The End of the Churches: the Parish of St. John the Evangelist

The archdiocese has published the decree of merger of St. John the Evangelist- Our Lady of Peace and Holy Family parishes. Holy Family will be the surviving parish:

This is the second time the parish has been terminated. 1) The first was in 1969, when the archdiocese demolished the original parish church of 1880 and in its place started construction of the New York Catholic Center – a small skyscraper housing the legion of Archdiocesan bureaucrats and a Catholic high school.  We are fortunate to have a witness to these events who was also an active participant in this process. Monsignor George A. Kelly was Secretary for Education in the New York archdiocese and later the first pastor of the new St. John the Evangelist located within the Catholic Center. Monsignor Kelly is probably still best known for his 1979 book The Battle for the American Catholic Church, a seminal text for Conservative Catholicism.

Kelly’s The Parish: as seen from the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, New York City 1840-1973 (St. John’s University, NY 1973) is a work full of curious and valuable facts on the immediate post-conciliar era. The author, in the final two chapters dealing with the demolition of the old St. John the Evangelist and the building of the Catholic Center refers to himself in the third person. Much of what Kelly writes in justification of the archdiocesan actions is startlingly familiar: 

Indeed, radical uprooting of old structures is sometimes required in the name of life. Many large churches, providing diminishing service, stand long after people have moved. And frittering away limited church resources on ancient forms when substantial new needs existed in other places, is not good sense, if only because of the unreasonable amount of priest power and money power locked into ecclesiastical enterprises no longer productive. (p. 123)

But ideological and theological rationales also justified the decision:

Moreover,  liturgical changes have made 19th century churches less than useful to 21st century needs. … When Father Flood was building the 1880 church, some judged 1,200 seats too few. Today cathedral-like churches are hindrances to the eucharistic community and 200 people scattered throughout a nave built to sit six times that number give the church the appearance of a museum, not a dynamic house of worship. (p.123)

I was thus intrigued to find explicitly stated in Kelly’s book many of the things I had surmised from the location, décor and architecture of the new St. John the Evangelist. Of course, whether these arguments were meant seriously or were merely excuses to justify an essentially financial transaction I will leave to the reader to decide. Kelly himself describes a real estate transaction involving Cathedral High School proceeding in parallel with the closure and demolition of old St. John’s. Here too ideological arguments were adduced to locate this school in an affluent area. 

Of course, on Monsignor Kelly’s own evidence, St. John’s was, up to the Second Vatican Council and even afterwards,  not a moribund parish at all. Attendance had leveled off over the decades, but strangely the parish income steadily increased because of the continued development of nearby Sutton Place. There was still a functioning school. Indeed, by 2024 standards,  St. John’s in 1969 looked distinctly healthy! 

The parishioners did not at all agree with the decision to demolish their church. From reading Kelly’s book and from other sources,  opposition seems to have been fierce and the process traumatic. Kelly describes the laity of the parish as ignorant and emotional:

While the decision was supported by an array of substantial arguments in its favor, those directly affected, especially the parents of school children, were distressed and angry. (pp. 125-126)

In this book we thus have yet another witness to the contempt of the post-conciliar clergy for the laity (which continues to the present day).  And of course, this comes from the pen of a “conservative,” not a radical reformer! 

Archbishop Cooke, despite his ineffectual, Pope Paul VI-like persona, could, just like the Pope, take drastic action against those who were seen standing in the way of progress. The parish was duly closed, and the construction of the new building began. St. John’s parish virtually ceased to exist:

 (O)nly one third of (the) number (of  parishioners)remained after the demolition of the old church in 1969 to offer mass in a very unattractive chapel situated on the ground floor of a solid but hardly well-appointed rectory. Sunday attendance was down to 700 and there was little call for baptism, matrimony, penance, extreme unction, indeed for any substantial priestly service. All parish organizations were moribund and total parish income fell between 1969 and 1970 from $223,000 to approximately $106,000. (p.135)

Kelly then describes what he audaciously calls the “Fifth Spring of the Parish.”  St. John’s had to start all over again  “as if it were 1840.” Kelly writes that “1973 not only marks the end of four years of stress and unhappiness but hopefully the beginning of a new parochial dream.” (p. 135) Kelly’s confidence in the future, however, seems to have been tentative, even shaky, based more on ideology and wishful thinking than facts: 

“In spite of a sense of loss for the old, a new church might be more salvific for the future. … Not every parishioner would agree with this, and time may yet prove their judgment correct.” (p. 137)

“What may be expected of the new parish of Saint John’s will only be known after the more commodious and properly appointed facilities of the new church are completed and are available for use.” (p.145).

“There is no great rush to utilize the parish facilities as yet. Only time will tell whether St. John’s will survive as a neighborhood parish.” (p.142)

Did parish life survive after 1973 or, as Kelly feared, did the new church simply become a chapel for the school and the archdiocesan employees? I do not know enough about the post-1973 history to say.  Over the years, however,  an array of figurative art was added to soften the original, radical decorative scheme of Kelly’s time. In 2014, the (relatively)nearby parish of Our Lady of Peace was merged into St. John’s. Within two years the church building of Our Lady of Peace was sold. That does not bode well for the continued existence of the “worship space” of the former parish of St. John’s, once the last archdiocesan offices vacate the Catholic Center in 2025. 

St John’s is one of the earliest examples in New York of a parish restructuring/closure, directed from the top, and also of a new Novus Ordo worship environment. Monsignor Kelly wrote thst only time would tell how successful the newborn parish would be. Now, in 2024, we do know the answer: the new St. John’s was an abysmal failure ending in its dissolution.

On the parish church of St. John the Evangeliset see our post. On the looming fate of the archdiocesan headquarters see HERE.

1. Ignoring various early moves between the founding of the parish in 1840 and 1880. St Patrick’s cathedral is built on the original site of St John’s!