Press Releases15 Apr 12

Special Titanic Service at St Anne’s will hold Commemoration and Thanksgiving Together

A special service in St Anne’s Cathedral on 15 April will hold in tension commemoration and celebration, remembrance and thanksgiving on the anniversary of the sinking of the Belfast–built Titanic.

In his address, The Dean of Belfast, the Very Revd John Mann, will acknowledge the huge fascination with the tragedy saying:

“The tales of heroism and self–sacrifice of self–preservation and social advantage have been frequently rehearsed in these recent weeks, but for us today it is in the separation of fact from fiction, from movie to reality is what is required if we are to remember in sincerity and commemorate in the true spirit of acknowledgement of both the nobility of humanity and its inner frailties.”

Turning to the present, the Dean will highlight the great energy for development in the Titanic Quarter and the work of the Church to, “bring a sense of Christian witness that is not bound by the creased and worn divides of our history.”

Dean Mann will conclude by urging the people of Belfast not to rest on past laurels, and to, “continue to build a society that honours its past sacrifices, recognises its failures, celebrates its successes and works towards producing a healed and renewed people whose experience of difficult times will stand it in good stead in meeting very different challenges which, nonetheless ask the best of us all.”  

 The service will include elements of the original memorial service held in the Cathedral in 1912, the Sunday after the liner was sunk. The “Titanic Funeral Pall” will also be dedicated.

Special guests and the congregation will be invited to join clergy as they walk from the cathedral to the Titanic Quarter. They will stop for brief reflections at ‘The Kit Sculpture’ and the Drawing Office, finishing at the Thompson Graving Dock.

(The full text of Dean Mann’s address appears below)

Dean John Mann’s Address for the Titanic Commemoration Service in St Anne’s Cathedral 15th April 2012

On this day 100 years ago the Titanic slipped into the icy waters of the north Atlantic, leaving more than 1,500 people dead and the dream of opulent travel in complete safety or the excitement of the opportunity for a new start or simply a prestigious maritime job gone.  This single event has, for many, affected their work for the past few months, possibly even for a few years – tour operators, promotions agencies, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, designated employees of the City Council and other institutions, and more than one or two journalists writing for the newspapers and magazines connected with the Belfast and indeed, much more widely – right across the world.  Why?  Where lies the depth of interest?  Is it that film of 1997? Is it the quality of the detailed documentation that still exists? Is it the fascination in the nature of the ship’s loss?  Is it a morbid curiosity about how the social fabric of what was still Edwardian Society unravelled, or at least partially unravelled in the face of human tragedy, which was, for its day, so publicly played out?  Within the human stories that have been much related in recent weeks, the underlying fact of huge loss of life in a single accident is hard to miss, yet, as some local newspaper columnists have pointed out, perhaps we have been more attentive to the glory of the liner, than the scale of the tragedy.

Anyone who comments on public events is aware that achieving a balance, when it comes to matters that have both positive and negative aspects, is very difficult, in fact they recognise that they are on a hiding to nothing, as people will always see things differently and promote their own perspective.  So we live these days in a City that brings celebration and commemoration, remembrance and thanksgiving into some kind of slightly uncomfortable whole.  Today we meet in this Cathedral that bore with the people of Belfast a hundred years ago the sense of loss, which was incredibly deeply experienced through those April, Spring days of 1912, reaching a symbolic expression in this Cathedral on the Sunday after the liner was sunk.  The liturgy of that service bore a distinctly funereal aspect.  The reading was that of the service for the burial of the dead, a long portion of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians Chapter 15 that speaks of death and resurrection; where Saint Paul uses images such as that of a grain of wheat falling into the ground which in a sense dies, as it was perceived in order for the new shoot of life to grow.  The extent that this City was swamped in grief must have been even more dramatically felt in Southampton and other parts from Scandinavia to the United States, from where the loss of life was much greater. 

Today 100 years on we take our readings from the Acts of the Apostles, reminding ourselves of a shipwreck in the New Testament.  Saint Paul and his companions were in a boat blown about in a storm until pounded to pieces of the coast of Malta.  Whilst from the Gospels we read of Jesus meeting, early in the morning a group of fishermen, his disciples who had returned to Galilee after his Passion, death and resurrection and had spent a fruitless night fishing.  From these emotional accounts of fearful and fruitless days on the water we allow a little of their energy to seep into our reflections this afternoon.  Of fear, we can be in no doubt, that as the seriousness of the damage to the Titanic became obvious, while the liner listed and the crew and passengers sought safety, the emotions must have been tangible and the dread of be immersed in the freezing waters very real.

The tales of heroism and self–sacrifice of self–preservation and social advantage have been frequently rehearsed in these recent weeks, but for us today it is in the separation of fact from fiction, from movie to reality is what is required if we are to remember in sincerity and commemorate in the true spirit of acknowledgement of both the nobility of humanity and its inner frailties.

With these thoughts of nobility and frailty in mind we turn to that other aspect of our remembrance and that is the reflected glory in which we bask as a city that managed to build such liners as the Titanic and its sister ships.  From design to execution, the exacting process of building such a momentous creation is hardly to be reckoned with as we source our creative work in generally much humbler projects.  

What comes to the fore today is where the nobility and frailty of the people of Belfast lie in 2012, not 1912, nobilities and frailties that are exposed in social interaction and political debate and have been exacerbated through the current recession, as we look for vision from our politicians and community and church leaders to see this region and city through difficult times. Saint Paul off Malta with a frightened crew and Jesus on the beach calling to the failing fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were both visionary men.  Saint Paul pointed out that if everyone worked together no lives would be lost (and in fact all survived that shipwreck) whilst Jesus called to the fishermen who had failed to catch anything that they were looking in the wrong direction and when they tried another way, they were rewarded with huge success.

I am not applying these messages to our situation in Belfast today, directly, but I am tangentially. We know that we need to work together as people of this great city of Belfast, not just talk about working together, actually doing it (as many are), across community divides and social divides and age divides.  In the Titanic Quarter there is great energy being found for new development, new growth around this amazing, shimmering Titanic Centre, reflecting, albeit from the past, new outlets for opportunity and initiative.  The Church itself is working as one in the Titanic Quarter to bring a sense of Christian witness that is not bound by the creased and worn divides of our history; whether that is in the physical location of churches or in the dogmatic compartments of tradition, so often ripped apart by what we failed to see or maybe didn’t want to see.  We wish the Titanic Chaplains well as they seek to model a mission of the Church in a fresh location that is becoming, praise God, more like a newly formed island than a lifeboat.  You have heard of coffee and tea “to go” – this is Church “to go”! 

Nonetheless, the dominant reality of the shipbuilding and engineering might of this City provides us with another message, and this is to do with purpose and fulfilment.  The fishermen on Galilee in those days after the resurrection of Jesus were going back to what they were sure they could do, not going on (they knew that they could fish on Galilee) but they spent the night in a fruitless search for a catch.  They sought the satisfaction of being able to fulfil their work, which, at that stage, they felt had completely failed with Jesus.  Our Lord needed them to regroup, to find the inspiration and hope that would make them fishers of men – to find fulfilment in the labour and success in their calling.  He knew that it would take vision and that he gave them, there on the seashore, through Peter and John.

This is vital for all men and women.  Sometimes I think we are in danger of reducing a job to being a means of making money.  It is that, of course, but should be something more.  In the building of the Titanic and many a creative project there must be great satisfaction in seeing one’s work, with that of many others, bearing fruit – in that case the construction of a fabulous liner that could boast to excel all others.  As the recession bites, and we are surely seeing that in our community at the moment, there will be increasing pressure to maximise everything from the financial angle, and potentially, to reduce to a minimum the things that make people’s lives, and indeed particularly the most vulnerable in our society, most pleasurable and fulfilling.  We need not only to work for our keep, but to have pride in our work, we need not only to earn money, we need wisdom in using it in a fulfilling way, we need not only to have a benefit system, but a real love and respect for the elderly and infirm, for the many carers in our society, and for the sufferer, and the victim, and all who are desperately trying to rebuild their lives after past mistakes.  Traditionally, the people of Belfast have been at one in being very good at these things within families and communities.

So it is that in public life and in private life the ways of our City should come together in mutual concern and corporate responsibility to make unity of purpose dependent on a fundamental concern for the lives of others.  The charitable and voluntary sectors need all the bolstering that we can give them, the job producers need encouragement and support.  The days are long gone when a shipyard employing 30,000 would occupy what we now know as the Titanic Quarter, nor must we rest on past laurels, but produce a society in which everyone is valued, encouraged and made part of – what we as a City are concerned to have in abundance – a people who are a blessing to each other and a source of envy to the rest of the world.  We may not make another Titanic, but we will, please God, continue to build a society that honours its past sacrifices, recognises its failures, celebrates its successes and works towards producing a healed and renewed people whose experience of difficult times will stand it in good stead in meeting very different challenges which, nonetheless ask the best of us all.

The Very Revd John Mann