Old Churches….

The rose window of Holy Innocents is very likely the original from 1870 mentioned by John Gilmary Shea.

Yes, there is a unique quality, difficult to capture, that the sensitive visitor experiences in the silent old churches of New York or Brooklyn. A feeling of remoteness from the surrounding city, a somewhat musty atmosphere of a past that here somehow has not disappeared and a mysterious sense of solidarity with the tens, even hundreds, of thousands who have passed through these doors. This is especially so in the old Victorian churches of New York. The few neoclassical buildings, like St. Peter’s, are stark witnesses to us of an earlier age that has vanished. The later magnificent structures of the golden age of the Archdiocese, like Blessed Sacrament or St. Vincent Ferrer, are too artistically complete, too carefully thought out. I find myself constantly returning the structures of the earlier High Victorian age – St Stephen’s especially, but also Holy Innocents, Most Holy Redeemer or the former St. Ann’s. These churches, once grand centers of Catholicism and even of the city itself, now lie off the beaten track, sustained by small devoted congregations. They show all too clearly the ravages of time: water damage, indifferent paint and plaster work, shrines and altars that have been abandoned. Their decor ranges from magnificent windows and altars to kitschy devotions – with every age feeling entitled to add its own new devotion or shrine. Some, like St. Stephen’s are splendid architectural achievements, other like Holy Innocents represent the average parish church of the time. Best of all, by reason of their poverty, they mostly – not entirely – escaped the full ravages of the liturgical renewal.

(Above) Candles (real) are always burning at Holy Innocents, here before an image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. (Below) A Lourdes grotto is furnished with a fountain that has gone dry long ago.

(Above) St. Lucy is of course among the seemingly innumerable statues of Holy Innocents. (Below) Joyce Kilmer also stood before this crucifix many times before his conversion.

What does the threatened loss of a church like Holy Innocents mean to us? First,of course, the loss of a place of secluded refuge, of prayerful spirituality and even, here and there, of real beauty – all set in the midst of one of the most arid wastelands created by a barbarous capitalism.

This window is one of set of 20 from Munich installed as part of a grand refurbishing of the church starting in 1894 which included the new high altar. Other elements of that once magnificent decoration, like the side altars and communion rail, have disappeared.

Then, there is the loss of the devotions that made up so much of the life of old Catholic piety. Our Lady, the Infant of Prague, Christ the King, the great crucifix for an indulgenced prayer before leaving the church – all these and many others are found here. In recent years Holy Innocents also acquired a special new devotional role: as a shrine to its own patron saints in the face of a new massacre – that of abortion. Presumably this devotion is no longer seen as necessary or urgent.

There is also the loss of solidarity with the many who come here daily to pray, to light candles, to attend the masses and devotions. They are generally workers, the poor, even the eccentric and annoying. Those who frequent parishes in the suburbs or off Park Avenue do not come here. It is these ones with little means who are most adversely impacted by the looming changes. But so are they who are deprived of their example of sacrifice.

Above all, of course, Holy Innocents has served since 2007 as a center of the daily celebration of the Traditional mass. How many magnicent liturgies have taken place here in recent years! Moreover, this mass has added significance now that that the Traditional mass at Our Saviour’s across town has been suppressed. All this liturgical progress is the result of grass root initiatives – just like the hundreds of thousands of dollars this parish recently raised to refurbish the grand Brumidi fresco. I would have thought that the Church would want to encourage such initiatives from below. That is, if I didn’t know already through long experience how unlikely that would be! But the cessation of the celebration of the Traditional Mass would be the gravest loss of all. Let us pray – through the intercession of the Holy Innocents – that this fate can somehow be averted.