Queen's College RS students attend workshop at St Paul's Cathedral

On Mon 1 March the Year 10 Religious Studies GCSE group made good use of a sunny afternoon travelling to St Paul's Cathedral for a tour and ethics workshop. We were impressed by the architecture, symbolic objects and innumerable memorials to famous people. Notably only one famous woman is commemorated at St Paul's: Florence Nightingale. The mosaics added at the behest of Queen Victoria who found the cathedral too drab, were a bit overwhelming, almost a little 'kitschy', but we did like the meditative painting of 'Jesus the light of the world' by Holman Hunt. Our question and answer session with Sarah, a young, female priest serving at the cathedral, was informative. The discussion moved from religious experience and the nature of God to how we know one religion is 'right' and another 'wrong' when God is transcendent and cannot be described adequately by human language. We also touched on church attitudes to marriage, homosexuality and the ordination of women. It was interesting to meet a person for whom there is no real division between private and working life, whose work is a 'calling'.

Posted: 15 Mar 2010