Why Have a Cathedral?
The Meaning of a Cathedral
Why have a church?
From even the most primitive times, we have sensed the presence of the sacred in the universe. We have also recognized how the self-centered demands of the workaday world tend to dull this humbling sense of the sacred and to weaken its ennobling impact. And so we have sought to hold the profane away from the sacred by designating special times and special places for worship. Thus, what the holy day is to time, the temple is to space: Both are set aside and reserved in order to proclaim the primacy of the spiritual over the material.
From the economic or commercial point of view, such sacred time and space are wasted, unproductive, and unfunctional. Yet, this very "waste" helps us to bridle our passion for worldly gain.
At the more obvious level, the sacred building also provides religious gatherings with a shelter against the weather. For the Catholic, this shelter mainly supplies the setting where God summons His people to re-enact the Lord's Supper (the Mass) in memory of Christ's death and Resurrection. In this sense, a church is indeed the Lord's place. It is likewise the place of His abiding bodily presence wherever the consecrated Bread is preserved in the Tabernacle between Masses.
Furthermore, the physical structure of the church graphically symbolizes the unity of all the faithful in the one body of the Lord. And any beauty and expense that is lavished upon a church make it, to a greater or lesser degree, a foretaste of the glorious home of heaven.
Why have a cathedral?
Just as each American state has a governor, so each Catholic diocese has its chief shepherd, the bishop. This bishop is a successor of the twelve apostles; he carries on their spiritual authority in the name of Christ. One church in each diocese serves as the spiritual headquarters of the bishop. A special chair (or throne) is placed in this church to signify the bishop's official role as teacher of the Sacred Scriptures and of the ancient traditions of the Church. Kathedra is the Greek word for throne, and from this the "cathedral" gets its name -- so called because it contains this symbolic chair.
The location of our Cathedral also has rich meaning.
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