Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 1, 1995 TAG: 9507060001
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COVENTRY, ENGLAND LENGTH: Medium
In my fourth visit to the island nation in a decade, this time to see "cathedrals and holy places" on a seminary-sponsored tour, overhead street banners were still in place in the old Roman town of Cirencester. They were left from the May celebration, the hotel clerk told us.
At the National Army Museum connected to a historic veterans hospital in the London neighborhood of Chelsea, a "pensioner" gave us directions. Like my husband, Charlie, he had served in the war.
At St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the guides carefully point out the places where volunteers put out the bomb fires that would have destroyed the Christopher Wren-designed landmark in 1940. At Durham Cathedral in the North, they tell of "St. Cuthbert's fog" which prevented Nazi war planes from bombing that venerable house of worship during the same period.
Of all of England's cathedrals - and we saw more than a dozen in our two weeks of travel - only the one in the industrial Midlands city of Coventry sustained major damage by bombers. Destruction of the medieval red stone building was total. Today only parts of the walls and the tall steeple remain from the November 1940 night of horror.
But from that skeleton has grown what became the highlight of my trip to Britain, the shrine of reconciliation which the bombers made possible. For instead of removing the ruins, the people of Coventry decided to erect a new cathedral while preserving what they could of the old. Today the two are joined by a remarkable etched glass wall in which a reflection of the ruins can be seen.
As I stood with an elderly Michigan woman who was part of our tour, our eyes filled with tears of awe. Both of us had long awaited the chance to visit this contemporary house of worship which blends remarkably with the one in which people worshiped for 1,000 years.
"If it had not been for the war, this beautiful example of modern architecture would not have been built," my companion observed.
Inside the big new church, dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II in 1962, a contemporary tapestry of Christ is the focal point. "Christ in Glory" is its theme. Jesus is shown in carpenter's apron extending his arms over the world.
On the wall outside the new cathedral is a powerful statue of St. Michael in combat with the devil. Inside the great church are wall tablets of the major sayings of Christ and a brightly colored, wall-sized stained glass window forming a backdrop for the baptismal font. This font, a basic symbol of entry into the Christian faith, is, in the new Coventry Cathedral, formed from a boulder that came from a hillside near Bethlehem.
The new cathedral is full of gifts that peace-loving people from throughout the world have sent as their offering of hope and reconciliation. One in the museum under the nave comes from a Russian who survived the Battle of Stalingrad.
On the altar in the new church is the original cross of nails, a modern relic fashioned by the Rev. Arthur Wales from three medieval nails taken from the smoldering ruins in 1940. This cross became the symbol of Coventry.
Within the ruins of the old church is a wall memorial with two words, "Father Forgive." On the gloomy day we were there the ruined church swarmed with tourists clicking their cameras or wiping their eyes at the power of the symbol.
Like all the great cathedrals in England, Coventry is a place of worship. As we joined others on the steps to eat our bag lunch, a choir from Texas was singing "The Trumpet Shall Sound" from "Messiah"for a midday service.
The life of the great churches does go on throughout the nation, as events like World War II fade into the past, and those who remember grow fewer in number.
Frances Stebbins is the former religion editor of this newspaper.
by CNB