Thinking Anglicans

St Paul’s Suspends Legal Action Against Protest Camp

press release from Diocese of London website and now also the cathedral website

St Paul’s Suspends Legal Action Against Protest Camp

St Paul’s, 1 November 2011 (All Saints Day)

The Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral has unanimously agreed to suspend its current legal action against the protest camp outside the church, following meetings with Dr Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, late last night and early this morning.

The resignation of the Dean, the Rt Rev Graeme Knowles, has given the opportunity to reassess the situation, involving fresh input from the Bishop. Members of Chapter this morning have met with representatives from the protest camp to demonstrate that St Paul’s intends to engage directly and constructively with both the protesters and the moral and ethical issues they wish to address, without the threat of forcible eviction hanging over both the camp and the church.

It is being widely reported that the Corporation of London plans to ask protesters to leave imminently. The Chapter of course recognises the Corporation’s right to take such action on Corporation land.

The Bishop has invited investment banker, Ken Costa, formerly Chair of UBS Europe and Chairman of Lazard International, to spearhead an initiative reconnecting the financial with the ethical. Mr Costa will be supported by a number of City, Church and public figures, including Giles Fraser, who although no longer a member of Chapter, will help ensure that the diverse voices of the protest are involved in this.

The Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, said: “The alarm bells are ringing all over the world. St Paul’s has now heard that call. Today’s decision means that the doors are most emphatically open to engage with matters concerning not only those encamped around the Cathedral but millions of others in this country and around the globe. I am delighted that Ken Costa has agreed to spearhead this new initiative which has the opportunity to make a profound difference.”

The Rt Rev Michael Colclough, Canon Pastor of St Paul’s Cathedral and a member of Chapter, added: “This has been an enormously difficult time for the Cathedral but the Chapter is unanimous in its desire to engage constructively with the protest and the serious issues that have been raised, without the threat of legal action hanging over us. Legal concerns have been at the forefront in recent weeks but now is the time for the moral, the spiritual and the theological to come to the fore.”

ENDS

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Jay Vos
Jay Vos
12 years ago

Chartres: “St Paul’s has heard the call.” Better late than never, I suppose. Why is it always thus with institutions like the church? I don’t trust Chartres as far as I can throw him. So this Costa guy will “spearhead an initiative reconnecting the financial with the ethical…. [And] will be supported by a number of City, Church and public figures, including Giles Fraser, who although no longer a member of Chapter, will help ensure that the diverse voices of the protest are involved in this.” It will be interesting to see what “diverse voices” are invited and that it… Read more »

Dalony Cutting
Dalony Cutting
12 years ago

How very surprising and revealing that it took the clergy so long to change their minds and to act in a more profound manner according to their supposed Christian ethics….it is a good sign…repentance …turning around…better late than never.

Achilles
Achilles
12 years ago

It must have been hard to make this decision, given that the Cathedral staff would all too readily understand that this could simply be taken as another badly thought-through volte-face. But they did so, all the same. After all, Simon Peter denied Jesus thrice before becoming a fast foundation of the new life!

Erika Baker
Erika Baker
12 years ago

This is very good news, well done Bishop of London, well done St Paul’s!

Robert ian Williams
Robert ian Williams
12 years ago

A misguided move…if they are not removed, this will create a precedent. My advice is prosecution, but undergirded with Chritsian love. As St Paul himself said, ” do I become your enemy that I tell you the truth. “

Love sometimes has to be tough.

Graham Ward
Graham Ward
12 years ago

GF “no longer a member of Chapter”? Well that wasn’t much of a notice period, was it? As others have said, better late than never.

JCF
JCF
12 years ago

“Love sometimes has to be tough.”

Bring back the Papal Executioner, eh RIW?

So many Christians need to “Meet Jesus Again for the First Time”. Lord have mercy.

peterpi - Peter Gross
peterpi - Peter Gross
12 years ago

I wonder if Robert Ian Williams is also willing to prosecute with Christian love the bankers, stock brokerages, and mortgage-lending firms that helped create this mess in the first place?
And how would RIW prosecute and remove the St. Paul’s protesters with Christian love? Paint crosses on the police officers’ body shields? Print “Dominus vobiscum” on the raised police truncheons?

Susannah
Susannah
12 years ago

I just don’t see any reason why Giles Fraser should not go back to his post, and lead the critique on the financial systems, now he’s not being overruled by the Dean. The Bishop and the chapter have now accepted his line – that taking legal action could well lead to violence against peaceful protestors – so he has been thoroughly vindicated. So if the Bishop and Chapter are serious, they should immediately give him his job back. He was right all along. He was also faithful, on a point of principle, to the right of protestors to peacefully protest.… Read more »

Pat O'Neill
Pat O'Neill
12 years ago

RIW:

So you would have the Church emulate the chief priests and Pharisees, arresting an innocent “troublemaker” to protect the larger society?

John Wirenius
12 years ago

“Prosecution undergirded with Christian love”? What on earth does that even mean? I seem to hear St Augustine recommending torture to save the heretics, and reassuring his audience that “it is rather the Catholic Church which suffers persecution through the pride and impiety of those carnal men whom it endeavors to correct by afflictions and terrors of a temporal kind.” (Augustine, THE POLITICAL WRITINGS (Paolucci, ed.) at 195 (excerpting LETTER XCIII, at 5-10)). But on this issue the unsaintly but perceptive Oscar Wilde was closer to the mark as to the effect of imprisonment: “And some grow mad and all… Read more »

Erika Baker
Erika Baker
12 years ago

This “Christian Love” is often mentioned when people propose something unpleasant and cold-hearted that they know, deep down, to be uncharitable.
It would be better if we aimed for “Love” in those instances and left the “Christian” bit out of it.
It soils Christianity.

John Roch
John Roch
12 years ago

A (now dead) bishop once told a meeting I was at that if someone offers “a word in love” you must protect your sensitive areas. (That’s not *quite* how he put it)

John Thorp
12 years ago

Giles Fraser for Dean !!!

Robert ian Williams
Robert ian Williams
12 years ago

More like Jesus , whipping the racketeers out of the Temple.

We recently had a pro women’s ordination demonstration at St Peters, and the Vatican had them removed and arrested. An example of practical Christian love.

Erika Baker
Erika Baker
12 years ago

“We recently had a pro women’s ordination demonstration at St Peters, and the Vatican had them removed and arrested. An example of practical Christian love”

Unless you can explain, precisely, what was Christian and loving about that, this is more like a practical example of Newspeak.

I really resent the term “Christian love” being devalued like this and turned into its precise opposite.

MarkBrunson
12 years ago

Yeah, but neither you, nor the Pope, nor the Roman Catholic Church are Jesus. You’re all just the same as the poor schlubs you’re “loving!”

I will grant you, it’s a fair demonstration of what passes for “love” in the Roman Catholic denomination.

Pat O'Neill
Pat O'Neill
12 years ago

RIW: How are the protesters of OLS like the money-changers in the temple? Are they charging for admission to the cathedral? No–the cathedral chapter is doing that. Are they using the bankers and financiers as their chief source of funding? No–the cathedral chapter is doing that.

To expel them would be closer to denying the publican access to the temple, while allowing the rich man to pray there.

peterpi - Peter Gross
peterpi - Peter Gross
12 years ago

Someone please tell me that RIW was kidding at 6:24
or, alternatively,
RIW says things just to get a rise out of people.
We know he thinks the Universe revolves around the Vatican, but his 6:24 is over the top.
Of course, if I recall correctly, when a group of Roman Catholic sisters in monastic orders presented Pope John Paul II with a petition to open a dialogue on the ordination of women priests, J2P2 thought that was hilariously funny.
I guess they have a different sense of humor on the Tiber.

JCF
JCF
12 years ago

“We recently had a pro women’s ordination demonstration at St Peters, and the Vatican had them removed and arrested. An example of practical Christian love.”

Roman Exorcists, exorcise yourselves!!!

Robert ian Williams
Robert ian Williams
12 years ago

True Christian love tells you the truth..not what you want to hear.

As St Paul stated, ” Do I become your enemy that I tell you the truth?”

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