cuff’ that ‘most eggs produced in England are infected with salmonella’. It happened to be true but it was such a blunt statement that it caused outrage and the end of her ministerial job.
The remark that I made casually in this Pastoral Letter last month which caused the greatest reaction was when, in writing about the impending ordination of female bishops in the Church of England, I said that this was a decision that the Church had taken and would be implemented whatever personal views we ourselves may hold. Whereas, after the decision to ordain women some ten years ago, it was possible to provide ‘flying bishops’ to serve parishes and people that wished to remain free from the ministry of women, this was now no longer a sensible option. The earlier provision allowed those who objected to the whole idea to be ministered to and cared for in the coming years. However, the new situation means that the structure of our church is now about to be changed and I cannot see any logic in allowing the creation of a church within a church which would perpetuate the division in the C of E. Are we really going to have to enquire of future priests not only whether they were ordained by a male bishop but whether that male bishop had himself been ordained by a male bishop? The situation would become ludicrous as far as our own Church of England is concerned. To perpetuate a ‘pure church’ within the church would simply not work. The decision to ordain women bishops has been taken and therefore we either have to come to terms with that decision or ‘get on our bike’ - meaning find a church group that doesn’t ordain women – either the Ordinariate or one of the other churches. I do not think that there is an option to stay and keep somehow ‘pure and undefiled’.
Not surprisingly this caused some well meaning outrage. Those of our congregation that do not share my views were quick to tell me to my face and it has been a sign of how healthy a Christian church we are here at St Bart’s that such views can be openly shared without any ill will. There are many in St Bart’s who are very clear that they want nothing to do with women priests and bishops and, rather more surprisingly, an equally large number who think just the opposite. What is quite clear to anybody who knows St Bart’s is that there is no movement whatsoever or any group of the congregation that wants to approach the Ordinariate. A few individuals have mused that this may well be the path they have to tread in the end but St Bart’s as a Catholic congregation of the Church of England is absolutely firm in its commitment to stay put and witness to the catholic faith within the existing and future structures of the Church of England. So, even those who are most strongly opposed to women bishops are saying that they are going nowhere. St Bart’s is their church and it is in St Bart’s they will stay within the Church of England. The bikes may be parked outside but there are hardly any in St Bart’s that will be pedalling away.
At the time of writing absolutely nothing has been done about trying to find a new priest for our parish. We are now in the fifth month of the interregnum and the great delay has been because of diocesan moves to redraw the boundary of our parish and incorporate the parish of the Annunciation. It was expected that this would be a simple, popular and logical amalgamation as we have, in the past, looked after the Annunciation through two previous vacancies there. However things have not gone at all smoothly and the Annunciation have become very opposed to such a sudden move to join us with them and have made their feelings very clear in their joint meeting with our PCC and from their own discussions and resolutions. On our side we have also had reservations. What started as a ‘growing together and exploring the idea of one parish’ suddenly became a reality of the parishes being joined together immediately and a new priest being appointed to the one new enlarged parish. We have felt uneasy with this situation and have even begun to think of other groupings of parishes which might make better sense. St Bart’s is a central city parish whose ministry is quite different from that of an ordinary suburban parish. In this the incorporation of the traditional Annunciation parish area would be a distraction.
So with all this unresolved the first moves to seek out a new priest have not even started. In many ways this is not a bad thing because it will enable us to stand back from the present Ordinariate question which has already taken away two priests who had been mentioned as possible vicars for St Bart’s. We would prefer that those who are thinking of leaving do so before being appointed here and creating uncertainty and future turmoil and heartache. We want to find a priest who will be content to lead St Bart’s into the future years in the Church of England and to consolidate the good work of previous years. So delay may seem like inaction but it may well be the best form of action that we can take.
In this month we reach the climax of the Christian year with the celebration of the Passion. In that major week we recall the events of Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, the betrayal and arrest, the trial and condemnation, the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus. It begins with him on a donkey entering into Jerusalem in peace. It ends in the early resurrection morning with the terrified women fleeing in haste from the empty tomb. I love the image of the donkey. It is slow, wilful and stubborn. In a sense Our Lord has ridden a donkey down the past two thousand years as he seeks to be the guiding presence in our Church. We are wilful, slow to move, stubborn and cantankerous. We must be a most frustrating people to have as his church militant and yet it is in the image of the man on the donkey, the vision of the scourged man carrying his cross and in the naked, broken figure nailed to a cross that we see the love and goodness of God most clearly.
Happy Easter,
With my love and prayers.
Fr Geoffrey
Newletter for February 2011
There was a fascinating programme on television in January about the problems of making a will and providing for your bereaved spouse and your children when you die.
On the one hand there was the family with the multimillion-pound farm and three sons and a daughter to consider. The wisdom of past ages has decreed that such a farm should be inherited entirely by the eldest son and the remaining children receive small bequests of such chattels and money as may remain. It seems to urban ears to be monstrously unfair and yet it is the only way in which a farm can be handed on in a healthy workable state to the next generation. In my last parish a local farmer had ignored this tradition and left his farm to his two sons equally. Chaos ensued and a bitter rivalry and sense of injustice saw the warring parties fighting through the courts for the next twenty years. The eldest had inherited the farmhouse – a local hall of grand proportions and sometimes used as a film set – whilst the other son had to make do with one of the cottages on his half of the farm. It was sad to see a family so destroyed by an arrangement which the parents had intended to provide equally to the two sons.
The divided farm of course, as the wisdom of the ages had predicted, had left two farms that were too small to be viable. The two struggled on bitterly throughout my time in the parish and, as I left a few years ago, the elder son had given up and had effectively given his land to a neighbouring farmer to make a bigger unit and allow him to find other employment in order to keep up the grand house that had now become a burden to keep in good repair. So, even though the traditional expectation of the eldest inheriting the whole farm seems monstrously unfair to those who live in an urban setting, it is – and remains – the only way in which a family farm can be successfully handed on to the next generation as a viable unit.
The second example in the programme was of a devout and very well-educated and wealthy Muslim couple who had one son and two daughters. They wanted to make a Will as good Muslims and provide for each other and fore their children. When they turned to the Koran they found difficulties. Though they had joint ownership of the family home so that, in the event of the death of either of them, the other would be able to assume automatically the other half of the property, the Koran decreed otherwise. If the father died his wife, according to the Koran, was not allowed to receive anything but all must be given to the children. Even more difficult was the ruling of the Koran that the son, being the male, must have two thirds of the estate and the remaining one third alone was to be divided amongst the two girls. Not unnaturally this struck our Muslim couple as being unfair and difficult to accept and yet, as sincere devout Muslims, they felt bound by the decree and ruling of the Koran.
They called in a local imam for his opinion and he reinforced the absolute priority of what was written in the Koran. This was the Words of God and there was nothing that could be done but to submit to that ruling as all other faithful Muslims have done. A hard rule but one that is clearly and absolutely clear. The bereaved wife must not inherit anything and the son will get his two thirds and the girls the remaining one third divided between them.
The couple then called in a much-respected and liberal Muslim imam and teacher from Oxford to ask him if there was anything that could be done to find a way around this clear ruling and yet still remain faithful Muslims. He pointed out that the Koran was written and was legislating for a culture and an age that is far removed from modern Britain. In the time of Mohammed women, as in most other contemporary cultures, had no rights or separate position. It was a male world. It was the duty of the man to provide for the women in his family. Therefore, though it sounded unfair to modern western ears, the Koran was actually trying to legislate for the women by placing an obligation on the male members of a family to provide for them for life. That is why the bereaved wife would not inherit; it was the duty of the son to provide for her. That is why he was to be given two thirds of the estate; because he was under an obligation to provide for his sisters for the rest of their lives or until another man took them on in marriage. The Oxford teacher suggested an interpretation of the Koran that provided a way forward. The bereaved wife still could not inherit anything, that was in the Koran and could not be changed, but the house could be left in trust to the children to allow her to live out her remaining years in the family home. Then, when the final division of the estate became due, the son was to be asked whether he was prepared, as the Koran decreed, to provide for his sisters for the rest of their lives. If not then the Koranic injunction could be declared void and all three could inherit equally. It was a controversial view and interpretation which, we were told, was increasingly being adopted to help devout Muslims cope with a modern situation without being disloyal to the Koran.
For us Christians this was a fascinating parallel glimpse of how the Muslim world is clashing with modern western life and how a text and injunction which was written for a very different culture one and a half thousand years ago is having to be reinterpreted and rethought for a modern Muslim family. Christians have been through this process in the past five hundred years as we have had to reassess and reinterpret the words and decrees of the Bible to make sense of them in a very different modern age. We have, for instance, long ago ejected slavery which is clearly envisaged and provided for in the text of the Bible. To do this reinterpretation is not to reject the Bible but to put things in perspective and to work out afresh where the authority of the Biblical text is. It is not possible or practical to read off the words of the Bible, written for a very different age and culture to our own, as being authoritative and binding in this present age. We will all have in our minds the bitter debates that are raging in the Church at the moment about whether the text of the Bible is the authority that has to be adhered to absolutely even though it was written for a very different age or whether the underlying intention and spirit of the various texts should be the guiding factor.
For me the authority of the Bible has never been in the written word but in the values that it teaches me as I read about Jesus. I measure everything against the teachings of the man who is recorded in its pages, though still with some caution that we are getting the actual text intended. So the Bible teaches me about man’s search for God and how to be faithful to God. I see there not one united voice but many different and competing voices which have to be balanced and weighed again each other. Above all place everything under the searching light of the teaching of Jesus in his humanity and compassion. “It was written of old (in the Scriptures) … but I say to you this! ‘The Law is very clear that a woman caught in adultery should be stoned to death. So let the first stone be thrown by the one who is sinless.’”
It may be easier to accept the written text of the Koran or the Bible as binding and authoritative for all time but I cannot accept that it is right. I still wear clothing of mixed fibres even though the Bible says I must not. I will not put my neighbour to death for infringing a Sabbath rule. I will not treat women as male property even though the Bible (and Koran) says that this is so. We live in a different age and the Spirit, says Jesus, will lead us into all truth. If we believe but one text of the Bible this must imply that we do not yet know the truth – it is still changing and developing as our world changes and develops. There is no easy way. With all the great questions of our age we have to wrestle and pray and try to hear the Word of God for our generation. Keep your eyes upon Jesus and let him be your guide and authority and you will be surprised how many difficult questions have easy answers.
With my love and prayers,
Fr. Geoffrey
Newsletter for January 2011
Happy New Year! We are now in my third month of pastoral charge and the second official month of the interregnum. Already the timetable seems to be stretching out into the distant future. Those who expected that this interregnum would last no longer than three months are almost certainly wrong. Even the original mental calculation of a new priest in post for Easter begins to look unlikely even though Easter is very late this year so that time scale is still possible. There is, however, no need to be in a hurry and it is far more important that time is taken by those concerned in the appointment process to ensure that the eventual priest who is invited to serve at St Bart’s is not only the best that we can attract but also the one who is God’s choice above all else. One of the reasons why it is never a good idea for an outgoing priest to have any input into the choice of a successor is precisely because there is an inbuilt distortion in the way in which he will view any candidate. In the end it is a choice that lies with God working through the various appointing procedures. There are very clear lessons in the Bible, in both Old and New Testaments, about the ways in which God continues to surprise and challenge us by the candidates that He proposes for any position. So those appointing are not just looking for the best priest they can find but trying as well to listen to what God is saying to them at the same time. The process is one of discernment and, if God is at the centre of all the deliberations, then the priest that He has chosen for our church will be the one who becomes obvious in the end. So an exciting few months lie ahead. So far, however, we haven’t even made the very first step and it will be sometime this month that the archdeacon or bishop will meet the PCC and begin the whole process.
So we enter this New Year in confident mood because St Bart’s has a unique style and place not just in the city of Brighton but also in the wider church and that unique nature ensures that we are needed. We are not just a parish church and it is doubtful if we ever could fulfil our special place in the church if we ever tried to become an ordinary parish church again. The days when this lofty building was surrounded by rows and rows of railway-workers’ cottages and much deprivation have gone. We will never again have the huge Sunday School of past ages which commandeered a whole train in the summer to take the children to the country for their outing. We are unlikely to function in the way that other parish churches up and down our land minister to the people of their parishes. The present population is not only very small but also contains very few families with young children. The children in our church school come mainly from elsewhere. The new flats on the old railway site that now dominate our parish are filled with single or childless couples many of whom will be hostile to the witness of the church which looms nearby. In many ways you cannot wonder at it. The church has been particularly cruel and critical of the lifestyle of many of our parishioners. Is it any wonder that they are not able to hear the message of Jesus when His church is so bad an example? Remem-ber the words of Mahatma Ghandi: ‘I think the whole world would be Christian if His followers were not such bad examples of Him.’ We (the Church in general) have failed Him massively in recent years. We have, in Brighton, a huge repair job to do in making people welcome when they have felt excluded.
St Bart’s has a unique style of worship and it draws people from miles away every week to worship in its special way. If we ever lost sight of that uniqueness then such people would not come. If St Bart’s was an ordinary parish church then many people would rightly decide that they could find such a church nearer to home. So the extraordinary musical repertoire brought to us each week by a largely amateur choir is central and hugely important. Without the music that accompanies our Sunday High Mass the central act of worship would be lacking its most important ingredient. Music was used in the Temple in Jerusalem to invoke the presence of God and that is exactly what it does Sunday by Sunday at St Bart’s. It takes our main act of worship and invokes the presence of God in our midst. So together with the clouds of incense and the dramatic ceremonial which is performed (I am sure that is the correct word) the presence of God is invoked in our prayers Sunday by Sunday in our church and the congregation that has come so far, and those who have come from nearby, go home uplifted and renewed. St Bart’s ceremonial has always been carried out with a very ‘railway worker’ masculine military precision. There is nothing soppy or prissy about St Bart’s.
The High Mass, our central service, is very much out of fashion and misunderstood. It is the equivalent of cathedral Choral Matins. It is an offering of the very best music and preaching and prayer to Almighty God. It was only in the last fifty years that it was ever normal for people other than the priest to receive communion. The High Mass was, like Choral Matins, a service in which we participated by prayer and were lifted into the heavenly realm by the drama and the music. Those who wanted to make their communion did so at an earlier service. I can remember the great howls of anguish when churches began to turn High Mass into a general communion. I remember the old brigade being very angry that the service was now being ‘ruined’ by the ‘hordes going up to com-munion’. It is amusing now to reflect on their discomfort but they had a point. What has been lost almost everywhere is the ability to take part in a service without thinking that everybody has to be included in everything all the time. There is the priest’s part, the peoples’ part, the servers’ part, the choir’s part. That perspective has been largely lost in many churches. People get angry if they can’t sing everything and have lost the art of passive prayer in which we let the sight and sound of worship lift us to heaven. Fr Wagner, our founder, had this vision in mind when he constructed St Bart’s and we have tried, against all other influence of fashion, to keep that vision alive.
All of this will be of no consequence if we, the present congregation, do not do our part in bringing others in and making them welcome. This is the vital charge that is laid at all our feet this year. Invite others to come with you. Make sure that nobody leaves this church without a smile or word of acknowledgement.
With my love and prayers,
Fr Geoffrey
Newsletter for December 2010
I am writing this after having returned from a really inspiring celebration of the ninetieth birthday and sixtieth anniversary of the Ordination to the Priesthood of one of Brighton’s most remarkable and endearing clergymen – Father Stanley Horsey. I remember first catching sight of him back in the early sixties when he was Vicar of St. Martin’s and I went to a Candlemas service there. I pushed open the door and found myself in that cavernous church and it appeared to be empty! Then suddenly from the side aisle appeared the Candlemas procession of the altar party followed by the people holding their candles. The empty church suddenly filled with people and candles.
I don’t remember Fr. Stanley making any particular impression on me then, as a young teenage boy, but he has made a deep impression on me in recent years since I have met him again back here in Brighton. The great crowd at his party of many clergy and a church packed with people together with the Diocesan Bishop and the Archdeacon testified to a much loved clerical character who has had a memorable ministry in several parishes in Brighton and Hove in the last fifty years. He could pass for a sixty year old if you took a quick glance at him. He is agile and thinks nothing of climbing onto a bus and walking briskly later down a street. He has a great sense of fun which is infectious and that is coupled with a very sincere and inspiring demeanour with which he leads a service. What a lovely man, what a great priest, what a remarkable enthusiasm for life and what litheness and agility both physical and mental with which he crowns this double celebration. So it is with enthusiasm that we at St. Bart’s add our own good wishes to the many that have been offered to him.
Fr. Stanley has perfect timing. At the end of the Reception, the speeches and the toasting of his health in the Wagner Hall after the Mass, he collapsed and was speedily conveyed to hospital and spent his celebratory night as a guest of the National Health Service. I understand he was released unharmed in the morning.
Why do I write all this? Well because as we begin the great commercial run up to Christmas and the tension of it all begins to ratchet up each day, it is good to be able to recall someone like Fr. Stanley who is not a super human or a Christian of unique qualities. He simply has that one thing that matters – that he remains a very human and therefore loveable and admirable man. There is nothing otherworldly about him and nothing that would have marked him out years ago as someone who would be an inspiration. He has become all these things because he has not lost touch with his humanity . From this comes his sense of fun and the ridiculous and the ability to see the joke on himself. I was at St. Paul’s a year ago when he was celebrating and, as he solemnly processed out at the end of Mass, his girdle slipped from his waist and entangled around his feet. So, with a big grin, he stooped down and stepped out of the cords and waved them triumphantly aloft as he hurried on to the vestry. It seemed to encapsulate everything about him and I shall remember that always.
I have come to hate Christmas because I can no longer cope with it. I have got so wound up with the whole business of writing cards and all the expense of sending them or getting them distributed and then the buying of endless presents for relatives and friends who expect them that I have learnt to dread the whole season. Hearing Christmas music in early Autumn in local stores gets the muscles in my stomach tensing in the way that I used to do when we went back to school after the summer holidays. Over the years it has become worse to the point where it has now become a serious worry.
For the past two years I have been miraculously rescued at the eleventh hour by a phone call a few days before Christmas asking me to take an emergency cruise chaplaincy where the original clergyman had to drop out. So I have vanished onto a ship and left everything behind and have returned to normal life some time after New Year. So for two years people have not had Christmas cards from me and I have realised how free that has made me and what a release from perhaps the major tension of the season. Nice as it is to send and receive cards from friends and others, I also wonder if it is necessary, as one of my friends does, to start writing his cards each year in September. Hasn’t that just gone too far? If we have spent a quarter of the year writing cards for Christmas then I think it is time to stop.
All my friends who have not had cards for the past two years now either think I have axed them or that I am dead. The truth is that I have discovered a freedom from tension. I do not intend to start all over again. So this is notice that, whilst I appreciate all the cards I am sent, and I am always pleased to receive them, I will not be sending out any this year myself. I am not going to rejoin that rat race.
What we are celebrating at Christmas is that God entered into our physical world in the birth of Jesus and lived a human life amongst us. He was born to show us the true values of life and to be a living witness to the ability of all faithful Christian people that the virtues of respect and love and forbearance are the marks of the man who is ‘born from above’
Christmas is about looking out for others, it is about celebrating the birth of the baby in the Stable who was destined to grow into a major religious teacher.
I often wonder what our image of God would be like without the life of Jesus? He shows us what God is. By his physical birth he has declared that life is for living. Christmas shows us the humanity of God and all our ideas about God must be measured against the life of the baby born in the major. God makes himself vulnerable and risks everything by his coming amongst us an a human being.
Which brings me back where I began – to Fr. Stanley and his long years of life and service to the local church community. He is an extraordinary character and his very humanity and sense of fun enable us to glimpse the person of Jesus in him. He shows that God has a sense of Fun and a natural worry about how others will respond. Fr. Stanley would probably be horrified to see me write all this but because he has lived so long as a priest and a human being he has reached a stage where he begins to glow with humanity. He is living proof that that life is for enjoyment and not selfishness – that God laughs with us, and maybe at, our pompous demands of status and recognition. Christmas is about the vulnerability of God and shows us that we don’t have to live unusually saintly lives to show Jesus to others. It is in the joi de vivre and great enjoyment of good things that Fr. Stanley shows so many people what our faith is about. He is welcoming and warm in his encouragement of others. He is a ninety year old example of someone who has cared for his future and made provision for plans to go wrong.
When we all gather to celebrate Christmas this year remember that by entering into physical life God changed how we would approach and imagine him. A figure that was remote became human. A figure of awe and terror become an approachable rabbi/ healer. A figure of some humourlessness in the Old Testament which is the old Testament picture of God now became a human being who lived life to the full and taught us a sense of the ridiculous (camels through eyes of needles – planks in eyes). The Jesus who’s birth we celebrate raises us to heaven and shows that with God the physical world can be changed and glorified. Human life may have many ups and downs but it is also given to us to enjoy and to radiate the love of God to those around us. I know one very human priest who has done just that.
With my love and prayers,
Fr. Geoffrey
Newsletter for November 2010
Welcome to the interregnum – well almost!
Fr. Vickery held his last service as Vicar of St Bart’s on Saturday October 30th at a celebratory High Mass, accompanied by choir and orchestra, thrilling us as they do on so many occasions, this time with Mozart’s Coronation Mass. Parishioners and colleagues from Fr Vick’s long and varied ministry over the last forty years joined with him to thank him for all that he has achieved as a priest in the Church of England and especially in these past sixteen years that he has been vicar. He has inspired so many young men to offer themselves for training for the priesthood and he has brought to St Bart’s his own distinctive style and warm personality. For myself I will always be grateful to Fr. Vick for the way in which he made me welcome when I arrived here seven years ago and allowed me to become part of the clergy team. I have always been especially thankful and impressed by the way in which he has allowed his honorary assistant priests to express our faith openly and sometimes controversially without himself feeling unsettled or intimidated. That has been the measure of Fr. Vickery as a priest. A man secure in his faith and in his integrity and therefore never feeling threatened by the presence of other powerful personalities in his team. I have told him that I hope, in retirement, he finds an incumbent as accommodating and welcoming as he has been to myself and others.
Fr. Vickery’s other achievements at St Bart’s will have been noted and rehearsed in the speeches of thanks at the gathering after the Mass. One of his most important changes was the way in which he has opened up St Bart’s to the world outside by the reordering of the west end of the church to provide glass doors opening into the church. Now people passing by can look right in and can be tempted to step inside themselves. This has borne unexpected fruit when the reordering of the station land resulted in Ann Street becoming a major thoroughfare. The road outside now carries large crowds of people on their way to the new flats and the new supermarket. St Bart’s has been thrust into the centre of the marketplace in a way which any church can only dream of. The opportunities that this had given to our church must be the envy of every other church in Brighton. With that opportunity, given by God, comes responsibility to make full use of the missionary opportunity that has been given to us.
We enter the interregnum with everything to play for. For the month of November Fr. Vickery remains as vicar although he has taken his last service and will be on holiday until the end of the month when he will return and finally retire on Advent Sunday. The process of seeking and appointing a new vicar will not begin until December when the parish is legally in interregnum when Fr. Vickery has actually retired. So November is a month of transition, in which we are not quite into interregnum. Nonetheless I shall begin my work amongst you as Priest with Pastoral Responsibility during the interregnum and I shall be pastorally responsible for the continuing pastoral care of the congregation and the organization of the services and directing our mission to local people in these coming months. This is actually the third interregnum that I have been in charge. The last one was three years ago when I took charge of Eastbourne Parish Church for what was expected to be three months but actually turned out to be eleven. By today’s standards that is still a short time. Some dioceses, increasingly constrained by finances, have a policy of delaying appointments by as much as a year as a way of saving money. It was eleven months before a new priest started in my last parish when I left it seven years ago.
I have used the word ‘interregnum’ several times now in this article but it is a word that is increasingly inappropriate these days. It implies that a vicar ‘rules’ or ‘reigns’ and that a parish is therefore leaderless and all at sea until a new priest arrives. This may have once been true but it is not so now. The days of the omni-competent priest who did everything and was the leader of everything in a parish is quickly fading as the number of full time stipendiary priests declines. The days when every parish had a full time priest have long gone and the time is fast approaching when very few will have any full-time staff member. The money and the manpower simply is not there. In the very near future the few full-time stipendiary priests will act like rural deans over large areas of churches and the day-to-day ministry will be carried out by members of the local church community. We may not have quite reached that stage yet at St Bart’s and a new stipendiary priest is expected to be appointed but I will be surprised if there is ever one beyond him. This is not a cause for dismay but a cause for rejoicing that God is leading his Church into a new age and we can have confidence that he will guide his Church, and that means you and me here at St Bart’s, into this new and exciting era.
November, in the new Church Calendar which we follow, is termed the Month of the Kingdom. It begins with All Saints and All Souls in which we rejoice with the saints in heaven and pray with those on their way to join with them in the fullness of the eternal vision. We pass through Remembrance Sunday when we recall the evil of war and the consequences of sin. It culminates in the great feast of Christ the King on which we proclaim Jesus as the goal and focus of everything we do and achieve. Can there be a more significant time for us as we begin to take stock of where we are and begin to move forward? I have asked the Vicar of Eastbourne, Fr. Tom Mendel, to come and be our preacher at this great feast and I hope as many of the congregation as can will come and hear him and make him welcome. The service will be dramatic and exciting but it will also be pruned so that it does not exceed our normal time limits.
I intend to be at St Bart’s most days. I shall, if possible, say the Morning Office publicly in church at 10.30 a.m. using the microphones so that it is broadcast to people coming into church. I shall be out and about visiting in the afternoons but I am going to attempt to be back at St Bart’s for 4pm when I shall have an hour and half of Exposition finishing at 5.30 pm with the Evening Office and Benediction. This programme is my intention and will apply when I am at St Bart’s. I shall keep everyone informed in the weekly leaflet of any changes and which day or days this will not happen. I hope some of you may be able to come and pray with me and maybe even lead one of the offices sometimes. Our church needs to pray and be seen to pray continually for the people who come through our doors seeking God.
So off we go into the future with faith, confidence and expectation that God will now show us the way forward and what part each one of us can play in the mission of St Bart’s to the people of Brighton.
With my love and prayers,
Fr Geoffrey