Of course we are called to show love and acceptance, but though love is accepting of the person it can never leave truth behind, or else it can’t be real love. So many churches put on ill-fitting trappings or accept every progressive trend that comes along, since we have to be “welcoming” and “tolerant.” It has often become very hard, impossible really, to distinguish between a church and a doctrine-free, feel-good NGO. Attracting people is essential, of course, but even more essential is that we have a right sense of what we should attract them to.įor at least the last 60 years there has been a vocal wing trying to make the church cater to secular fads under the pretense that this will attract people. And just today Norwich Cathedral opened a carnival ride inside the nave of the cathedral, which they laughably claim is not a gimmick. But I thought of it this week because of two stories concerning Anglican cathedrals in merrie olde England.Ī few weeks ago Rochester Cathedral made its medieval nave into a minigolf course as part of a “play and pray” initiative intended to draw a younger crowd to the cathedral. That last stanza is certainly a bit haunting.

I won’t pretend to know exactly what Plamondon had in mind with this. Let them enter, these pagans and these vandals. Luc Plamondon’s Le Temps des cathédrales, the opening number of the 1998 musical Notre-Dame de Paris, ends on a somber note somewhat at odds with the rest of the song:īut it is doomed, the age of the cathedrals.

Tempus edax homo edacior