Who are we? The Cathedral as community.

Christ Church Cathedral is a community of communities. There are different worshipping congregations at 8am, 10am and 4pm each Sunday, at the Daily offices, and at the weekday Eucharists. As well as those present on Sunday afternoon, there is an amazingly wide participation through the radio broadcast.  It is estimated at around 10,000 listeners, and the feed back we have shows that there is a major outreach both to sick and isolated Anglicans, as well as to Christian and others of the French speaking and English speaking communities of our region.

Around the worshipping communities is a nesting of wider communities. There are many who feel associated with the Cathedral for family reasons, and like to think of it as their spiritual home for the great life celebrations of birth (baptism) marriage and death. There are others, who have been involved in the past, but are now unable to be so closely attached because of age or infirmity or distance. Still others are drawn towards this church for the first time through the life-event celebrations. With the encouragement of new attitudes in the Diocese we are finding ourselves increasingly asked to perform services, especially marriages where the couples come from quite outside normal Anglican circles. The musical program of the Cathedral brings other communities together. Throughout the greater part of the year there are three concerts or recitals each week, which offer music to those who might not otherwise be able to attend concerts, as well as to those who find spiritual benefit in hearing music performed in a religious setting. These series of concerts also draw together a community of performers, and in the case of the Sunday series, these are students of music who, as part of their studies need places to perform, which are not always easy to find. 

Two other programs of the Cathedral also foster different communities. The work of the Drop In centre offers a place of community to people often on the margins of the success-centered communities of the secular world. Our partnerships encouraged by the Mission beyond Montreal Committee widen our communities on a global scale, with contacts in Western Canada, Haiti, the Great Lakes region of Africa, Central and South America, as well as with aboriginal people both locally and in the North of Quebec.

What are we? The Cathedral as building and institution.

Cathedrals in North America are somewhat different from their older counterparts in Europe. Most often they began their history as parish churches, and are still seen, both by their members, and by the rest of the diocese as one parish among the others of the diocesan family. Yet they also inherit from the past a vocation which is somewhat different from the typical parish, be it urban, suburban or country.

•       The Cathedral is the seat of the Bishop, not only containing the actual chair (or "throne") dedicated for the Bishop's use, but also serving as the place where the great events of the diocese, synods, ordinations, confirmations, weddings, funerals, and others are celebrated.
•       The cathedral is also a home where civic events take place.  In the English tradition (and this is true of Montreal) the city constitutionally becomes a city when the cathedral is created as the see of a diocese.
•       The cathedral is a place of pilgrimage. In our case, this is seen in the tourists who visit, especially during the summer months.  It is also seen in the many groups of young people, both from parishes and from the secular schools who request guided tours and seminars about the work of the Cathedral and the Anglican church.  It is also seen in the people of our city, who, every day of the year use the Cathedral as a place of quiet to think, to meditate, to pray, to light a candle or to ask for guidance and counseling in their life journeys.
•       Cathedrals are traditionally places which have fostered the arts. Music is especially important in this, but we are often asked, and willingly respond, to host art exhibitions, which complement the art and architecture of the Cathedral.  Dance, film, drama, literature and poetry also play a part in our work which could expand in the future.
•       Cathedrals are places of daily prayer for the city, the country and the world in which they set.
•       Cathedrals are places of education. We not only have programs for the young and adult members of our community. In co-operation with the Lay Education programs of the diocese, we are also experimenting with providing events for the whole diocesan family.
•       Cathedrals are nodes of contact in a worldwide network of Christian communication. People visiting from afar often look for the cathedral of the place they visit, and feel at home. Today, by means of the Internet, and through satellite television Montreal is part of a flourishing network of North America communications, branching into other parts of the world. We are increasingly asked to feature in film and television documentaries produced for many different countries.
•       Cathedrals are places of hospitality, where all can find a warm welcome, whether they come for spiritual or bodily nourishment, for education, for friendship, for a sense of community in a lonely world or a new place.  Part of this hospitality is openness to all.  We are learning today that our neighbours of other religions and faith traditions have their place in God's design of the biosphere and nousphere. Cathedrals can become more and more places of open conversation and dialogue, places of the meeting of histories and traditions.  They can also be places where we learn to extend hospitality to the whole ecosphere.

Liturgy.  The cathedral as centre of worship and care.

Liturgy, in its usual sense, refers to the regular ordered worship of the people of God. Sunday-by-Sunday and day-by-day, the Eucharist of Christ's Easter presence is celebrated, the Bible is read in an ordered, continuous fashion, the Christian faith is explained and proclaimed, and the history of the church and its saints is commemorated and celebrated.  In the 1960's, as the church struggled, at last, with modernism, the place of liturgy in the life of the church was demoted in favour of social service, social and political action, transformation and revolution. But just as the church was coming to terms with modernism, those intellectual forces of enlightenment, science and technology which had driven western society for five centuries were being shown to be limited rather than infinite, and modernism was giving way to post-modernism.  In the post-modern outlook narrative and story come to the fore as means of search for truth, rather than the dogmatic use of linear reasoning.  And as the five senses interpreted by logic are seen as a less sure source of truth, then intuition, innerness and spirituality are words which have greater and greater currency. So it is not too outrageous to believe that liturgy, well performed, and beautifully and faithfully presented, will soon become more and more sought after by many in our society. Liturgy should then be at the centre of the life of the Cathedral, not only to maintain a tradition, but by doing so, to move into the future. It is likely that we will also reclaim the specifically Cathedral tradition of partnership between liturgy and other art forms, such as music, drama, poetry and dance, not forgetting their technologically developed sisters in film, television and electronic communication.

But in a world which has not greatly improved in justice, peace or in moral and harmonious living, it would be disastrous of we lost sight of the emphases if the middle of the last century. It might be useful to recover something of the meaning of the word liturgy in its classical and early Christian use, to enable us to see where the two fit together.  The Greek word, leiturgia, which becomes liturgy in English, meant public office or public service.  We perform the liturgy of the church not only in the ordered round of worship, but in service to the society in which we live.

Many of the ways in which we undertake this have already been mentioned, as we have looked that the ways in which we fulfill the traditional roles of a Cathedral.  But some others are outlined here.

•       The service of the church involves pastoral care. This includes the care of the congregations, Christian education, and preparation for Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation and marriage. It involves supporting people in work and family life (in a very broad definition of family), visiting the sick and preparing people for death.
•       Counseling is an important function of the Church.  Clients are not only members of the church, but in our inner-city context, often people who, in time of crisis, are encouraged by the presence of the building to seek personal contact with the clergy.  Where especially difficult cases are encountered, clients are often referred to the Montreal Pastoral Counseling Institute.
•       This liturgical service includes not only Christian education, but also public education. At a time when musical education in public schools is declining, the thirty or so members of our junior choirs (many of whom come from outside the original membership of the Cathedral) are offered a full musical education. This is a service which could well be developed further in the years to come. Aside from music, we also have a role in public education, not yet well developed, in the field of peace, social justice and environmental awareness.
•       Care for the less fortunate is also part of our mission, carried out through activities such as the Drop-in Centre, and the Christmas basket program. In the future this may be an area in which greater cooperation with other agencies, particularly those of other churches and religious traditions, might be fruitful.

Finally, the changing shape of ministry in the diocese is offering the Cathedral another sphere of service, that of supporting other communities. The Dean already supervises the work of the non-parochial ministries financed by the diocese, including the Port Ministry, and the Mile End Mission. He holds a brief to support clergy working in ministries sponsored by other agencies, including hospital, prison and university chaplaincies. The Dean, helped by Honorary Assistant The Rev'd Dr Elizabeth Rowlinson, provides priestly ministry to the Rédempteur community, a small group of French-speaking Anglicans, which is largely lay-led. The most recent development in this area has been the appointment of the Dean as Rector of Grace Church, Point St Charles, to assist that community, much dedicated to social outreach, become an effective model of a lay-led community. Priestly ministry in the liturgy is being provided by the Rev'd Joyce Sanchez, and other clergy of the Cathedral and already this project is involving much support from the whole of the Cathedral community.

In preparing these thoughts I acknowledge the contributions of the Internet fellowship of North American Cathedral Deans, my colleagues and the people of Christ Church Cathedral in many discussions. There is no fixed role for the Cathedral in North American Anglicanism. The discussion is a continuing dialogue.

The Very Rev Michael J. Pitts