From its official opening 50 years ago, Liverpool’s Catholic cathedral may have divided its critics but it was quickly taken to the community’s heart. But as a Liverpudlian writer explains, the sense that it is ‘our’ cathedral is not something that should be taken for granted

If ever a building had something to say for itself, it is the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King. In my earliest memory it was the Apollo lunar module inexplicably waiting for me at the top of Brownlow Hill. The bracing river wind that swirled around it whatever the weather only added to the launch-pad atmosphere. The cathedral officially opened between the end of the Second Vatican Council and the first Moon landing, in the summer of Sgt Pepper. Inside other churches you looked up at the stained glass to see depictions of the lives of the saints. Here the stained glass washed you with great swathes of colour. You saw yourself in a new light. It was electrifying and the source of that electricity seemed to be the spirit of a new age and Liverpool’s special place in that spirit. Look, it seemed to say, the Church is young and alive.

The first time my Dad saw the Cathedral of Christ the King it was floating in the air above the school railings. The cathedral was paid for largely by what Yeats called “Biddy’s halfpennies” – small public contributions. As part of the fundraising effort in the 1930s, schoolchildren were given little transparencies which – when held up to the light – showed the proposed building dwarfing the waterfront and – more importantly – the Anglican cathedral. This was a very different cathedral from the one we celebrate this week.