The End of St. Michael’s Russian Catholic Chapel?

With great sorrow we must inform you that the demise of St. Michael’s Russian Catholic Chapel may be imminent. Sunday, February 3, may see the celebration of the chapel’s last divine liturgy. The community of the chapel reportedly is facing “eviction” in a dispute with its “landlord” (Old St Patrick’s Cathedral and the New York Archdiocese) over an increase in rent and other financial disputes. It is unclear at this point whether the dispute can be resolved or whether the Archdiocese will provide a new home for the St. Michael’s community if it isn’t. We hope to provide you with further information – hopefully from all parties – as soon as it is available.

Apparently, Old St Patrick’s Cathedral and the Archdiocese are treating the matter as an exclusively financial negotiation with some kind of unrelated business party. This, for a chapel that has functioned in the same location under Archdiocesan authority since 1936. A chapel that has introduced so many to the Eastern liturgy ( I attended St. Michael’s regularly through the 1980’s.) At that time it was the best place in New York for a Catholic to get a glimpse of what a Traditional liturgy actually is – that it has little or nothing to do with the size of the congregation, the splendor of the church’s architecture and decoration, the quality of the music, the beauty of the vestments etc. Rather, the celebration of the liturgy in its completeness, the immersion in the form of the rite – these are decisive. And St. Michaels’ was always well-known among both Catholics and Orthodox for its uncompromising and almost unique dedication to the fullness of the Eastern Orthodox or Byzantine liturgy and ritual. That’s why so many distinguished priests and scholars – and at least one Patriarch – have attended liturgies at St. Michael’s or celebrated there themselves. And as for the laity – we should mention one member of the congregation in the early 1980’s, then a very old lady who had been a lady-in-waiting to the last Empress of Russia…

We hope and pray that this small but influential chapel – still very much alive – may be saved.