Buildings that offer a different path to worship

sir – Sir Simon Jenkins (report, June 5) is only half right when he suggests that cathedrals are doing better than churches because they don’t “bang on” about God.

Cathedrals are increasingly popular as places of pilgrimage and worship, both formal and informal, but not because they fail in their core purpose of connecting to God.

Rather, they succeed because they offer sacred approaches that many parish churches now fail to do. They are open much of the time, and offer a range of spaces, from numinous to intimate. Many Church of England parish websites, by contrast, present themselves in language more reminiscent of the corporate than the sacred.

There is an older, slower way of worship which thankfully is still present in our cathedrals. Cathedral music also carries the core Christian tradition and messages. Prayer can simply consist of listening, after all. Mary O’toole

Marlow, Buckinghamshire