PARISH HISTORY	RECTORS	MINSTER MUSIC	ACTIVITIES	MINSTER TOUR	NEWS & VIEWS
PRAYER BOOK SOCIETY			INDEX PAGE	HOMEPAGE	THINGS POLITICAL

THINGS POLITICAL !

This page, perhaps an indulgence, is aimed at being a forum at which ANYONE can express their views, whether or not it they coincide/concur/agree  with mine. Is that fair? I hope so!  Nothing that I have written will, I hope be classed as subversive, because that is not the intention. Far from it, I hope that my criticisms will be seen as constructive, even if the suggestions are not considered adoptable.

Why the separate page?  Because I am conscious that, if I wish this whole site which people can visit without any embarrassment or even sense of disloyalty to their own faith, denomination or convictions, it is not helped by presenting my own stronger views throughout the site

To my great sorrow, I am in dispute with the folk who 'run' our church on a number of grounds: chiefly- and most importantly, as it concerns the belief that their is a present-day failure to present our church (that is, to remind them, the Church of England) of the precepts of the church as set up and encompassed in the Articles of Religion (see the Book of Common Prayer).

On a lesser basis, there is the failure to represent that Church of England properly, in the present quest to be "all things to all men", which usually ends up as 'nothing to anyone' (or stages in between). This can easily be resolved by closer reference to the Book of Common Prayer and attention to those services which stood the test of time for 300 years+ until the dawning of this "more enlightened" age.

And, thirdly, of course is the way in which the enlightened church offers its praise in presenting the glorious music that has been written, especially for the Anglican (and British) rite over the centuries. Should  this church, as the leading church in the ever-expanding city, not be carrying this torch of excellence through this century and into the next - or do we merely wish to pander to the modern concept of being a church for the city, providing services (and OFFICIAL CEREMONIES), for folk who wish to exhibit their grandeur but feel no great loyalty/influence/obedience to the tenets of the Anglican faith.

     But, don't get the impression that I wish to see all modern forms banned. Not at all -- a church serving the whole community should indeed be a broad church (always Anglican of course) and there should be room for all modes of Anglican service and music, but this should, surely include provision for the established, traditional services, including Mattins, as a part of the main services on at least one Sunday per month. The main churches in our capital city and elsewhere in the country can manage to achieve this, so why is Sunderland incapable of such !!?

IT IS FOR YOU TO DECIDE!  Please let me have your opinion, pro or con, to add to the debate

 

THE SAD DEMISE OF BISHOPWEARMOUTH, MORE RECENTLY SUNDERLAND, PARISH

This, to my mind is a subject to mourn greatly because, after about 1,000 years, the parish of Bishopwearmouth, as it was until very recent, sad, changes, will disappear. Instead of being members of a parish, the worshipping congregation are now members of 'the Worshipping Roll of an Extra Parochial Place'.

How it will affect the church in the future was not really apparent because, as usual, the vast majority of us were kept 'in the dark' over this - especially as to how services in future would change (See the description above for  some of the causes for my concern). We were told that the "should manage to remain sufficiently Anglican - what on earth that means, I do not know and at the time I shuddered to think. However, I knew that time would tell, and as the 'Wise Ones' who devised this admit that they were not sure if it would work, I waited and see with some feeling of trepidation !!

       That was not misplaced - my fears were not totally ungrounded. While it must be recognised that the attendance at thew 10am Sunday Eucharist has held up well, and certain special days get good support, I am sorry to say that otherwise, the Minster continues to progress towards being something between an Exhibition Centre and a concert hall, to the detrimewnt of the more traditional (and I would say authentic) Anglican services.

      Particularly, I refer to the service of Evensong which remains under constant attack, and what appears to be moves to gradually erode it until it can be finally dispensed with.   I say this because, the service, instead of being held weekly, was reduced to twice monthly 'alternative' Evening worship being set in its place.  This seemed (reluctantly) acceptable, as the services on the first and third Sundays was then billed as Choral Evensong - a chance for folk, and especially the choir, to worship God both in the traditional way and with all the glory of Church music to explore and render.

      Unfortunately, this is another promise broken, because time and time again, this service has been shelved and replaced by another form of service, either for some kind of Civic or Regimental occasion (but why not use traditional Evensong even for this0, or, as on Sunday 6th April, the touring 'Musicianaries' AG & Kate. WHY was it necessary to use these folk as an excuse to cancel yet another Evensong. What IS their agenda/ Certainly not to proclaim the glories of the Church of England -- more an attempt to be 'All things to all men !'  It really is not fair !

Christmas 2006

Perhaps the fact that I am very much an enthusiast about Christmas and all the 'fripperies' that go with it,- as indeed I am about all the other great celebrations of the church, through the ages, makes me unsuitable to carry out any kind of a study of the subject  -- but I can at least offer my own thoughts for others to take up or reject as they seem fit. The particular issue I would raise at this time is the contribution that we make, musically, to the season.

  These thoughts are presented randomly - as they occur , or as dredged up from my memory :-

1) Last night, I attended the Durham Cathedral Carol Service, my wife and I having decided not to go to the Christmas Eve service this year. This was a superb evening of readings and music and, as usual, the Choir carried its heavy responsibility for the music totally. A very memorable evening

2)  By way of contrast, for the first time in my memory - which is not infallible by any means - the Minster choir was NOT trusted with the task of providing the music for the whole of the musical contribution to the Annual Carol Service. "Top of the Bill", this year, were performers from "Scrooge", the show currently been held at The Empire theatre, across the road. Apparently, our Choirmaster was told about this arrangement about one week before the event. I understand that he was given some choice in the matter, but it was probably such as was offered by as certain Mr Hobson!  To be fair, I am possibly the only choir member who felt that this move was inappropriate, but perhaps I am too ambitious for the choir, and the only one who feels that the Minster Choir should reflect the grandeur of its name by being capable of meeting all such challenges!)

     Further confusion arises in my mind because, normally, the Minster hosts both a Civic Carol Service (to which the Minster choir is not invited) and its own Parish service. This year's sole offering was billed, for some reason, as "The Mayor's Carol Service", and the Great and the Good from Civic life were in reserved pews at the front, while the parish regulars, however few they would normally be, were relegated to other areas of seating. (The best comfort I can offer is that if Our Lord had also entered in his normal apparel he, too, would probably have been placed in the back rows -the one good point was that at least these pews were nearer to the Civic Mince Pies ! )

     My memory is that the Carol Service is the highlight of the year, especially from a Choir point of view, and I have always maintained that most of our effort as a choir should be directed towards such functions, and the aim should be to improve on it year by year. Perhaps next year we will have a true PARISH service of Nine Lessons and Carols  -- or will the parish be dissolved by then ?? This is not, of course, an effort to do away with our responsibility to those City folk who need their own service. A Civic get-together of this nature is an excellent thing and I have long felt that the Minster Choir should be encouraged to grow and develop in order to bring this into being: but why cannot this take place a little earlier in the month, or on a different night? (except Thursday - we need our Choir practice !) The choir should, in other words, be doing more work as a body, rather than less.

     ...And on this matter, the Choir should be able to provide a good turn-out for ALL its major services! The main seasons of the Christian Year are Christmas and Easter, but these are also the times when the current choir seems to have to run on a "Skeleton Staff". This has been so for a number of years, now, and I maintain that, while it is fair to acknowledge that many folk feel that they have other responsibilities at Christmas and Easter (students of the local University, for example, got home) a Church which has such Civic responsibilities should be able to provide a Choir at almost full complement for its major services. Perhaps there is a need to address the staffing of the choir in general? Can the Civic authorities, perhaps via the Schools system, do something to help?   I have been making noises about this for a number of years now but, so far, the seed has fallen on stony ground. Perhaps 2007, with the issue of the Bells Restoration resolved, will see the matter of expanding and improving the Choir resolved.

  Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the choir of our near neighbours, Newcastle Cathedral, is drawn from local schools -- they do not have a Choir School now.. Further, the York Minster choir is composed of day- pupils only, who travel to the school in York daily from the surrounding area. If it is possible in York and Newcastle, it should also be possible to establish a similar tradition in Sunderland.

     If the Minster is to live up to its name and title, something must be done to enhance the music it offers!

   I reproduce, below , from "The Dalesman", an article which reflects my feelings on the matter:-

 

"The words `Christmas holidays' don't have much meaning for the choir boys and girls of York Minister, as John Scott discovered their preparations for one of the highlights of their year

Christmas HOLIDAYS! A time for long lie-ins and forgetting all about school, but not for the forty choir boys and girls of York Minster. For them the break up of school means the begin­ning of same of the busiest and most memo­rable days of their lives - and for their parents.

At York the choristers are all day scholars, not boarders as at many other cathedral schools, so during the weeks leading up to Christmas the `Minster run' takes the place of the daily `school run'. Parents and grandparents continue to deliver the choristers far early morning rehearsals and daily services. And with all the festivities culminating on Christmas Day, life becomes even more complicated. As one mum Diana Widdicombe, asks: "How do you find time to cook the turkey?"

Diana, who lives in Barton le Willows sox ten miles (15 km) from the cathedral, has r one chorister in the Minster choir but r Rebecca, eleven, and Charlie, nine.

"For us, Christmas Day has to be organised like a military operation," she says. "On Christ­mas Eve, everything that's needed for the next day is lined up ready. We haven't time on Christ­mas morning to go hunting for a lost sock. Presents are opened very, very early and the whole family drives into York to attend Eucharist at l0am. Part of the family then goes back home while one of the children sings at Matins. Everyone is back home for lunch and then the other child returns to the Minster for Evensong:'

Somewhere along the line the turkey has to be cooked and that, says Diana, becomes a real talking point among the mothers: when and how do we cook the turkey?

"Our solution is to designate someone as turkey baster for the day. Needless to say, nobody has time to watch Christmas TV"

Is all the hectic rushing about worth it? Diana has no doubts. "The rewards for being a choris­ter are enormous. The children are taught music in a most incredible environment, and the mood and atmosphere of the services can give you goose bumps. For me sometimes it brings on the tears. And for the children it is something they will never, ever forget:"

The Minster School breaks up on December 13 but cathedral duties continue as usual for the choristers, and it is then that the rehearsals for special Christmas events begin. Philip Moore, Master of the Music at the Minster, explains: "We have eight sung services a week shared between the boys and the girls, and there have to be special rehearsals for the Christmas choral concerts and carol services:'

Choir practice starts early - 8.15am - on Tuesdays to Fridays inclusive, and sometimes on Saturdays too but Monday is always a holiday. Is there any hint of resentment against such a tough regime? The youngsters storming energet­ically around the playground of the Minster School, looking very unlike the traditional image of demure choristers, certainly show no signs of resentment.

Hen (short for Henrietta) Titcombe, twelve, head girl chorister and a veteran of Minster Christ­mases, summed up the general feeling: "Yes, we are very, very busy at Christmas but it's fun. And its lovely seeing all the lights in the Minster and the presents under the Christmas tree

Head boy chorister, Dillon Mapletoft, twelve, is already looking to the future: "We know Christmases here are something special that we'll remember for the rest of our lives:"

The boys and girls form two separate twenty­strong choirs, supplemented by twelve song men and choral scholars. With the help of his col­leagues, Mr Moore - as his title suggests - organises the music in the Minster with John Scott Whiteley, the organist and director of the girls choir; Mr Moore looks after the boys.

In 1996 questions were asked by traditional­ists about bringing girls into the choir, he says, but he thought they had established a validity in their own right. There had been no shortage of boy singers at the time, it was simply a chance to provide equal opportunities. Rarely, however, are the two groups mixed.

"Their voices are slightly different but in any case they prefer to be kept separate and we want each group to develop its own identity," says Mr Moore. Ask the boys and the girls which is the better choir and there is an immediate enthusi­astic chorus of. "We are!"

With a child in each section, Mrs Widdi­combe is in a good position to judge but thinks the difference is mainly one of attitude. "The girls are more perfect in the way they stand and present themselves; the boys are more relaxed. But there is such a change in all of them when they put on their robes. It is very impressive:"

While today's choristers certainly manage to have fun amongst all the hard work of practising and singing, it is nothing compared with the `fun' some of their predecessors had in medieval times. Boys' voices have been raised in praise in the cathedral for centuries, but not all of them were little angels. Unruliness and gossiping in church was common, and in 1566 some of the boys, horror of horrors, `plaid at the foot ball within th~ cathedral'.

The real opportunity for a bit of what was called `regulated licence' came just before Christmas. The choristers elected one of their number as boy bishop or Episcopus Innocentium. A number of his friends were elected `priests'. The idea was that they could act out these roles until Holy Innocents' day (December 28). At York this `feast of the boys' was a regular feature of Minster life, and right up to the six­teenth century the boy bishops wielded quite wide powers

Not surprisingly the practice was said to have "caused some controversy: One can see why from the activities of York's Episcopus Innocentium in 1396. The choirboy-cum-bishop collect­ed substantial sums of money and decided that he would like to travel. So he staged a mock `visitational progress', journeying as far afield as Fountains Abbey and, for some reason, Bridlington. (Perhaps he wanted to have a paddle.) Henry VIII, when not too busy beheading queens and taking the roofs off monasteries, put a stop to the practice of boy bishops.

In the past there was often a shortage of choristers. Today, despite the long hours and all the hard work involved, this is no longer the case at York. As old choristers leave, new applicants out­number the vacancies. The warm ethos surrounding the making of music in a great cathedral still has its attractions for young people and clearly also for their parents who share the experience so closely with them. "

 

Quote from James Bishop,the Editor of London Illustrated News   Christmas1993

English churches will be comfortably full this Christmas Day, as they invariably are now at this time of Christian rejoicing. It was not always so. In the mid-17th century Parliament ruled that December 25 should not be observed in church, or anywhere else. On Christmas Day in 1800 only six people took communion in St Paul's Cathedral. At other times, unlike today, churches were usually pretty full, though attendance may not always have been wholly voluntary.

Joseph Addison recorded in The Spectator how the squire would sometimes stand up when everyone else was on their knees "to count the congregation, or see if any of his tenants are missing." Our "traditional" Christmas is not very old. The Illustrated London News had no Christmas number in 1842, its first year of publication. Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol was not published until the end of the following year, and the Christmas tree did not become familiar until it was seen to have been given royal approval by Queen Victoria in the 1840s. In succeeding years we have added more trimmings, and today for many of us a visit to church is part of the ritual of Christmas, though we may seldom go at other times. The average Sunday attendance in most parishes is less than 2 per cent of the total parish population; in urban areas the proportion is generally even lower. The thinness of congregations is one of the elements that are often lumped together in media terms as the Church of England in crisis.

Other constituents generally include the surplus of churches (some of which have been adapted or sold off for other uses while others, often listed, sit unused and visibly decaying-a potent symbol of the Church's problems), the destruction of the liturgy, the renunciation of the Church's literary tradition, the abandonment of other established strengths…….. and practices in generally unsuccessful and sometimes ludicrous attempts to adapt to the uncertain whims of a fluid and uncertain society,, and the spread of an evangelical fundamentalism that seems in danger of engulfing the Church's liberal tradition. Such dilemmas of the Church of England have been endlessly analyzed, in the Synod, in the pulpit, in articles by bishops, in books, even in a play.

……………………perhaps the presence of so many of us in churches this Christmas will help re-establish a sense of need. Popularity is not, or should not be, the fundamental objective.

Dean Inge once wrote that a Church "married to the spirit of the age will be a widow in the next", and there is truth in the dictum. Far more important is that the Church should stay true to itself, and to the virtues it has long established, which are widely recognized but not always readily found.

They are the virtues of justice, friendship, family relationships, moderation, tolerance and tranquility.

They are very much what we mean when we wish each other a happy Christmas.

-o-o-o-o--o-o-o-o-

                                                                             CHOIR MATTERS

This year, for the first time in my memory, which I must confess is not as good as it was, the Annual Parish Choir Service, which was always the Choir's major choral event, will feature musical items from the cast of the current "show" taking place at the Sunderland Empire Theatre (just across the road from us).

              It may seem petty that I criticise this innovation which was thrust upon our Choirmaster with very little notice. We already knew that the Clergy had decided to make this "The Mayors's Carol Service ( why he was not content to take part in the Civic Carol Service is not clear) instead of being a purely parish event (with everyone welcome to take a seat in the pews), but I, as a member of the choir for forty years plus, who has begged those in authority to do something about increasing the strength and profile of the Church Choir (not to say MINSTER choir), see this as something as an insult that not only has this ambition been thwarted but we are now upstaged by visiting folk who are no doubt professionals, better qualified than we now are, and will no doubt be "the stars of the show".

               Envious?? Yes, certainly as I have been banging my head against a brick wall trying to persuade those 'powers that be' that the choir should be a fundamental part of the progress of the Minster. We can not hope to compete (if such a word is appropriate) with the superb choir of Durham Cathedral, but I have maintained that we should, at least, endeavour to emulate the standards and  traditions of Newcastle Cathedral, who draws its Boys' choir from local schools and its other members from other walks of life.  If they can do it, why cannot we ?

                 Perhaps the "Friends of the Minster" will be prepared to take a look at possible funding needs for such a venture !!

                                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View My Stats

Visitors up to 07/04/2008   981

 

Page updated by David Herring 07/04/2008