Canterbury Cathedral’s Rave in the Nave- Dirty dancing over the shrine of the saint

Ashenden Scripted.

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A group of protesters plans to gather outside Canterbury Cathedral tomorrow evening to “peacefully” object to a dance event being held in the cathedral’s interior.

Labelled by some as the “rave in the Nave”, its organisers at the cathedral argue that the event called 90’s Silent Disco In The Cathedral is a way to raise much needed funds for the cathedral and to grow awareness about religion among younger generations.

The protestors, however, have branded the event – that will run for two nights – as “absurd” and described it as an “alcohol fuelled rave” that will do nothing for the faith, reports the Daily Telegraph.

All of the £25 tickets have sold out, according to the cathedral, and it is expected that 750 people will attend the disco each night. Revellers will wear headphones to hear classic 1990’s tracks as they dance. Silent discos, as they are known, are a relatively recent phenomenon, and have proved popular due to their counter intuitive and quirky modus operandi.

Due to the headphones, there is no thudding baseline and “external noise”, and people can dance, talk, laugh and clink glasses as if they were in their own home and holding a low-key party in their sitting room.

“It’s not going to make younger people take the Church more seriously, it’s not going to make people think Christians take their faith seriously – no other religions would do this and it’s not effective evangelism,” says Cajetan Skowronski, one of those campaigning against the event.

The group raised their concerns during a meeting with the Dean of Canterbury, the Very Rev David Monteith.

“While respectful of our right to protest, the Dean was dismissive of our petition, stating that we were an extreme minority – for not wanting an alcohol-fuelled rave to the music of Eminem in God’s house,” Skowronski said.

“Rev Monteith was convinced – with no evidence – that the majority of Christians would support this disco, and our petition and reasoned arguments could not change his mind.”

As Catholic Herald columnist Gavin Ashenden has described, the problem for many Christians – especially Catholics – is exacerbated by the fact that the cathedral, now in the hands of the Church of England, was once one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage sites when England was a Catholic land.

Saint Thomas Becket was martyred in the north western transept, just beyond the nave, after which people flocked to the site and “the Cathedral saw an endless line of suffering pilgrims walk, stumble and crawl over these stones begging for healing,” Ashenden says.

“Every stone on that floor carried the weight of streams of desperate people. Both the questing suffering, but equally those who walked away healed, infused with joy at the miraculous answers to their prayers.”

In short, the cathedral, especially its interior, is an especially holy location. So much so that even today there are, as Ashenden says, “those of us who have been pilgrims there and for whom love, longing and prayer were birthed and nurtured there”.

In a more recent Catholic Herald article, he highlights that the appropriation of the cathedral for the disco maintains an ongoing and troubling trend – particularly in the eyes of Catholics.

“Scarcely a month seems to go by in the United Kingdom without a small scandal relating to a medieval Catholic cathedral sequestrated at the Reformation and now run by the Church of England,” Ashenden writes. “The current cathedral custodians in different places have resorted to golf courses, helter skelters, risqué film clubs and gin distilleries.”

Hello and welcome I have complex and profound feelings of affection and protection for Canterbury Cathedral I grew up in her Shadow during my teenage years and having been sent to the Cathedral School that surrounds her she became part of the framework of My Life as a young man for 5 years I lived

Beside her and around her and indeed sometimes within her and as I explored her almost daily some sometimes she was a shortcut between classrooms a relationship between us developed like a person she had different aspects to her character parts of her were easy access other parts of her were intense and

Complex the intense and complex places were where the scent of Holiness had grown thick and the atmospheric pressure somehow a bit more intense and I was seduced first perhaps by the music as a coral scholar I had to sing in liturgies I wouldn’t otherwise have bothered with as a teenager but in the

Depths of the crypt after battling through the darkness of early morning fog Before Dawn as it swirled through the cloysters and under the buttresses I found myself singing mysterious haunting plain song as part of the most Exquisite liturgy while the Eucharist was celebrated by an Anglican minister at an ancient stone Catholic

Altar the candlelit darkness was full of presence and somehow the music acted as a key that opened the pores of my Curious adolescent Soul it didn’t occur to ask myself if I believed or not for God was quite obviously present the place was infused in him and by him

Stones soaked in prayer had become soft like a sponge and they radiated the presence of God with prayers and the Adoration of the past into the present it was TS Elliot who moved on the peric creases of time inter penetration of time and space the present and the past with some in some

Mysterious way the past seeping deeply into the present there in the Crypt one Sunday evening I first met the mother of God Mary the Mother of Our Lord Theos as a clergyman talked surprisingly effectively about her in his sermon he described the quality of sacrificial love which keeps faith in

The face of pain and dereliction expressed as Mary kept watch at the foot of the cross where her son was being executed as he carried the sins and paid the price for the flaws of the whole of humanity I understood something of that and I found myself scribbling on a piece

Of paper in response something like a hiq poem which I’ve never forgotten it emerged from my heart even if my head was traveling quite a long way behind and would take years to catch up I wrote If Ever I am to love or be loved then let there be a cross with a

Foot to be filled and so began the seeds of longing for our lady admiration and affection that only broke surface properly when decades later I was received into the Catholic church the church that had conceived and built and sustained that Cathedral until the state take over at the Reformation better known as the

Defamation my life was like the cathedrals in Reverse I had begun as an Anglican and I had to Journey Back to the foundations of the faith reversing the flow of National History and time to put things back in order where Faith had gone wrong the Nave the western part of the

Building was more diffuse atmospherically than the mysterious womb of the crypt or the choir of the high altar but one night in near total darkness right at the West End lit only by a solitary line of candles we sang the ever glorious Advent responsory by palestrina something in the ecstatic

Longing of this p pie carried upwards by an Exquisite pipany that melted the heart gave fresh Wings to my soul I never knew until then how much my soul was in a state of longing for God until this Advent responsory carried it heavenwards into the Luminous

Dark just beyond the Nave St Thomas Aid was murdered in the Northwestern transip a small corner by The Little Door into the cloysters that the monks thought to bar to keep the assassins out until the Archbishop was struck down by thuggish jobs workor jobsworths on the make trying to impress the

King who knew the Archbishop had clothed himself secretly in a hair shirt worn under his formal clothes until his body lay prone on those same flagstones soaked in blood and it was exposed as the monks tried to care for his corpse recognizing him as I did for a

Brave man a man brave enough to put conscience before abusive Authority I would from time to time sit on a stone ledge beside where he’d been struck down contemplating a would be friendship with him he became an odd but real friend in my adolescence I was practicing what

Catholics understand as the communion of saints talking to those who are closer to Jesus now than they were in the flesh I too was often to counter as many of us do what I took to be abusive Authority then and Beyond in the windows above where he

Fell are to be found remembrances of some of the 73 attested Miracles that took place as pilgrims came to his Shrine on their knees in in prayer kneeling on those stones over the centuries before the Protestant vandals not for the last time mistaking the meaning of the place

Ravaged his Shrine the cathedral had seen an endless line of suffering pilgrims walk stumble and crawl over those flagstones begging God for healing through the prayers of St Thomas Becket and the healings came at least 73 times and undoubtedly more petranella for example the desperate nun whose life was completely

Crippled by epilepsy until she was healed by the prayers of St Thomas and the love of God at The Shrine Henry of fordwich I used to row in fordwich and cycle down there where Henry lived in the Middle Ages he was off his head with violent

Madness and he was forced to live with his hands tied behind his back by his neighbors with rope and sticks until cured at The Shrine after spending the night in prayer there with S Thomas over his bones in his right mind he left the sticks and the ropes at the tomb the

Ones that have been used to restrain him from wounding himself in the past a every stone on that floor carried the weight of streams of desperate people both the questing suffering but equally those who walked away healed and infused with joy the miraculous answer to their prayers but today the cathedral

Needs money the new Dean the very Reverend Dr David Monti says he wants to reach out to the younger people as well as finding ways of raising the large sums the cathedral requires to survive he scratched his head and decided that the stones under his feet might be put to a different use

Than worship and pilgrimage he’s opting instead for dancing accompanied by booze rave music and very sexy lyrics he wants to draw the young into the cathedral both the young and their money the dean knows what he wants to do with their money but he’s not quite so clear what he wants

Them to get out of their entrance into this Sacred Space so the Rave in the Nave will take place over two nights in February 2024 it will be a strictly 18 plus event and it will feature lots of alcohol and the music of the 199s Britney Spears the

Spice Girls Eminem and the wenga boys Dr Monte hasn’t been clear about how he intends to preserve the sacredness of the place while flogging the raver’s booze and entertainment in the form of throbbing nose noise in their high-powered headphones raw sexy lyrics and the self-expressive jiggling that comes in the form of drunken

Dancing indeed he doesn’t seem overly bothered by the gap between the Holiness of the Sacred Space he was appointed to care for and the drunken epicurian pursuit of nine mind-numbing hypersexualized pleasure not surprisingly some people have felt critical of this Katan scony who is a doctor in Sussex has written an

Excoriating article for example in the European conservative reminding some of his readers of the lyrics that entertain silent discos dancers through their Hightech headphones let me read some of it to you he writes profound exhortation such as the real slim shades my bum is on your lips if I’m lucky you might give

It a little kiss as well as his theological musings that if we can hump dead animals and antelopes then there’s no reason why one man and another man can’t elope these lyrics will be beamed into the headphones of intoxicated ravers whilst they contemplate the ancient architecture and 14 centuries of

Christian history that they’ve stumbled into in pursuit of a good time will there be a life-changing experience the dean’s not sure some might well accuse Dr Monti of really poor judgment and wonder how such a man came to occupy such a dignified and responsible position as dean of the mother Church of the

Anglicans but perhaps the situation says more about English anglicanism than anything personally about the current dean of Canterbury because entertainment seems to have become if not a religion for Anglican cathedral Deans then well at any rate an alternative to practicing their religion they’ve taken these medieval Catholic shrines that the state

Grabbed in a p at the defamation and not content or even aware of the presence of God they’ve abandoned a pursuit of the Sacred for a push for populist secular entertainment in other Cathedrals this has taken the form of indoor Gulf coures Helter Skelter the installation of gin distilleries in in buildings into

Buildings and also adult film clubs well-meaning people hoping to save the cathedral from impending desecration have started a petition begging for the Archbishop of Canter to intervene sadly because of how the Church of England does episcopacy Justin Welby has neither the power nor the influence and nor from

His his silence the willingness to intervene within the church where he sits on the throne of St Augustine and where he was consecrated it’s not a new Trope but on the other hand I’m not sure it’s being bettered but those of us who’ve been pilgrims there and for whom love longing

And prayer were birthed and nurtured are tempted to offer a different solution to the anglicans perhaps if the cve doesn’t know what Cathedrals are for any more they might consider returning them to the people who built them the Catholics who do