Raving at St Paul’s, by Sackerson

The management of St Paul’s Cathedral have signed a four-year deal with a nightclub called Fabric to use the premises for entertainments.

On Twitter/X the Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan welcomed this decision:

Fabric. St Paul’s Cathedral. Name a more iconic duo.

Bringing together these two institutions will create a one-of-a-kind experience, pairing world-class music with one of our most special landmarks.

But it wasn’t his call and although one suspects that as a Muslim he may have enjoyed seeing how easily the kuffar can be bribed into desecrating one of their houses of worship, answerability lies with the Christians alone.

The public offence it has caused is for two reasons.

Firstly, St Paul’s is a national monument sacred to the memory of many of our great people - naval, military, scientific, literary and so on. As such it is a special place and there are things you simply do not do.

A similarly “iconic” site is Lutens’ Cenotaph, built in 1919-1920 to honour those who fell in the “war to end all wars.” In 2011 when Charlie Gilmour swung on a Union Jack from the Cenotaph his adoptive father’s fame as a rock musician did not save Charlie from a prison sentence. Nor did his claim - as a 21-year-old Cambridge student - not to know what the Cenotaph was; nor his attempt to recruit the war dead as his political allies (“Those who are commemorated by the Cenotaph died to protect the very freedoms that allow the people of Britain the right to protest.”)

But St Paul’s is also a sacred place for Christian religious worship. Secular activities are literally profane - “away from the temple.” All four Gospels in the New Testament describe how Jesus entered the Temple in Jerusalem and drove out the merchants and those who exchanged money for coinage that was ritually acceptable as offerings.

An American bishop states the central issue here:

“This development simply shows that the leadership of the Church of England has lost any sense of the crucial distinction between the sacred and the secular.”

If that is so then the people drawing salaries and accruing pension rights as religious functionaries and their assistants need to reconsider their positions. As Jesus told his followers:

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”

Another X commentator tells us the secularism is not new: “They rent out the crypt containing Lord Nelson & Duke of wellington graves for corporate drinks parties on top. They claim building itself needs more than £60 million of repairs over the next decade.”

If St Paul’s is nothing more than an entertainment venue requiring physical maintenance then we cannot deplore Osama bin Laden’s remark “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

As Milton said, “The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed” and they will turn elsewhere: other religions, magic, millenarian socialism or various kinds of self-destruction.

In this as in other matters, we seem to be approaching a moment of decision.