The first time I visited London, I hit all the tourist spots. I was overdosing on history, architecture, culture, and though only 20 years old and traveling on my own, felt I had somehow arrived as some kind of international man of travel.
As a Catholic, historic churches and cathedrals have always been on my “must-see” list wherever I travel. London was an overwhelmingly rich environment for such activity. Westminster Abbey had enough Church and British history to keep me enthralled for 10 trips. St. Edward the Confessor, Charles Dickens, and Isaac Newton are buried there, among many other monarchs and luminaries. (You will not find English revolutionary and dictator Oliver Cromwell there anymore, though. A few years after the restoration of the Crown, Cromwell’s body was disinterred from Westminster Abbey, the coffin dragged through the streets of London and then his corpse publicly “executed” by hanging and decapitation. And we think our politics are rough and tumble.
I also brought my own biases and cultural DNA with me. When I visited Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, I could not help but feel a pang of regret that these amazing edifices were once “ours.” Both still are beautiful sacred spaces where for hundreds of years the holy sacrifice of the Mass took place. As a Catholic, there is a sense of loss, but as a Christian there is an appreciation for so much liturgical beauty. The uppity Irishman in me may have thought quietly to myself that someday “we” will get these back, but I behaved myself, listened politely as tour guides explained the current status of these structures, and went on my way to other tourist destinations in London.
Now St. Paul’s Cathedral is making news for a not-so-spiritual reason. The structure that survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the German bombs and V2 rockets of the 1940s may be falling to a different kind of foe in 2026. According to the BBC, the cathedral has entered into some kind of contract with a London nightclub to host musical “gigs” inside its sacred space. The report states that St. Paul’s Cathedral will be hosting a variety of DJ-driven events through 2030.
I have written about being inside our late and lamented St. Vibiana Cathedral in downtown LA, which is now an event venue. But before that happened, St. Vibiana was officially desacralized according to the rubrics set down via canon law. “If a church cannot be used in any way for divine worship and there is no possibility of repairing it, the diocesan bishop can relegate it to profane but not sordid use” (CIC 1222).
St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is still a church, albeit one that does not fall under the auspices of canon law, but the Anglican tradition does not seem to dovetail easily into being transformed into a nightclub, even if just for a few selected dates. According to the news reports, the nightclub that St. Paul’s has entered into a contractual agreement with has a checkered past, including having its license revoked after the drug-related deaths of two teenagers. I am no canon lawyer, but I would qualify that stipulated fact as “sordid.”
Since almost every British monarch since William the Conqueror has been enthroned in St. Paul’s Cathedral, there exists a secular magnificence that is also being trivialized by holding a dance party. The St. Paul director of visitor engagement sees no problem with the nightclub addition, believing it will be a way for people to “discover and engage with this historic building in new and exciting ways.”
That quote made me think of the era when this was a Catholic church and how exciting and engaged worshipers must have felt kneeling before the bread and wine transformed into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Lord himself.
What a lose/lose proposition. Like the cathedral’s director of visitor engagement, the owner of the nightclub is excited about the future event venue, seeing it as a way to “showcase world-class talent and create unforgettable experiences for audiences within one of London’s most iconic spaces.”
Somehow, I cannot picture the genius British architect Christopher Wren, who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral, thinking the nave of this church would be a really cool place for people to dance to a DJ spinning songs by Drake and Bad Bunny.
I know little of canon law and less of Church of England rubrics, but if they have a ritual by which the sordid is spiritually scrubbed from a once sacred space, the address is St. Paul’s Cathedral, St. Paul’s Churchyard, London, EC4M 8AD, United Kingdom.
