Indignants on St Paul’s parvis

When you commented on Joseph Muscat a few weeks ago, many took you to be implying that you almost expected him to be organising something like the anti-capitalist protests of the ‘ Indignants’ whose ‘occupations’ stretching from Wall Street to the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral in London started on that very same Sunday. Did you expect that the protest in London was to create a crisis within the Cathedral Chapter and indeed the Anglican Church?

The Bishop of London was fully aware that philosophers like Badiou and Zizek resorted to St Paul to produce a new Communist manifesto- Fr Peter Serracino Inglott

Not really. Quite frankly I did not expect that all but one of the seven Canons would so decisively sympathise with the anti-capitalist protesters since they did not have the reputation of being ‘hairy-lefties’ as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I thought that the initial mixed reaction of the Chapter would persist. On one hand there was the expression of vague sympathy with the campers under the more than 100 tents pitched outside the Cathedral spewing forth their indignation against the greed of the bankers, still awarding themselves giant bonuses.

On the other, there was unhappiness at having to close the doors of the Cathedral (which involved among other things the loss of £16,000 per day in tourist revenue).

However, when Graeme Knowles, the Dean, successor of such eminent figures as the poet John Dunne, decided to support the City of London Corporation which sought the eviction of the protesters on the ground that they were obstructing the highways, by adding the further charge that they were trespassing on private property, the disagreement of his fellow Canons who feared that the Church was thus going to share responsibility for an outbreak of violence practically forced him to resign.

At this stage, the Archbishop of Canterbury who, however, disclaimed any juridical responsibility within the Church of England over St Paul’s, decided to intervene with a powerful statement of the Church’s radical opposition to capitalism.

Many were surprised that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, said that the Archbishop had given voice to widespread national sentiment in his statement, when he himself had been part of the butt of the Archbishop’s criticism which, among other things, deplored Cameron’s opposition to the so-called Robin Hood tax. This tax on all financial transactions was due to be proposed at the G20 meeting this week. Followers in Malta of this kind of situation found it more typical of the Maltese context of religious-political embroilment than of the British much more secularised society.

Why was the anti-capitalist protest staged in the precincts of St Paul’s, partly in the ceme-tery famous for many historical events in the course of the Catholic-Protestant litigation period?

The association of the protest with the Church came about by coincidence, but once it happened the protesters were mostly very pleased about it.

They had originally, like their American counterparts who occupied Wall Street, intended to occupy Pater Noster Square, close to the London Stock Exchange.

It was only when the Police stopped them from doing so, that they encamped in front of St Paul’s. Most people thought that the weather conditions would soon drive them away instead they have been there for two weeks, have set up a communal kitchen, a library and information technology facility. Most of the organisation is done through Facebook.

Besides the Cathedral finances, also the small businesses in the locality were badly hit by the occupation.

The first reason given for the closing of the Cathedral was health and safety; fire exits were blocked, the campers were using flammable liquids and so on. But the former Archbishop of Canter-bury, Lord Carey, promptly described this reaction as “hysterical over-reaction”.

The press began to speak of a meltdown of the Chapter and the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, third in the hierarchy of the Church of England, was catapulted on centre stage. For him the main issue was no longer how best to promote the early demise of capitalism but rather what should be the role of an institution like St Paul’s Cathedral in the 21st century.

He was fully aware of the contemporary discussions of the political theology of St Paul. This has been read by such leading philosophers who have attempted to produce a neo-Marxist vision as Badiou and Zizek, as providing them the wherewithal to produce a new communist manifesto attuned to the 20th century, including openness to religion.

I have myself shown in my lengthy study of St Paul in the Anglican Tradition that the intention behind Christopher Wren’s design for the re-building of St Paul’s after the great fire of London was for it to be a protestant counterpart of St Peter’s in Rome, and I also showed the audacity of John Dunne’s exposition in many instalments of St Paul’s vision of history applied to his age marked by the maritime supremacy of British seamanship across the globe.

I have no doubt that the Bishop of London was envisaging the opening of similarly vast horizons on the post-Capitalist age when he spoke of “the role of St Paul’s in the 21st Century”.

Has anything similar to the reaction of the Anglican bishops to the indignation of the anti-capitalists protesters appeared in the Catholic Church?

The Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace has issued a document regarding the re-form of the global economy. The main point is the institution of a kind of planetary regulating organism that is, however, to be compatible with free-markets and arrived at by fully democratic, participative international process.

Thus popular mass mobilisation is envisaged, although not in the form of occupying Wall Street or corresponding spaces, such as in Malta would be Castille Place, in between Stock Exchange and Central Bank, with St John’s Square as the sign of the religious-political confluence on this topic.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.