Monday, Oct. 24, 1927

Washington Cathedral

Campaign. A committee collecting money for Washington Cathedral last week received $250,000 and a $50,000 annuity. These were first scores in a new campaign announced the week before. Chairman of the committee is General John J. Pershing; executive chairman is George Wharton Pepper, onetime (1922-27) U. S. Senator from Pennsylvania; treasurer is Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon. (Some thought that Secretary Mellon gave last week's gifts; they were anonymous). Associated with these are Bishop James Edward Freeman of Washington, whose seat is in the cathedral, other clergymen and potent laymen.

The cathedral and its associated institutions need $30,000,000. Already $6,000,000 have been given or pledged. The present campaign is for $6,800,000 to complete and endow new portions of the cathedral building itself.

Foundations. The site of the cathedral is Washington's highest point, Mount Saint Albans, a thickly wooded hill 400 feet above the Potomac and northwest of the city. Here already functions some appanages of the cathedral Mount Saint Albans National Cathedral School for Boys, National Cathedral School for Girls, a wing of the library, (containing 20,000 books), the college of preachers (for which last week's contributions will build a permanent home). Contemplated are a hall of assembly, a hostel, to accommodate visiting clergymen and scholars, an administration building, a chapter house, and a clergy village for retired rectors.

The foundations of the cathedral, great and thick, have been laid. When the building is completed it will be a large Gothic, cross-walls supported by flying buttresses, a great central tower, two towers at the west entrance, a nave 500 feet long, 95 feet high. Under the apse, which is already finished at the foundation's east end, are three crypt chapels. In one of these, Bethlehem Chapel, Bishops of Washington have conducted cathedral services since 1912. Here are entombed the bodies of Woodrow Wilson, George Dewey, Henry Yates Satterlee (first bishop of Washington) Henry Vaughan (cathedral architect), and others. Episcopalians want Washington Cathedral to be the Westminster Abbey of the United States.

George Washington started the idea of Washington Cathedral. He believed in God, but he was never known to pray in church, although he attended services at times. He never knelt when there were prayers, nor did he ever take communion.

Like his good friends Thomas Paine, B. Franklin and T. Jefferson, he was a Diest. Also, in all matters, he was an able politician. He knew that religion is the keel of the Ship of State. So he said that in the great capital city which he wanted on the banks of the Potomac River, there should be a great building: dedicated to the new nation's religious life. This purpose the Episcopalians intend that Washington Cathedral shall answer.

Bishop Freeman. The Right Reverand James Edward Freeman, bishop of Washington, oversees these diocesan works. He is a great strapping man, and a good liver. Men like him. They write him letters after he speaks his resonant lyricism over the radio. They give him money when he asks for it. The Washington Cathedral project has taken renewed vigor since his Episcopal resumption in 1923. Before that he was, for two years, rector of Epiphany Church in Washington; before that, for 11 years, rector of St. Marks Church in Minneapolis. While he was in Minneapolis he was elected Bishop Coadjutor of Western Texas. He declined the elections.

When he had first gone to Minneapolis, from St. Andrew's Memorial Church, Yonkers, N. Y., his good friend the late John Pierpont Morgan,* said to him: " You'll not be happy in a town of 300,000 inhabitants. New York is where you belong. You'll stay, I predict, no more than six months in Minneapolis." He stayed from 1910 to 1921.

Mr. Morgan judged from the then rector Fireman's earlier activities. He had been for 15 years with the New York Central Railroad, in the legal and accounting departments. In Clerk Freeman the late Bishop Henry C. Potter of New York foresaw a great cleric and gave him theological lessons. He was ordained Protestant Episcopal Priest in 1895. He is now 61 years old.

Episcopalians call Bishop Freeman "the 20th Century prophet of the church, a leading exponent of prophetic ministry, a new St. Chrysostom* of the pulpit whose magnetic oratory and sound reasoning have great effect on his congregation. " Comparison might also have been made to Prophet Malachi, who wrote: "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts."

Biggest? Bishop Freeman's dramatization of Washington Cathedral makes it seem the biggest cathedral in the world. It is not Saint Peter's in Rome, the Mezquita in Cordova and the Sainta Maria de La Sede in Seville, of those abroad, are far larger. Washington is like Notre Dame of Paris, Chartres, Rheims, Cologne and York cathedrals--famed less for size than for associations. In America there are notable cathedrals at Mexico City, Santa Fe and Montreal; and in Manhattan there is St. John the Divine.

St. John the Divine, on Morningside Heights, Manhattan, is the biggest cathedral in the U. S. Like its sister Episcopalian cathedral at Washington, it too seeks money ($15,000,000), and from the same clientele. Last week St. John the Divine's committee for completing the cathedral compared it with Washington Cathedral: "The Cathedral of St. John the Divine will be the third largest in the world, being surpassed in size only by St. Peter's in Rome and Seville in Spain./- Its total area is 109,082 square feet as compared with an area of 71,000 square feet of Washington Cathedral, which ranks eighth in size among the cathedrals, of the world. The central tower of St. John the Divine will rise to a height of 400 feet as compared with the height of that of Washington-- 262 feet."

Remark. The comparison and the open rivalry between New York and Washington Episcopalians made people recall a tart remark that Bishop Freeman made almost two years ago. It was in the "enemy" camp at Manhattan, in St. Thomas's Church, where Bishop Freeman was developing a thesis that the City of Washington was of paramount importance to the culture of the U. S. Said he: " If Washington is not more powerful than New York, then the capitol ought to be transferred to New York!"

*Whose son-in-law, Herbert Livinutoii Satterlee,, Manhattan lawyer, helps the-bishop raise cathedral money.

*St. Chrysostom (345-407), Archbishop of Constantinople, had a pure and copious vocabulary with which, daily from his pulpit of St. Sophia, he flayed the vices of the eastern Empress Eudoxia, her court ladies, eunuchs, ministers, magistrates and monks. He died an exile.

/-A mistake; see above.