Msgr. Eugene V. Clark, RIP

I was surprised to learn today that Msgr. Eugene Clark had died on April 11, 2012. At the Month’s Mind Mass celebrated at his old parish of St. Agnes, Fr. George Rutler preached this moving sermon:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathrynlopez/2012/05/remembering-a-priest-who-knew-christ-knew-the-cross/

Strange – we hear the surprising news of Monsignor Clark’s death just as we were reminiscing about the beginnings of the recovery of liturgical Tradition in New York City in the 1980’s.  If the Novus Ordo Latin Mass had debuted at Our Lady of Vilna and the Traditional Mass – deliberately scheduled outside of Sunday –  at St Ann,  it was at St. Agnes under Msgr. Clark that  the regular Sunday Traditional Mass returned to the city. It has been celebrated at that parish ever since. Now in the 1980’s at St Agnes Msgr. Clark had gathered about him a number of priests who in one way or another were laboring for the preservation and restoration of Catholicism in New York.  Father George Rutler was one of these priests.  The parish became the focus of  wide variety of initiatives and apostolates, Traditionalist or (mostly) otherwise. Dare I mention our own minor contribution:  a Catholic reading club that met a number of times in the St. Agnes rectory? Although I do not think that Msgr. Clark was himself a committed proponent of the  Traditional liturgy, he nevertheless made its recovery possible. Msgr Clark also  worked for the artistic restoration of St Agnes church and later for its rebuilding.

After Msgr. Clark moved to St Patrick’s  and made some very precise and provocative  statements about the moral ills afflicting our country today,  I knew he was a marked man. Disaster was not long in following. Msgr. Clark was quickly dropped by his neoconservative fan club. It was a tragic end to the career of a man who had certainly taken positions over the years not conducive to ecclesiastical preferment.

Now I would concede that there were serious issues about some of the personalities and policies at St. Agnes in the 1980’s. And the rebuilding of St. Agnes  fell short of what should have been accomplished. Nevertheless, with all its failings and mistakes, this was the beginning of a recovery of Tradition and even of the sacred within the New York Archdiocese itself.   And as the Germans say, Aller Anfang ist schwer. We owe Msgr. Clark an immense  debt of gratitude for that beginning.