Fides
Quaerens Intellectum
Faith
Seeking Understanding
– St Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033-1109)
GAITERS
Today I hope to enlighten you, if you are not already aware, of many of
the names and origins of things that surround your everyday life at Bishop’s
University: The University’s name; Doolittle’s; The Mitre; St Mark’s Chapel;
McGreer Hall; Bishop Williams Hall; the Nicholls Building; the portraits in the
Senate House; The Gait; the University's Badge; the name of the football team; and The Gaiters. Actually some of these are
self-explanatory and the last four I can deal with right off the bat. The
ridiculous garb you now see me in is the distinctive dress of Anglican Bishops
and Archdeacons which we wore regularly up until the 1960s and even now, in
theory, on very formal occasions. One of my predecessors as Archdeacon of St
Andrews in the Diocese of Montreal, John
Paterson Smyth, penned the following limerick just after the First World War
There was an Archdeacon
who said,
May I take off my gaiters in bed?
But the Bishop said, No,
Wherever you go
You must wear them until you are dead!
INTRODUCTION
At one time or another, most of us in our lives (usually whilst
undergoing the psychological process of differentiation during adolescence)
have experienced the acute embarrassment over the existence of our parents. We
see no connection with their strange out-dated values, shoddy dress sense, abominable
taste in music, hackneyed humour, and obscure pop cultural references. Who has
even heard of ‘the Love Boat’? Sean
Connery was 007? Planet of the Apes starred Charles Heston? There were Doctor
Who’s before Christopher Eccleston? Who knew? It is hard to remember that they
were once young and were raised in a different world. The people they have
become seem so different from anyone who could possibly be associated with our
way of life. Their very existence often made us cringe.
In the strong, and increasingly so, secular context of Canadian and
especially Quebec culture the church finds herself in the parental position in
regards to many of the institutions and cultural realities to which she gave
birth. The church as we know it today, a private members group defined by
particular theological beliefs and worship practices is a very modern phenomenon.
In the age when institutions such as Bishop’s were founded the church community
was not just restricted to what they did on Sundays, if anything this was the
least of it, but rather by their wider
communal mission. Hospitals, orphanages, senior residences, schools,
universities, and the social welfare of the community was founded and run by
the church. The fact is that the importance of caring for the poor, looking after
the weak and infirm, and the education of children and youth was so
successfully integrated into society as core values that the government took
over all of these responsibilities. Excellent. However, with the lion’s share
of its work taken over by other institutions, it means that the church
increasingly became identified (and self-identified) almost solely with
religion and worship, a state of affairs that has led to a narrowing of its
life and vision. I mention this to remind us that the church of today is not
the same type of institution that formed the modern landscape of current
society or founded Bishop’s University.
It is easy to understand why people and institutions, if they make this
historical mistake, have a sense of disassociation with their religious origins
and even their unease or embarrassment about them. Yet as we become comfortable
in our own adult identities, and recognise that the genes of our parents and
their history is part of our own makeup, then we can take pride in them, or at
least honour them, even if we have developed away from them and taken a very
different road in our own lives.
The stream of culture and history cannot be easily parsed into before
and after periods. The Hegelian Dialectic shows that history is a continual
pendulum swing from thesis to antithesis to synthesis before the whole things
starts over again. Our culture and history is a continuation of a narrative
that is weakened if we pretend that only the current manifestation is of value.
It is like the tip of an iceberg pretending that what lies beneath the water is
not part of its makeup. By doing so we undercut something essential about our communal
identity. One tends to be suspicious of those who claim no connection to their
childhood and cultural formation. I will not go on about the Russian Revolution
or Mao.
Let me be perfectly clear here. I do not argue that denominational
religion should have a part to play in modern secular universities. Not at all.
What I do argue is that to minimise the fact that its origins and intellectual
culture are a product of a religious tradition is to not only be dishonest
about the past, but to actually misunderstand the continuity of history and
culture itself. When it comes to the historical treatment of religion in our
culture, the tendency is to try and isolate the religious tradition from the
culture of its day and pretend it can be separated out and judged accordingly.
I think it will become clear that the religious tradition that undergirds the
foundation of the university cannot be so easily separated and dismissed.
SCHOLASTICISM
An anthropological argument can be made that the real beginnings of humanity’s
pursuit of knowledge began when the first human, who presumably showed a
special attention to detail, was given permission to sit out the hunt and
figure out why the caribou disappeared at different times of the year or why
the days grew shorter before becoming longer again. As a reward he or she would
have been given a share of meat. The earliest shamans (the original pseudo-priests,
professors, alchemists and/or scientists) first began our never ending quest to
figure out what the hell is going on. Early magic is just the first stab at the
scientific process. It is conceivable that if a particularly knarrled knot on some
stick you just found is the spitting image of your sister in law then perhaps
the two things are related. So you draw a connection, come up with a hypothesis
and then test it by shoving the said stick into hot tar. Even if it turns out
magic was a dead end, it was a ‘scientific’ pursuit. So these early pseudo-priests/
professors were the earliest profession. Or at least so we think. Rudyard
Kipling claimed that prostitution was the world’s oldest profession. Priests
and prostitutes have been arguing over the right to the title ever since. Not
that they have actually been having formal debates with one another, although I
would pay good money to watch my colleagues participate in one. Very good money
indeed.
Now to jump ahead – way ahead. The real foundation of Bishop’s
university is owed to a former Archbishop of Canterbury, St Anselm, the father
of Scholasticism. You may think this a bit of a stretch considering he died in
1109 – but stay with me.
Early European centres of learning were centered in monasteries and
cathedrals and were primarily for the education of monastic novices. In the 12th
century Aristotle was reintroduced into Europe through Arabic translations in
Islamic Spain. Through scholars such as the great Jewish Rabbi Maimonides, Aristotelian
thought led to a flowering of dialectic methodology in Europe and thus led to
the birth of Scholasticism: a logical methodological reasoning that relied on
inference for the extension of knowledge of the world. With this resurgence of Aristotelian
and Neo-Platonic (A synthesis of Plato and Aristotle) thought and the attempt
to reconcile Christian theology with classical philosophy came the birth of the
great medieval universities. And all of this from just 300 pages of Aristotle!
These institutions kept much of their original monastic and clerical characteristics.
Some lasting even until modern times. For example all Fellows of Cambridge and
Oxford were ordained Anglican clerics and took a vow of celibacy until as late
as 1882, the same year that non-Anglican undergraduates could read for a
degree. They lived in their individual colleges as bachelor scholars – not that
far of a stretch from a monastery although much more comfortable.
The medieval universities concentrated on: grammar; rhetoric; logic;
mathematics; geometry; music; and astronomy. The idea was to form minds that
could think logically and rationally, attend to the details of the world around
them, and then infer from the created order aspects of the one universal truth
they believed lay both behind it and permeated it. This emphasis on natural science in
scholasticism fostered the birth of modern science: Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler
and Newton were all trained in the Scholastic system. Fides quaerens
intellectum.
For Bishop’s, the particular manifestations of Scholasticism that are
important, are the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Even after the Church
of England’s break with Rome in the 16th century these institutions
retained their essential pre-reformation characteristics. The clergy were now
just Anglican priests instead of Roman priests. Still today, almost all
Oxbridge colleges are Anglican institutions with both a Dean, who teaches
theology, and a Chaplain, who looks after the welfare of the students and leads
the daily services in the chapel.
Bishop’s University was founded in the Christian Humanist ideal of
Oxbridge with the first seven Principals, and Bishop Mountain, as ordained
Oxford or Cambridge men. Of the first 12 Principals (up until 1970 – or the
first 125 years) only one was not educated at Oxbridge. In Master’s history of
the early days of the University he says that almost all of the early
professors were also English educated with almost no American scholars.
THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY
John Henry Newman was one of the great Anglican theologians of the 19th
century and one of the fathers of the Oxford Movement in the Church of England.
His subsequent conversion to the Church of Rome is still somewhat of a sensitive
issue for some Anglicans so we often just slide over this awkwardness. Of
course this is made much more difficult to do when the Roman Church first made
him a Cardinal, then beatified him, and then made him a saint. But I digress.
His book The Idea of a University
lays out a modern philosophy of the purpose of a university education that
draws its inspiration from Scholasticism and Aristotle. He posits the idea of a
mind exposed to a wide breadth of knowledge with the purpose of not producing a
particularly knowledgeable mind but rather a balanced mind. The balance of mind
produced by exposure to vast sweeps of knowledge leads to freedom of thought,
awareness of philosophical and cultural presuppositions, is thus trained for
making good judgements in all aspects of life. He decried specialisation of
undergraduates and vocational studies and being the antithesis of the goal of a
university. Interestingly Newman did not see theology as having a place of
pre-eminence in a modern university but rather as playing 5th Business,
as Robertson Davies would put it, to the other faculties. His idea was that the
all-encompassing meta-narrative and theological world view of Divinity would
act as an observer to the rest of the Universities academic pursuits and by
engaging with them all would allow for cross fertilisation and constant
dialogue amongst the various disciplines. In some ways his idea was similar to
the role of an Anglican Chaplain in the British Navy whose rank was always just
one step above whoever he was addressing even if he was the Admiral. In this
way he could quickly disseminate information needed all over a ship without
being hampered by formal rank and the differences between the commissioned and
non-commissioned ranks. Regardless of what you think about his conclusions his
was one of the most powerful voices in educational philosophy of the Victorian
era.
Bishop’s first Principal, The Rev’d Jasper Hume Nicolls, (1845-1877),
was a graduate of Oriel College Oxford when John Henry Newman was its tutor and
treasurer. The influence of Newman of Fr Nicolls can easily been seen in his
Convocation Address of 1860:
“For it is
the business of a University to gather into itself all the branches of
learning, to adopt and interweave with the old and well-tried, what is new and modern;
to assist in its measure, and according to its capability in the work of
scientific discovery, but far more to sanctify scientific discovery. When man
searches and investigates, argues and proves, pronounces at his study-table,
that this or that field or rock, produces or does not produce a certain
precious metal, or indicates by calculations the existence of some hitherto
undiscovered heavenly body, and points out the very spot it occupies at the
moment; when the human mind thus strides onward, let it be the University’s
privilege to demonstrate that the excellency of all this, is not of man, but of
God; that while man discovers, he discovers what God has made, what God gives
him to understand.”
ANGLICANISM
Regardless of its size, Anglicanism is still a mystery to many people so
it is probably necessary to give a quick overview of what it is. To begin with
it is not a protestant church but rather a reformed catholic church. It is the third largest Christian
denomination in the world after Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy and, with the
Roman church, one of only two worldwide churches that exist in almost every
country and culture on earth.
Although it is a western church it is structured like that of the Eastern
Orthodox Church. Each of the separate Provinces of the Anglican Communion (large
geographical areas sometimes coterminous with a country but often a region of
the world), of which there are 44 are autocephalous, which means they are
independent, but are all held together by their common communion with the
Archbishop of Canterbury. This is identical to the Orthodox churches that are
so called only if they are in communion with the Oecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople.
The liturgical and sacramental rites of the Anglican Church, its hierarchy,
titles, and customs are very similar to those of the Roman Catholic Church,
sometimes to the point that you could not tell an Anglican Mass from a Roman
Catholic Mass unless you were paying very close attention to which bishops were
being prayed for during the intercessions. Like Roman Catholicism, however,
there is a wide range of cultural and linguistic variations in the rites from
country to country. Often you will find that Anglicanism has kept medieval
offices, usages, and vocabulary that the Roman church abandoned long ago.
The Reformation in England was very different to the Reformation on the
continent in that there was both a political Reformation and a theological one.
The main changes in the Church of England were political and are tied up with
England’s struggle to keep from becoming part of France or falling under the
Sway of Spain or the Holy Roman Empire. The Pope as a political player in these
European dynastic struggles led to the split with Rome. During this first
Reformation England did not change its services or its theology. The latter
reformation was theological.
Anglicanism’s theology is based on the Scriptures, the Seven Oecumenical
Councils of the undivided church, the Apostle’s and Nicene Creed, and the
teaching of the Apostolic Age and the Church Fathers (the theologian and
philosophers of the first four centuries). The Reformation challenged many presuppositions
of the Catholic faith in Great Britain that led, in England, to a long wrestle
over the nature of the Church of England – whether it would be catholic or
protestant. The Elizabethan settlement of 1559 under Elisabeth I chartered a
middle way which has often led to Anglicanism’s description as ‘reformed
catholic’ or the via media or middle way between the two.
The most influential theologian in the Anglican tradition is Richard
Hooker. In his eight volume Magnus opus Of
the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1590s) he, amongst other things, laid
out the role of reason in man’s search for truth. His emphasis on the balancing
of revealed truth, tradition, and reason has shaped Anglicanism’s academic approach
for which it is known.
The emphasis put on the role of reason within Anglicanism has made it
easier for the Church to adapt to new scientific views of the world as well as
the findings of historical criticism in Biblical hermeneutics and
ecclesiastical history. Thus the Anglican Church has become known in many parts
of the world as a theologically progressive church. In many Provinces of the
Communion women are ordained to the deaconate and priesthood and as Bishops. In
many Western Provinces, because of scientific findings on human sexual
orientation, there are not only openly gay clergy but partnered and/or married
same sex clergy.
However, one of the strongest characteristics of Anglicanism is
difficult to pin down. It is a combination of artistic and musical sensibility,
a traditional British flavour to our culture, and openness to long discussions
with people, and a distinctive pastoral style. A Roman Catholic and an Anglican
Priest may have exactly the same duties in the same town, do the same job, and
use almost identical services but you can easily tell the difference between
them based on how they do them. This is not saying one is better or worse but
that they are culturally different and recognisable even if difficult to put
into words.
Many people assume that Anglicanism is synonymous with the Church of
England and that the Queen is its head. These assumptions are not true. To dispel the last misconception first, the
Monarch in the Church of England alone holds the title of Supreme Defender of
the Faith – a title granted to Henry VIII by the Pope. She is not the head of
the church but its defender. In the other 43 provinces of the Anglican
Communion the Monarch holds no special place.
Anglicanism is also not solely English. Some churches within the Anglican Communion are called
Episcopalian. These churches (such as the USA) derive from the Scottish
Episcopal Church. The Scottish Church is as old as the English Church but has a
very different history.
After the Reformation,
the Episcopal Church was the established Church of Scotland. The Church
remained Catholic in its theology and form and refused to subscribe to the Protestant
influenced Revised Prayer Book of 1552 and did not have the Reforming 39
Articles. The overwhelming majority of Protestant sympathisers led to its
disestablished and replacement by the Presbyterian Church in 1689. The English
brought harsh Penal statutes to bear from 1746 to 1792. These were meant to
further weaken the Church as punishment for the support for the Risings of 1715
and 1745 to restore the Royal House of Stuart to the Throne. Yet in spite of
the persecution and small numbers the Bishops maintained continuity.
In 1794 in Aberdeen, the
Scottish Church consecrated the first Bishop of the American Church, Samuel
Seabury, whom the English Bishops had refused to consecrate after the
Revolutionary War. Thus the Scottish Church gave birth to what would become the
Anglican Communion. It also added a stream of Anglicanism that did not
subscribe to the 39 Articles, the reforms of the Second Prayer Book, was High
Church from the beginning, and independent and non-establishment in character.
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF CANADA
The first Anglican clergy arrived in Canada as chaplains on John Cabot's
expedition in 1497. The first Anglican Eucharist on Canadian territory was
celebrated in 1578 by Robert Wolfall, who was chaplain to Martin Frobisher's
expedition to the Arctic. The Parish of St. John the Baptist in St. John's,
Newfoundland is the oldest Anglican parish in Canada, founded in 1699 in
response to a petition drafted by the Anglican townsfolk of St. John's and sent
to the Bishop of London, the Rt. Rev. Henry Compton.
Members of the Church of England established the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in 1701 which provided missionaries to Canada until
1940.
The Anglican Church was a dominant feature of the compact governments that
dominated the colonies in British North America. Adherents to the Church of
England were also numerous amongst the United Empire Loyalists who fled to
Canada after the American Revolution.
After the inclusion of Quebec and the American Revolution, many leading
Anglicans argued for the Church of England to become the established church in
the Canadian colonies. The Church of England was established by law in Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. In Lower Canada (now Quebec),
the presence of a Roman Catholic majority made establishment in that province
politically unwise. In Upper Canada (now Ontario), leading dissenters such as
Methodist minister Egerton Ryerson argued against establishment. Following the
Upper Canada Rebellion and the Durham Report and establishment of responsible
government in the 1840s, the unpopularity of the Anglican-dominated Family
Compact made establishment a moot point. The Church was disestablished in Nova
Scotia in 1850 and Upper Canada in 1854. By the time of Canadian confederation
in 1867, the Church of England was disestablished throughout British North
America.
The Clergy reserves, land that had been reserved for use by the clergy,
became a major issue in the mid-19th century. Anglicans argued that the land
was meant for their exclusive use, while Protestant denominations demanded that
it be divided among them.
Until the 1830s, the Anglican Church in Canada was treated as the property
of the Church of England: bishops were appointed by the church in England, and
funding for the church came from the British Parliament. The first Canadian
synods were established in the 1850s, giving the Canadian church a degree of
self-government. As a result of a Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
decision in 1861 (Long v. Gray), all Anglican churches in colonies of the
British Empire became self-governing. Even so, the first General Synod for all
of Canada was not held until 1893. In that meeting, Robert Machray was chosen
as the Canadian church's first Primate.
DIOCESE OF QUEBEC
The Anglican Diocese of Quebec
was founded by Letters Patent in 1793 and is a part of the Ecclesiastical
Province of Canada of the Anglican Church of Canada. It is the second oldest
Diocese outside of Great Britain and has the oldest non British Cathedral which
is located in Quebec City.
The diocese comprises the 720,000 square kilometers and took it present
shape in 1850 with the carving off of what is now the Diocese of Montreal and
includes a territory of west to east from Magog to the Gaspe and the Magdalen
Islands, south to north from the United States border to Kawawachikamach and
the communities of the Lower North Shore.
BISHOP’S
The particular example of university life we are concentrating on today
is your own. Bishop’s owes its direct foundation to Oxbridge and Newman as well
as one other indirect source – The Rev’d Lucius Doolittle.
The University is named after George Jehoshaphat Mountain (1789-1863) the third Lord Bishop of Quebec. Born in England he moved to Quebec after his father, Jacob Mountain, was appointed the first Lord Bishop of Quebec by his friend William Pitt the Younger. He returned to England at the age of sixteen to study at Trinity College Cambridge before returning to Canada as a priest. In 1821 he became the Archdeacon of Lower Canada and held the post until becoming Bishop. From 1824-1835 he served as the first principal of McGill University and Professor of Divinity.
Although known as a learned theologian and administrator, he is equally
well known for his devotion to his vast diocese which entailed long and arduous
journeys. When visiting the Magdalene Islands or the shores of Labrador he was
known to regularly travel almost 3600 miles in a canoe. He is also famed as the co-founder of this
University.
The other co-founder of this University was my predecessor The Rev’d
Lucius Doolittle, the First Rector of Lennoxville. Fr Doolittle is also the
founder of Bishop’s College School which began life in his Rectory. Bishop
Mountain had already established a group of divinity students at Three Rivers
and wished to found an institution there. It was the tireless work of Fr
Doolittle that persuaded him to found it here. Actually is was quite canny of
him, as he secured the grounds on which the University stands today and gave
the Bishop a promissory note of contributions amounting to £1000, or $160,000
Canadian, in today’s currency, which he had subscribed to by leading Anglicans
of the Eastern Townships.
In 1948, on the occasion of the centenary of the building of the second church, the present St George’s on Queen Street, the Principal of this university and Dean of Divinity, G. Basil Jones, said:
“On the
occasion of the centenary of the consecration of St George’s church
Lennoxville, may I, in the name of the university, send cordial greetings to
the Rector, Churchwardens and Congregation and an expression of appreciation of
all that St George’s Church means, and has meant, to the community in general
and especially to this university. For one hundred years and more the Church
and the University have lived and grown side by side, helping one another as
need and opportunity arose, and with their fortunes always closely intertwined. This is due in no small measure to the fact
that they were both started on their respective careers of usefulness by one
and the same man. The Rev. Lucius Doolittle, the first Rector of Lennoxville
(1833-1862), who supervised the building of St George’s Church, was also one of
the co-founders of Bishop’s University. It was largely owing to his energy and
enthusiasm that Bishop’s College was set up in Lennoxville, despite the
apparent disadvantage (in those days) of so remote a position, and for the
first eleven or twelve years of its existence, not content with the general
oversight of its fortunes, he carried out the exacting duties of College
Bursar.
When it is
also born in mind that Lucius Doolittle founded and taught in the Lennoxville
Grammer School, which later became closely associated with the College, as
Bishop’s College School, it is clear that we owe our respective beginnings to a
man of great vision and power, whose ideals even after a hundred years still
continue to guide our destinies.”
The first principal of the University and Dean of Divinity, The Rev’d
Jasper Hume Nicolls, (1845-1877), was a graduate of Oriel College Oxford when
John Henry Newman was tutor and treasurer of the college, as I have already
stated, and Fr Froude, the famous Tractarian historian, was a fellow. Not
surprisingly, Fr Nicolls was a Tractarian High Churchman whose churchmanship
was somewhat suspect, even by Bishop Mountain, although his abilities were
never questioned. He was a member of St George’s Church and attended services
there every Sunday from his arrival at Bishop’s in 1845 until his death, and
during many periods looked after the parish when Fr Doolittle was ill or away
from the parish. Until 1857, when St Mark’s Chapel was built, the entire
College community worshipped at St George’s with him. The second Principal, The
Rev’d J.A. Lobley, was also a regular member of the parish and took an active
interest in all aspects of ministry in the community. He was a beloved by the
congregation, who arranged for a memorial to him when they learned of his
sudden death in England.
I could go on for hours about the intimate connections between the
Anglican Church, the Parish of St George’s, Bishop’s College School, and
Bishop’s University. In many ways they were all just different aspects of one
cultural and educational reality that gave identity to this community. The
first nine Principals of the University, whose incumbencies spanned over a hundred
years, were all Anglican priests. The University began its life as a community
of Anglican Divinity Students to train for the priesthood and so counted over
110 Anglican priests amongst its graduates during the same period. The Rectors
and later Wardens and Headmasters of Bishops College School were also Anglican
priests, There were Professors who were also Rectors of St George’s (or were
they Rectors of St George’s who held professorships at the University – such as
Canon Scarth the second Rector of Lennoxville), Wardens of the School who held
professorships, as well as dignitaries such as the famous Archdeacon Roe (after
whom the Hall is named) who were both Dean of Divinity and Archdeacon of St
Francis. James William Williams, headmaster of Bishop’s College School from 1857-1863
succeeded Bishop Mountain as the fourth Lord Bishop of Quebec. The Rev’d Arthur
Huffman McGreer, principal from 1922-1947 was an active member of the Anglican
community and the Diocese of Quebec. With the hills of Lennoxville crawling
with Anglican clergymen and seminarians it was more like something from the Barchester Chronicles of Trollope or the
Salterton Trilogy of Robertson Davies
than anything else. The ties are too intricate and numerous for me to unravel
in detail.
COMMEMORATION OF BENEFACTORS
Ever year at my Cambridge College we have a service of the Commemoration
of Benefactors in which we give thanks for all those who, over the years, have made
our existence possible. Unfortunately, as my college is almost 1000 years old,
the list does go on a bit. Fortunately the College puts on an elaborate feast afterwards
as a reward for sitting through a very long service which mostly consists of
the reading of a list of names. I take comfort in the fact that we do not
forget our friends even in death and despite the centuries rolling by. It makes
me feel part of the past and gives me a sense of continuity despite the tides
of historical upheavals, wars, changes in dynasties and cultures
Unlike the father founders of many institutions the father founders of
Bishop’s are not laid to rest here on the grounds, such as McGill is in
Montreal. Bishop Mountain is in Quebec City. However Fr Doolittle is laid to
rest, with his wife, in an unobtrusive plot next to St George’s. As the current
custodian of one of the Founders of Lennoxville and its institutions it pains
me to know how little attention is given to him in this current age. The only
visitors I know of in the last year were two crack users who have found a spot
next to his grave to hide their drug paraphernalia.
This period of Anglican hegemony has ebbed away over the last few
decades and really came to an end with the closure of the seminary in 1976 and
the de-anglicanisation of the university in recent years culminating in the
internal abolition of the Lord Bishop of Quebec and the Lord Bishop of Montreal
as the University Visitors (A visitor is the legal representative of the
original donors). The world which was ours is ours no longer, as the Prayer
Book says.
I do not dispute this or wish to encourage a backwards looking nostalgia
for another age and culture. However I do hope for honour to be given where
honour is due. The existence of this University, in this place, its endowments
and lands, buildings and history, has been bequeathed to it by a culture which
has now had its day. Forty two years ago when I was born St George’s Parish had
740 members on its rolls. We now count about fifty regular attenders. The forty
or so parishes of the Eastern Townships that existed just a few short years ago
will most likely be reduced to seven or eight in the next decade. It is not the
place, and I have not the time to go into the future of established liturgical
and sacramental churches such as mine in a rapidly secularised society such as
ours. What I hope is that what good we have done will be remembered with
respect and perhaps genteel gratitude. Remember Bishop Mountain, Fr Nicolls, and
the benefactors and alumni of this institution with kindness and, if you can
spare a minute or two at least once during your years of study here, stop off
at St George’s when you are walking down Queen Street, go halfway down the
right side of the church and visit Lucius Doolittle. It seems like the right
thing to do.
Oh, and if there is someone sitting on his grave smoking crack, you can
tell them I said to bog off and go smoke in the parking lot instead.
