St. John's Dean

Other cathedrals in the world are longer, wider or higher. But if Manhattan's three-fourths-finished (48 -years -a-building) Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine were sunk in the Sea of Galilee, it would displace more water than any of them. It owes its cubic capacity to one austere little man--Bishop William Thomas Manning of New York. When he succeeded to the see in 1921, St. John's consisted of an abrupt stub: a Romanesque choir and crossing. Bishop Manning (with the aid of professional Money Raisers Tamblyn & Brown) infected New York City with a cathedral-building itch, scratched up some $15,000,000, transformed his Romanesque stub into a soaring Gothic pile. Bishop Manning will be remembered as a cathedral builder. He may also be remembered as a bishop who had little luck with his deans.

In the Episcopal Church, cathedrals go with dioceses, deans go with cathedrals.

No pawn, a dean can check, sometimes stalemate a bishop. Bishop Manning, a High Churchman, and his Low-Church dean, Dr. Howard Chandler Robbins, frequently checked each other.* In 1929, Dean Robbins resigned, was succeeded by the Very Rev. Milo Hudson Gates, benevolent but bumbling. Last November Dean Gates died.

With proper pomp and ceremony, Bishop Manning last week installed another dean: dark, handsome Dr. James Pernette De Wolfe, 45, formerly rector of Christ Church, Houston, Tex. Prayed the Bishop before the installation: "Almighty God, the Giver of all good gifts. . . . Grant we beseech Thee to this Thy servant, whom we receive this day as Dean of this Cathedral, that he may . . . dwell with his brethren in this Thy house in perfect love and peace. ..."

Dean De Wolfe, who helped spark the Episcopalians' Forward Movement, may well make the cathedral's work measure up to the grandeur of its fabric. In twelve years he swelled the congregation of small St. Andrew's Church, Kansas City, from 90 to 1,100, housed in a fine new, debt-free Gothic church. His Low-Church parish in Houston feared he might be too High-Church when he went there in 1934. But friendly, straightforward Dr. De Wolfe soon had them genuflecting and liking it. Says he: "I'm not interested in high or low churchmanship but deep churchmanship."

Dr. De Wolfe's fine baritone will have no difficulty in filling St. John's vast, echoing nave. A militant churchman, Dean De Wolfe picked St. Patrick's Breastplate, most stirring hymn in the Episcopal arsenal, for his installation, preached his inaugural sermon on the text, "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory."

* Gravest present rift between a bishop and his dean is that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, and the Very Rev. Hewlett Johnson, "Red Dean" of Canterbury, ardent Communist sympathizer. Like other deans, Dr. Johnson's main job is the care of his cathedral and its services. The Archbishop, who mortally hates & fears Communism, enters Canterbury Cathedral warily and as seldom as possible, last March got support from the cathedral chapter when five resident canons denounced the Dean's politics, dissociated themselves from him.

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