The Archdiocese of New York, 2025: Decline and Kitsch

(Above) The former Catholic Center, surrounded by scaffolding. (Below)) The “Catholic” identifiers are progressively stripped away – you can still barely make out “New York Catholic Center.” An inglorious end to the main legacy of Cardinal Cooke in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral:

The new set of “murals” (actually panel paintings, apparently on canvas) in the entrance to St. Patrick’s cathedral were recently unveiled. These works are accompanied by an extravagant dedication to Cardinal Dolan. What can we say? The style is exceedingly similar to Soviet “Socialist Realism” or National Socialist “Heroic Realism” – a combination of photographic realism (almost colored photographs)and idealism. Most of the figures depicted are staring at something in space or above them in the sky, while we, similarly, gaze up at them. For some reason, Mother Cabrini’s image does make “eye contact” with the viewer. Some of the panels follow the lead of contemporary media and advertising by carefully distributing the figures among approved categories: a woman, a black, an “Asian,’ an “Hispanic.”. And, despite the presence of an image of the Virgin Mary, most of it is thoroughly secular as well. The themes are those approved by the secular media: migrants, 9/11 first responders, catholic social activists… The panels are entirely manipulative and propagandistic – art has ceded to the didactic.