But that traction also included two rather cross denunciations. Michael Hewat, vicar of the West Hamilton Anglican parish, wrote in reply: ‘I do not like the idea that Jesus is no longer the primary reason for celebrating Christmas. I like the idea even less when it is peddled by a senior cleric.’ Hewat dismissed Cardy as a comedian: ‘He’s not to be taken seriously.’ Quite right, wrote Garth George, a columnist and Christer, who flicked Cardy aside as a ‘troublesome priest’ given to ‘ramblings’ and a ‘philosophy of extreme liberal correctness that verges on dottiness’.
Cardy is the Anglican Archdeacon of Auckland, has a Venerable in front of his name, and serves as the vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City in downtown Auckland. His immediate neighbours include the casino, a twenty-four-hour pub where he sometimes breakfasts on Sundays before service, and the truly heathen Gomorrah of the TVNZ network centre. St Matthew is a beautiful church, a peaceful sight. A pohutukawa tree was in crimson bloom in the backyard. ‘It’s used as a urinal,’ he said. ‘People don’t have any fears of pissing in church grounds anymore.’ It didn’t seem to bother him. Nothing seemed to bother him; he had such a pacific temperament. He was, he said, a born optimist.
Our interview was conducted in the downstairs crypt. It was a bare room, rented out to a Buddhist meditation group and Alcoholics Anonymous. Upstairs, an office Christmas party was in full swing. A broken glass lay in front of the pulpit; a man dressed in a monk’s cowl played Doobie Brothers remixes on the turntable. They sang, ‘Without love, where would you be right now?’ I suppose that belonged in the church, although it was a shame the DJ hadn’t played the great Doobie hit, ‘Jesus is Just Alright with Me.’
But was Jesus just all right with Cardy, or more than all right? Why had he so blithely accepted Jesus was a bystander at Christmas, when he wrote his New Zealand Herald article? He said, ‘Well, I think Jesus has been withdrawn from Christmas. The biblical Christmas is ignored in a lot of places. I was wanting to say, “Okay, let’s go with the cultural Christmas.” There’s stuff in there that can build our spirituality, and bring us closer to God. Togetherness. Generosity. Food. Because there’s Jesus stuff in that.’
Pass the gravy; its secret recipe included ‘Jesus stuff’. It was as though Cardy was apologetic about Jesus. He didn’t want to frighten the horses with talk about The Chosen One; he would only mention the Son of God in polite terms. He talked about ‘language issues’. He said, ‘For a long time I was comfortable using words that I thought everybody was interpreting metaphorically, like “Father”. But they weren’t thinking that! A lot of people were thinking about a guy upstairs in the clouds – you know, full male gear, the beard, all that.
‘So I just don’t use that word now in relation to God, because I don’t believe God is more up there than down here. I want to use language that says God is in and among and between us. I’ve got to find language that will do that.’
Somehow I doubt this is the dilemma of many Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or Satanists.
This time last year, Cardy’s Christmas message saw him pondering the thesis of a US theologian, who interpreted that Mary had been either been seduced or raped. He said, ‘I think there’s a very good possibility of it. The main thing about the whole virgin thing is, “Virgin? Yeah, right.”
‘And that was the same when the story was written. It was saying there was something sexually irregular about Jesus’s birth. You can put that down to a miracle – you know, sperm out of the sky – or you can say she had sex with Joseph, or she was raped or violated, or had sex with somebody else. Who actually knows? But the way the story is written points to some irregularity. The bottom line is that it doesn’t affect my faith, and how I act towards other people.’
The Christmas nativity, too, had to be deconstructed. ‘There’s very little factual history in the nativity accounts.’ The story was about giving a great man a great birth. ‘Was there literally an angel called Gabriel who appeared? Were there literally wise men on camels coming from the east? Was there literally a star over Bethlehem? The answer is no. Those things are part of the story-creating talent of people trying to bring alive the real meaning of the man, and his real meaning is found in his adult life.’
And so on. No doubt Cardy could go through the Old and New Testaments, gently removing myth, shaking his head at various bigotries and nonsenses, forever reminding his listener about its stories of love. His surname was entirely apposite. He was cosy, informal, unthreatening. He said, ‘I don’t think spirituality is owned by Christianity, and I don’t think the Christian church owns God.’ And: ‘I’d love to give Jesus a land, a place and a city where gay people, where people who are different, who don’t fit norms, people of different races and creeds, are welcomed and loved. That international peace and justice stuff.’ Also: ‘I don’t do bland.’
He was raised an Anglican, sort of. ‘Mum was intermittent. There were some Quakers in the mix, and some good heathens.’ As a teenager, he ran with a mildly evangelical crowd, attending youth camps, singing folk songs, now and then dating. Did he experience religious ecstasy? ‘I wouldn’t describe it as ecstasy. But it was certainly emotional stuff.’ He trained for the ministry at St John’s College. Had he ever lost his faith? ‘Not really.’ Was his faith substantial? ‘I think so. I’d say so. It’s hard to tell, really.’
He is married with two girls and two boys. I suspect he is a great – surely his children are allowed to call him this – father. As a minister, he must attend to all sorts of chores. ‘In a sense, you’re running your own business,’ he said. ‘It’s like an independent business unit.’ He has a staff of six. Where’s the money come from? ‘Our sources of income are … there’s parishioner giving, there’s income from the car park next door, we have a factory we lease out.’ A factory? ‘It makes hemp products! Curtains, high-quality fabrics.’ He said the annual operating budget was about $600,000.
He tends to a congregation of just eighty souls. I cringed when he said, ‘Most of our congregation are online.’ God is reduced to broadband. ‘We podcast all our sermons,’ said Cardy. ‘A typical downloader might be a commuter in New York, downloading it all on his iPod.’ He estimated about five hundred people from around the world regularly access the St Matthew website.
I asked him if he knew how many people belonged to Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church. ‘Probably in the thousands!’ What did that tell him? ‘That he’s got an appeal to a particular market. What we’re producing here is what you might call a niche market. It doesn’t worry me, those sorts of numbers. Well, if the number we had here was thirty, it might worry me. And more than eighty would be great. But we have an eclectic congregation: we have university lecturers, truck drivers. And people travel long distances to come here. Someone comes from Whangaparaoa. Waihi Beach, there’s a parishioner. Matamata, there’s a parishioner.’
I asked if there would always be a church. He said, ‘Ummmm.’ While he was thinking of what to say, I asked whether St Matthew would become more and more niche, until the church was where we sat now – stuck down below in a bare, airless crypt.
He chose to answer the first question. He said, ‘I believe the church isn’t just for the actively committed. It’s for the entire community. Anyone in this community is welcome to get married here. Anyone in this community is welcome to come into this building, hence why we open up for parties and the like.’ The DJ in the monk’s cowl was now playing deep bass. ‘We get people through here. It’s their church. It’s not a little club that belongs to club members. Churches have a tendency to become like a club. I don’t want to talk just to the club. I want to talk to people outside the club.’
That made sense. There’s a better chance he’d be talking to more people than the congregation inside the beautiful, empty clubhouse of St Matthew. And he deserves a wider audience. He had such a wonderful innocence about him. I suppose it’s called God’s love. He was as harmless as a baby. He was the kind of person you wanted to reach out and touch bec
ause his presence made you feel good. Instead of shaking his hand when I left, I reached out and touched his arm, and said, ‘Merry Christmas, vicar.’
[December 23]
Acknowledgements
Every thanks to the help and professional excellence of Sunday Star-Times sub-editors James Belfield, Mike Alexander and Arthur Whelan, archive librarians Jill McCarthy, Lesley Longstaff and Serena Balston, and commissioning editors Melanie Jones, Donna Chisholm and Cate Brett.
ALSO BY STEVE BRAUNIAS
Fool’s Paradise
How to Watch a Bird
Copyright
First eBook edition published in 2012 by
Awa Press, Level 1, 85 Victoria Street
Wellington, New Zealand
eISBN: 978–1–577551–25–3.
First print edition published in 2008, ISBN 978–0–9582750–5–7.
Copyright © Steve Braunias 2008.
The right of Steve Braunias to be identified as the author of this work in terms of Section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.
The profiles in this book originally appeared in The Sunday Star-Times.
Copyright in this book is held by the author. You have been granted the right to read this e-book on screen but no part may be copied, transmitted, reproduced, downloaded or stored or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system in any form and by any means now known or subsequently invented without the written consent of Awa Press Limited, acting as the author’s authorised agent.
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
Front cover: Red One, Mark Braunias
Cover design by Liane McGee.
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Roosters I Have Known Page 15
