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Can institutions be narcissistic?

28/6/2016

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I was listening to a BBC Radio 4 Sunday service which came from an English Cathedral.  The Dean and the Precentor were the emcees, and it all seemed, well, a little too pleased with itself.  The worship got close to being worship of the cathedral.  It reminded me of hearing another dean from another cathedral say in some TV programme that 'people come to [our] cathedral to find God'.  This is not an uncommon line in the discourse of cathedral functionaries and indeed in the narratives a number of cathedrals develop about themselves in print and media. It seems unappealing as well as heretical.  Clergy often talk about churches in these terms - people coming 'to find God' there;  maybe cathedral clergy think churches only a second best location compared to their own.  But it is this notion that God (the God of the institution, clearly) is domiciled only - or particularly - in churches and cathedrals that seems misleading and fundamentally so anti-incarnational. It may be but another manifestation of the narcissism some institutions can - sometimes - develop.
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