Liverpool Cathedral promotes religious indifferentism

Local complaints, please. Just as last year Westminster Cathedral put on Taverner's 'Beautiful Names', a setting of the Islamic titles of Allah, now it seems Liverpool's Catholic Cathedral has put on another Taverner work. Though less obviously offensive than a setting of an Islamic religious text, the fundamental problem is the same: these works are explicitly an attempt to promote a view of religious differences which has been repeatedly condemned by the Church, as 'Religious Indifferentism': 'we're all the same really, it doesn't matter what you believe'. For more commentary on Taverner and indifferentism, see our post on the Westminster performance. Another serious problem is simply the use of Catholic Cathedrals to stage secular concerts: this is not supposed to happen, according to the Church's law; see end of post and further commentary from Fr Finnigan. Liverpool Cathedral is so wedded to concerts that it even has a 'Cathedral Concerts Society' with its own website.

From the BBC: Performance on 3 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/performanceon3>
Sir John Tavener's Requiem: Wednesday 5 March 2008 19:00-20:45 (Radio 3)

Petroc Trelawny presents a concert given at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral last month.

Rachmaninov's unaccompanied choral setting of the All-Night Vigil draws on Orthodox Church chants, and in Sir John Tavener's new work, commissioned as part of Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture, he attempts to reconcile the world's warring religions through music and the contemplation of death.

From the the Code of Canon Law, Canon 1210: In a sacred place only those things are to be permitted which serve to exercise or promote worship, piety and religion. Anything out of harmony with the holiness the place is forbidden. The Ordinary may, however, for individual cases, permit other uses, provided they are not contrary to the sacred character of the place.