(Above) The most recent parish bulletin.

Last night a concert of the music of William Byrd took place in the splendid, resonant and historic setting of Most Holy Redeemer Church, East 3rd Street, New York. A good-sized audience heard a superb performance of Bryd’s music, both sacred and secular. The church was an ideal acoustical environment for this kind of smaller scale, somewhat melancholy music. The warmly applauded performers were Charles Weaver, Elizabeth Weaver, Terence B. Fay and Grant Herreid.

Do I need to point out that Charles Weaver is the Music Director at St. Mary’s, Norwalk, where Elizabeth Weaver and Terence Fay sing with him each Sunday at the Solemn Traditional liturgy? Throughout the evening Charles Weaver interspersed historic commentary which highlighted Byrd’s deep ties with the Catholic recusants (Byrd was one of their number). Indeed, he had a specfic connection with the manor of the Paston Family in Norfolk where some of the music heard last night would have been performed. Edward Paston was, moreover, not just a patron but an artistic collaborator of Byrd; a poem written by Paston in honor of the Catholic Queen Mary and set by Byrd was performed last night. For it is an amazing fact that in their clandestine celebration of the prohibited Mass the Catholic recusants of Elizabethen England often created magnificent music and art. As Julian Kwasniewski points out in an essay distributed last night with the program:

Although I have spoken primarily of his life as a musician, Byrd’s life as a recusant Catholic should serve as inspiration for Catholics today, who face varying degrees of persecution not only from secular governments, but from within the Church’s hierarchy itself. Figures like Byrd remind us that the creation of great art is possible even in times of adversity. 1)

Since 2011 we at St. Hugh of Cluny have often covered events at the grand Church of Most Holy Redeemer, formerly Redemptorist, formerly German. Indeed, this Society has sponsored some of them. Today a young priest of the archdiocese leads this parish in the midst of what some might consider one of the city’s more inhospitable surroundings – half party land, half “underprivileged” neighborhood. Yet, under Fr. Sean Connolly, the church looks better than ever before and the parish is sponsoring an ambitious program of musical performances. 2)

(Above and Below) Most Holy Redeemer is an endless source of insights into the Catholic devotional life of the past ( and, as is the intention of this parish’s current management, of the future as well). Since 1914 the lavishly decorated shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is supposed to be the center of this devotion in New York City. 3)

(Above and below) The chapel-shrine of the relics includes those of St. Datian, a romam Martyr, enclosed in a wax image. His relics were brought to New York in the 1890’s amid great rejoicing.

(Above) Catholic devotions of an “earlier age” – that of the poor souls in purgatory. (Below) This modern, somewhat expressionless statue used to adorn (protected by a cage) the facade of the nearby Nativity parish, victim of a recent Archdiocesan downsizing. Most Holy Redeemer parish is now “Most Holy Redeemer-Nativity.” 4)

1. Kwasniewski, Julian, “Not a tame Byrd: Remembering a great recusant composer,” Catholic World Report (7/2/2023)
2. See, e.g., “Solemn Mass of St. Nicholas at Most Holy Redeemer Church,” (12/6/2019); “The Churches of New York IX: Vierzehnheiligen on the East River,” (3/27/2011) both on the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny.
3. “Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help,” East Village Catholic (Accessed 9/17/2023)
4. “The Churches of New York XII: Lady in a Cage,” Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (7/14/2011)

(Above) One of the less scandalous uses for old churches: a hotel (photo from the AP article at 2) below.

It’s a growing problem for the Europeans – abandoned churches. Why even small villages might have had two or more churches. Now certain German dioceses are facing ever more dire choices: Freiburg, for example, is moving from 1000 parishes to 40. 1) AP News reports that one solution is the conversion of churches into entertainment venues. In New York that kind of solution (a cultural center) has been implemented at St. Thomas and All Saints parishes (both in Harlem) – ususully old churches here are simply torn down to make way for luxury condominiums. Fortunately, very few in Europe are practicing the faith anyway, so that alleviates the problem. The AP story focuses on Belgium, where nowadays 10% of the population “regularly” attends church. The Catholic clergy are resigned to the situation. Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp – currently promoting LGBT wedding blessings with the support of Pope Francis – is hopeful things may turn around in 300 years or so……

1. “German archdiocese plans to cut parishes from 1,000 to 40,” CNA (7/16/2020)

2. Casert, Raf, “In Europe’s empty churches, prayer and confessions make way for drinking and dancing,” AP News (6/22/2023)

(Above: art warehouse for the diocese of Erfurt. This art warehouse currently is the storage center for around 2,000 works of art of the diocese of Erfurt, Germany, which either don’t have a place anymore in their parishes or where the churches in which they were located have been deconsacrated (photo 11.29.2022 © epd-bild/Steve Bauerschmidt )

Since the year 2000, the number of churches deconsecrated or torn down in certain German dioceses has reached two or even three figures. Author Gabriele Höfling asks what is to be done with, as she puts it, “pews, tabernacle and Co.”? Of course, according to this article, the art of the 19th century no longer accords with modern tastes. The same, however, seems to be true of the “art of the Council” dating to the 1960’s and 1970’s (when Catholic art was still being produced in significant quantities).

In some cases the artworks can be moved to another building in the same parish or even to a “private church.” Martina Außermeier of the Archdiocese of Munich art office reports (“with pride”) that: “we were just able to furnish a newly constructed private neo-gathic chapel more or lesss completely with used litugical objects and church furnishings.” Other art can be “recycled,” given – often free of charge – to new churches that are still being built in Eastern Europe or Africa.

Yet sometimes more imagination is required. Wooden objects can be burned in the paschal fire. Others can be placed in a coffin as “grave goods” (like in early medieval times): “such as a lectionary for a deceased reader.” Others are “upcycled.” Deconsecrated stone altars have been made into beautiful gravestones or headstones. A baptismal font has been refashioned as a fountain in a cemetary. Although “reverential, ” this takes a lot of time and expense and is not generally feasible. It seems that the dump may be the fate of art that cannot find another home or use.

The German dioceses are developing a central database of sacred objects. At this time it largely contains links to the relevant diocesan offices.

SOURCE: Höfling, Gabriele, “Von Upcycling bis Grabbeigabe: Was mit altem Kircheninventar passiert,” katholisch.de ( 3/28/2023)

Compare the same situation and function in the New York Archdiocese: Catholic “relics”

Report: the Church of St, Benedict the Moor has been sold. See my full description of this former parish, with photos, HERE.

A historic Hell’s Kitchen church which was the first Black Catholic parish north of the Mason-Dixon has been sold for $16 million, putting the future use of the 1869 building into question. First established as an act of reparation by a priest, the former St. Benedict the Moor building played a part in African-American history for decades, marking a time when Hell’s Kitchen was home to a large Black population before the growth of Harlem.

As first reported by Bisnow New York, the deconsecrated church at 342 W53rd Street between 8th and 9th Avenue and former rectory and parish buildings at 338 W53rd Street have been sold to billionaire developer Walter Wang. Publicly available New York County Supreme Court records show that the Archdiocese of New York sold the empty buildings to Wang’s JMM Charitable Foundation, a 501(c)(3) based in Los Angeles, California. Wang is the Taiwanese-American CEO of JM Eagle, the world’s largest manufacturer of plastic and PVC piping, while his wife, Shirley Wang is the CEO of Plastpro, a fiberglass door maker.

(The parish was originally in the Village. )

St Benedict’s move to Hell’s Kitchen cost $30,000, which the New York Sun of the time credited to fundraising by the pastor, Irish-born Reverend John E Burke, who was to stay its parish priest for decades. In 1903, he traveled to Rome, meeting Pope Pius X. Pioneering Black newspaper The Colored American, of Washington D.C., reported: “Father Burke, of the Catholic church of St Benedict, the Moor, brings back from Rome a special benediction from the new Pope, Pius the Tenth, for all the colored people of this country.” Four years later he was made the director-general of all Black parishes in the US.

The church became a center of African-American intellectual life, with a library dedicated to Black literature, a drama group performing Shakespeare and a weekly debating society dedicated to economic advancement. It had a parochial school beside the church, and a convent whose nuns ran an orphanage in Rye, Westchester. A 1911 book called Half a Man, about Black New Yorkers, said: “Only in this Catholic church does one find white and black in almost equal numbers worshipping side by side.

Beling, Sarah, “Historic Hell’s Kitchen Church — Home to First Black Catholic Parish in North — Sold for $16 Million,” w42st.com, 14/1/2023

(Above) Cardinal O’Connor at St Benedict the Moor. It had been a primarily “Hispanic” parish for decades prior to this event.

As the KIng of Siam said.

(February 15, 2023 – Manhattan, NY) – The Office of the Superintendent of Schools of the Archdiocese of New York today announced 12 Catholic schools will cease operations at the end of the 2022-23 academic year. Four schools will merge into two. (The Announcement is HERE)

• Academy of St. Paul & St. Ann, Manhattan
• Ascension School, Manhattan
• Guardian Angel School, Manhattan
• Holy Family School, Bronx
• Immaculate Conception School, Manhattan
• Immaculate Conception School, 760 E Gun Hill Rd, Bronx*
• Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, Manhattan
• Santa Maria School, Bronx
• St. Angela Merici School, Bronx
• St. Brendan School, Bronx
• St. Christopher School, Staten Island
• St. Margaret Mary School, Bronx

• St. Francis Xavier, Bronx, will merge with St. Clare of Assisi.
• St. Gabriel School, Bronx, will merge with St. Margaret of Cortona.

EV Grieve reports on the closing of Immaculate Conception School:

The school dates to 1864 (find a PDF with history here), part of the Immaculate Conception church when it was at 505 E. 14th St. The (original -SC) church, on the north side of 14th, was demolished in the 1940s to make way for Stuy Town. 
The school’s current building was completed in 1945. Per Wikipedia: 

In 1943 the parish took over the chapel and hospital buildings now known as Church of the Immaculate Conception and Clergy Houses, completed in 1896 to designs by Barney and Chapman and formerly owned by Grace Church. This existing facility was expanded with a four-story brick convent and parochial school at 415-419 E. 13th St. and 414-416 E. 14th St. … and completed in 1945.

(Immaculate Conception School) is the last Catholic grade school (serving students K-8) in the East Village. The archdiocese shut down St. Brigid School, founded in 1856, at the end of the 2018-2019 school year.  

On Guardian Angel School:

Guardian Angel, nearly 123 years old and the last Catholic elementary School left in Chelsea, will shut down at the end of the current academic year as part of a new rounds of closures announced by the Archdiocese of New York last week.

“It feels like one of the cornerstones of Chelsea is going to be gone,” said Eddie Edmonds, 58 the oldest of five siblings who graduated from there.

Kelly, Keith J., “Guardian Angel, the Last Catholic Elementary School in Chelsea, to Close,” The Spirit, 19/2/2023

On Ascension School:

Parents of children at Ascension were stunned and disappointed that the 126 year old school will be no more. A school originally opened on West 107th in 1897, the same year that the largely working class German immigrants had built the Ascension Church. The opening of the churtch meant that Mass no longer had to be celebrated in the basement of the massive Lion Bre(w)ery, that once occupied six sity blocks in the neighborhood. In its heyday, the parish boasted 10,000 parishioners and the school that had 1,100 students with the boys taught by the Christian Brothers and the girls taught by the Sisters of Charity. At the end, it had less than 290 students. Still the end sent shock waves through the community.

Kay Bontempo, “Parents Stunned as 126-year-old Ascension School Slated to Close,” The Spirit, 17/2/2023

St. Paul and St. Ann Academy:

St Joseph’s in the Village makes it to Vatican News! The parish is run by the Dominicans – obviously having the right connections helps getting noticed!

St. Joseph Church set to open first Perpetual Adoration Chapel in New York

How can we otherwise explain how planning a minor chapel merits the attention of the Vatican? I also am not totally sure if this is the “first perpetual adoration chapel” in Manhattan – see here.

I have previouly described the history of St Joseph’s and the state of the Catholic Chaplaincy at NYU as it existed up to 2016 HERE. Whatever else we think of it, the promotion of Eucharistic adoration is a far cry from the practices of the ideologies that once dominated at St. Joseph’s. (Of course, nowadays a growing number of New York City parishes have taken up the progressive causes once championed at St. Joseph’s.) Yet what is the intention behind establishing this chapel? The chapel is promoted as a place to encounter God and “meet Jesus.” But this can be done in any church or really anywhere. There is no discussion of the specific reason why one would visit a chapel for eucharistic adoration – is this knowledge assumed to exist among the faithful today?

In contrast, nebulous psychological benefits are cited:

Such an intimate and quiet place might appear opposite to the busy and striving nature of New York. However, according to Fr. Boniface, “what keeps us striving is the natural human impulse for happiness. Striving for whatever we think will make us happy, which is holiness.”

“What we are hoping here is that people will encounter what brings peace to their souls, a place where they can find the ultimate consummation of their own desires.”

Security is a most important concern here.:

Much effort was spent on security planning. “Because this is the middle of Manhattan, you can’t just leave an open door. People will come to the parish office, and we will issue them a key card that will grant them access so that we can control who is in there, and people can feel safe as they enter the chapel,” Fr. Boniface explained.

Vatican News adds this advertisement at the bottom of the report:

YOUR CONTRIBUTION FOR A GREAT MISSION:
SUPPORT US IN BRINGING THE POPE’S WORDS INTO EVERY HOME

The totalitarian drift of the Vatican becomes clearer with every day.

From the Our Old House Facebook Page (2/18/2023):

“We recently closed on this 1890 Catholic Church that we plan to renovate into our dream home! We plan to go all out with the gothic style and want to incorporate a medieval theme as well. It’s about 4000sqft and we are going to keep it an open space. It’s going to be a lot of work but we cannot wait to restore this beautiful church!!”

Sandro Magister reports on the ever-growing problem of using Catholic churches – once the clergy and faithful are gone:

Closed Churches. Two Criteria for Their Best Reuse

Here are excepts with my commentary.

More than attacks, thousands of churches in Europe suffer from abandonment. With ever fewer Catholics at Mass, they find themselves empty. And so they are being closed. In Germany, in Holland, in Belgium, the figures are dizzying. But in Italy as well there is a growing number of churches in disuse. 

(In Italy), at least, the churches are not state but ecclesiastical property, and therefore enjoy spontaneous and lasting protection on the part of their respective diocesan and parish communities. (Is this intending to be humorous? In the US, where the Church, in various forms, owns its own properties, such protection has been nonexistent. Indeed, it is largely because of state ownership (where such regimes prevail) and state-imposed restrictions that the Catholic architectural heritage has been preserved.)

But when these communities dwindle and disappear, for their respective churches it is the end. They are at serious risk of going under and ending up on the market, perhaps turned into supermarkets or dance halls, or in any case into something contrary to the purposes for which they arose.

(Again, speaking for the US experience, the churches are at risk even if the “communities” still exist. For one thing, all properties are de facto exposed to the financial problems of the entire diocese and its insatiable need for funds.)

A conference at the Vatican issued recommendations in 2016 for the disposal of such churches:

(The conference) produced “guidelines” advising against “commercial reuse for speculative aims,” and instead encouraged “reuse for aims of solidarity,” with “cultural or social” purposes: museums, conference halls, bookshops, libraries, archives, art studios, Caritas centers, clinics, soup kitchens, and more. Still leaving the option of “transformation into private homes” in the case of “more modest buildings with no architectural value.”

In the same vein, Giuliano Zanchi, a priest from Bergamo, professor of theology and a “great expert on art and themes on the border between aesthetics and the sacred” has now made his suggestions.

 (T)here are two criteria that Zanchi suggests be followed in the reuse of churches that have ceased to be such but want to “relaunch themselves in civil life with the function of cultural crossroads and spiritual threshold.”

The first criterion, he writes, is that which “harnesses the artistic dignity normally connected to historical sacred buildings…..”

There is in fact today a “social sect of art, which has its shrines, its liturgies, its priests, its myths, its sacraments, its pilgrimages, and its holy days of obligation,” which in turn, together with music, cinema, literature, “delimit a rather hospitable space of a common and shared ‘pensiveness’.”

The historic precincts of many religious buildings no longer functioning as places of the liturgy have all the qualities to be able to accommodate these social needs so deeply rooted,  and to bid to act as a true crossroads of a ‘cultural fraternity’ in which to enliven, in debate, in encounter, in plurality, in hospitality, a common sense of the human.”

(So, henceforth Catholic Churches will function as museums and cult locations for the “social sect of art.”)

The second criteron, according to Zanchi:

consists in “that typical need of the contemporary city” to have liminal areas, thresholds, “capable of steering toward the profound and the transcendent, which in the absence of anything else are identified in theaters, museums, libraries, and other places of non-utilitarian ulteriority.”

 “In our cities, which remain mercilessly horizontal even when they build skyscrapers that defy the heavens, there is a need for spaces that can be traversed as ‘spiritual thresholds’ and embody a vertical impulse even when they remain hidden on the ground floors of urban life.”

We cannot say that any of this typically European, Roman Catholic gibberish makes sense or imposes any real restrictions on anyone regarding the future use of former churches. What is clear, however, is the Church’s acceptance of the elimination of Christianity from modern society, as vividly symbolized by the closing of Catholic churches. The decline of Catholic practice is silently assumed to be an unalterable fact of life. In place of Christianity, secular functions are acknowledged that provide psychological benefits to the man of today (the “sect of art,” a “common sense of the human,” a “shared pensiveness” and “spiritual thresholds” that embody a “vertical impulse.”) Moreover, this psychological and emotional assistance is apparently viewed as an adequate substitute for the Christian cult previously practiced in these buildings. And are we not forced to conclude that the Catholic Church already sees its own primary role as providing such benefits (the “field hospital” of Pope Francis)? Did not the great Christian writer Novalis in 1800 denounce “pious” contemporaries for whom the Christian religion was “dope.” (emotional and psycholgical comfort). Such a “religion” is doomed to extinction. By actually endorsing such principles, the Catholic Church acquiesces in its own marginalization – and eventual elimination – from the world of modernity.

(Above) The Interior of the Church of Notre Dame (2008)

We have now received more detailed information about what is going on near Columbia University.

Columbia University, one of the premiere institutions among the Ivies, now has a proper Catholic center. 

The Thomas Merton Institute for Catholic Life had a “soft opening” at the upper Manhattan campus this week, as the center continues to finish construction. 

Named for who is most likely Columbia University’s best-known Catholic convert, the Merton Institute is being constructed at the Church of Notre Dame. 

Columbia Catholic Ministry is planning a grand opening of the Merton Institute for later this semester, when the space is better furnished, said CCM co-president Joel Kattady.

Merton Institute President Brian McAuliffe, a Columbia alumnus, estimates it will take $10 million to finish the Institute, which still requires further construction and furnishing. McAuliffe anticipates that successful alumni fundraising will meet this need.

“So much about the living of the Catholic faith goes beyond worship,” said Fr. Roger Landry, the chaplain to the Merton Institute and Columbia’s Catholic religious life adviser. Fr. Landry arrived at Columbia last year after serving at the Holy See Mission to the United Nations.

Source: Columbia University gets its own Catholic Center (2/16/2023)

And the website of Corpus Christi parish(“Masks requested, please“) – until now silent on all these developments swirling about it – has posted this:

It’s official: Corpus Christi and Notre Dame have merged into one parish.  We are called, quite simply, the Parish of Corpus Christi and Notre Dame.  We are one territorial parish, whose boundaries extend from 110th Street to 125th Street, and from Morningside Drive to the Hudson River.  We remain two church sites, Corpus Christi on 121st Street and Notre Dame on 114th Street.  According to Cardinal Dolan’s decree, Corpus Christi is the parish church, housing the rectory, office, and all parish records (including those of Notre Dame and St. Vincent de Paul).  Notre Dame will continue to serve the community as it has been, as the center of French-language Catholicism in New York City as well as a center for Columbia Catholic Ministry (under the aegis of the Thomas Merton Institute for Catholic Life, who are in the process of transforming the Notre Dame rectory for this purpose).

In the coming weeks, Archdiocesan officials will help us to form a new civil corporation.  This will mean appointing trustees and setting up a new finance council and parish council.  We are a diverse parish and I intend to have qualified representation from across the community in these councils.

CORPUS CHRISTI AND NOTRE DAME CATHOLIC PARISH NEW YORK CITY

So many questions are still unanswered. It takes $10 million to renovate a rectory? Who will own the renovated rectory? Is Fr. Landry now at least de facto the Catholic chaplain of Columbia University? Is Notre Dame church once again the center of the Columbia chaplaincy? Is anything going to be done to the magnificent church itself? Will the Thomas Merton Institute be transparent on the details of Thomas Merton’s life in the 1960’s? We will have to see!