The world's largest Gothic cathedral is not in France. It sits on Morningside Heights in Manhattan and after 86 years is still unfinished. Construction stopped on the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine at the outset of World War II and was never resumed; church leaders thought it improper to spend money on bricks and mortar in the face of poverty and social crisis in nearby Harlem. But last week Bishop Paul Moore Jr., 59, announced a change of policy: building will start again in June. "Confrontation, picketing and burning down are not the order of the day," says Moore, who is. widely known as an activist priest. His "edifice complex," as churchmen dub it, will use a very special construction crew. Workers will be hired from Harlem and trained to cut stone in the medieval fashion under tutelage of a master builder imported from Britain.

"Jean Paul Belmondo doesn't consider himself a sex symbol." This intelligence comes from Raquel Welch, presumably an expert on the subject; she once acted with the French star in L 'Animal. Nevertheless, Belmondo's charm leaves millions of Frenchwomen `a bout de souffle. In Flic ou Voyou, Belmondo's latest film, he plays a cop disguised as a gangster and gets entangled in fistfights. In more civilized moments off the set, Belmondo brushes up on his tennis. Even a nonsex symbol needs a touch of love.

The author of Crazy Like a Fox and Chicken Inspector No. 23 and the maestro of words such as wattles and dottle, boffin and horripilating was surely up to the challenge. Sidney Joseph Perelman, 74, faced the Chinese author of a drama titled We Will Always Remember Our Beloved Premier Chou En-Lai at a literary luncheon in Peking.

Thanks to many mao-tais, nobody lost face. The humorist had flown to Peking after driving from Paris to Hong Kong in his 1949 vintage MG. On arrival, a bout with bronchitis landed the peripatetic Perelman in a Peking hospital. When he saw the bill for his seven-day stay--$100--he treated his Chinese doctor to a pearl of wisdom: "Raise the rate!"

That wet suit may be a bit clammy, but Farrah Fawcett-Majors is willing to take the plunge. She always was the athletic Angel, and now Majors is getting to do all her own stunt work for her latest film, Sunburn. As Model Ellie Morgan, hired to help Private Eye Charles Grodin investigate an insurance swindle in Acapulco, she steers a car at breakneck speed through a bullring and fights off a gang of thugs under water. During the filming, stunt men got their signals crossed and pulled Majors beneath the surface before she had secured her breathing tube, nearly drowning her. But with it all, she is delighted at 31 to submerge herself for the first time in a serious movie career. "I'm a late developer," says Majors. Photographers may not agree.

Is it a bird? A plane? No, it's a "whale coming out of the water," says Henry Moore, 80, of his latest free-form sculpture. Architect I.M. Pel, 61, thinks it looks more like "the Loch Ness monster." This artistic debate took place at the unveiling of the 27,000-lb. bronze in front of Dallas' new city hall, designed by Pei. "Until this arrived," Pei said, "I felt something was missing." A few spectators, however, thought something was still amiss. "Is this a junkyard?" asked one. Moore was undaunted. "People shouldn't immediately expect to cotton onto something someone else has been thinking about much, much longer," he says. "I mean, they don't understand Einstein."

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