The End of the Churches: More Losses

(Above) Interior of the Church of St Columba (2013).

On January 1, 2023, the Archdiocese announced (look under “decrees”) yet more church closings and mergers. The announcement was made in the dark of night: Catholic New York, as of late last year, of course doesn’t exist anymore. Six Manhattan parishes were affected. The decrees are effective immediately.

I do not know much about the parishes of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and Saint Jude, North Manhattan, which are to be merged. We have, however, previously reported on three other churches which are scheduled to be sold or merged. 

Merger of the parishes of Corpus Christi and Notre Dame,  with Corpus Christi remaining as the main “worship center.”  Notre Dame is one of the most impressive Catholic sanctuaries in New York. Up to 2011, the parish was in flourishing condition under the administration of Polish Dominicans – at which time it also functioned as the chaplaincy for Columbia University. The order was then forced out in that year by the archbishop for undisclosed reasons.

 As is his prerogative, the archbishop hinted at but did not state the reasons for the friars’ departure. He mentioned money, that Notre Dame was in the red, although the books are closed and so it’s hard to guess how much of that debt the Dominicans inherited from a costly and controversial renovation project undertaken during the parish’s previous administration. (this involved adapting the sanctuary to Vatican II – SC)

And so the breakup of the Catholic intellectual community that the Polish Dominicans gave so much life to had already begun. The apostles had Jesus for three years. We had the Polish Dominicans for all of eight, and, for five of those, the Polish Dominicans in conversation with Dulles and Neuhaus. We never wanted any of them to leave. But God called them home”some to be with him and, in the case of the friars, some to their temporal home, Poland”leaving those of us left behind to mourn the loss of a Catholic culture such as we had never known and are unlikely to experience again unless we cultivate our memories of it and let them shape our effort to reconstitute it somehow. 1)

After the closing of St. Vincent de Paul parish in 2013, Notre Dame was designated as the new parish in Manhattan for French-speaking Catholics. 2) The merger decree doesn’t mention this or the status of Notre Dame as the local Lourdes shrine.

Relegation (i.e., designation for sale) of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Presumably, this is the old church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been merged into St Bernard’s parish in 2003. Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first Spanish-speaking Catholic parish in Manhattan.  The parish is now called Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. Bernard’s – the old church functioned, I believe, as a parish center. I cannot find any reference to this decree on the parish bulletin of Our Lady of Guadalupe/St. Bernard’s.

 

Relegation(i.e., designation for sale) of the Church of St Columba. This is one of the most historic, originally Irish, churches in Manhattan. As I wrote in 2013:

We have seen how St Columba parish was founded in the dramatic 1840’s and its modest church erected so rapidly thereafter. It was little more than an expanded chapel – a large hall. We can now understand why the construction of the church of St Bridget in 1848 was greeted with such enthusiasm. Next to St Columba, the church of St Bridget appears grand, spacious, airy – and built in a proper Catholic Gothic style! But the curious thing is that despite its limitations of style and size the church of St Columba was never replaced. It survives to this day as one of the earliest structures built specifically as a Catholic church.

(Above and below) St. Columba in 2013 (The former parish school is on the right)

As in the past, the Archdiocesan decrees contain “boilerplate” rejecting in advance all arguments based on aesthetic or historical significance:

Whereas, the Church is not an archeological Museum,

(citing a statement by Pope John XXIII in an entirely different context). 

The process of Archdiocesan decomposition continues unabated.

1. Frankovich, Nicholas, “When the Polish Dominicans Left Morningside Heights,” First Things, (9/2/2011)

2. Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, “French Mass unites parishioners” The Columbian, (3/19/2022)