The Very Reverend Michael J. Pitts

Greetings from the Dean,

Welcome to Christ Church Cathedral's web site. Whether you are a visitor to Montreal, looking for information, or a member of the Cathedral Parish, seeking the latest news, or whether you have found us while surfing the net, I hope you will find something useful and of interest here. I always enjoy trying to answer the messages I receive, or passing them on to the appropriate member of our staff.

Here we are in the 21st Century. Neither the Y2K bug nor more cosmic prediction of catastrophe seems to have disturbed our passage beyond that exciting 2000 marker of the passing of time. For the church we are now in the season of Epiphany, whose themes are about the showing forth of Christ, and therefore about the ministry and mission of the Church.

The mission statement of Christ Church Cathedral begins with the phrase "We are set in the heart of Montreal". Our vocation, like that of the church at all times and places, is to be the bearer and ambassador of Christ in our local context. Montreal is a large, exciting, bilingual multicultural, pluri-ethnic city. The concept of city denotes more than geographical location. It speaks of a network of relationships, economic, political, cultural, commercial, among many others. Today that network of relationship extends around the globe. The church, then, is called to an urban mission and ministry, which is in fact a mission and ministry to the global city of our new century.

Part of our work, particularly that of our professional ministers, is to care for the communities of the Cathedral and for the individuals who make up those communities. But a more important part is to enable the communities to carry out their vocation of mission and ministry in this global urban environment. For some this will be through activity in the social service and social justice aspects of our work. For others it will be through our partnerships with the church in other parts of the world. For many it will be through their daily life, work and leisure pursuits, and through their professional, political and secular social commitments.

All our mission and ministry is centered in and arises from our daily and weekly round of liturgy, worship and intercession. One of the problems of the global city is that its science and technology have sidelined the spiritual, so that even where religion is still valued, it is as a private individual occupation. The pursuit of beauty and commitment in our liturgy is a vital witness to the world around us of the existence and reality of a spiritual environment, and of the necessity of our participation in it, in order to achieve the full possibilities and potential of our humanity.

The educational program of this season will continue to deal with some of these areas of our common life, as well as looking at the ecumenical dimension of the mission of the church, and beginning, we hope, to do some joint study with other churches.

May you and the communities of our Cathedral be richly blessed in this new year and new century.

Yours sincerely,

Michael J. Pitts