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!

For the feast of Candlemas, February 2: mass, blessing of the candles and procession at the historic church of the Transfiguration on Mott Street.

(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)

Last year The New York Times featured an article on the Archdiocese’s disposition of the contents of closed New York Churches:

Gill, John Freeman, “These Churches Have Been Closed, but Their Artifacts Live On,” Tne New York Times, December 24, 2021 (1)

IN this report we encounter “artifacts” (the reporter’s term) from several churches on which we ourselves have reported over the years. We provide links to the relevant articles.

First, St. Lucy’s in East Harlem:

“This is my last Mother Cabrini,” Mr. Amatrudo (the manager of the warehouse)said, resting his palm on the head of a waist-high plaster statue of the canonized Italian-American nun Frances Xavier Cabrini, rescued from St. Lucy’s Church in East Harlem after the church’s deconsecration in 2017.

(Above) This statue of the pieta was in the Church of St. Lucy in East Harlem (photo taken December 2014); (below) a pieta identified in the article as having been removed from St. Lucy’s in the Archdiocesan “Patrimony Warehouse” in December 2021 ( but repainted? or with a newer overpainting stripped off?).

Then, there is the grandiose former parish of All Saints, Harlem:

“Two of the most striking items in the warehouse are a pair of white-marble angels that once flanked the high altar at the Church of All Saints, on Madison Avenue and 129th Street. The splendid Italian Gothic Revival-style church, built starting in the 1880s after designs by the architect James Renwick Jr., is sometimes called the St. Patrick’s of Harlem — a reference to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, which Mr. Renwick also designed. All Saints is a city landmark, a designation that protects its exterior, but not its interior.”

All Saints was deconsecrated in 2017

“Workers disassembled the great marble altar with power saws fitted with masonry blades. To reach the clerestory windows high above the pews, some four stories of scaffolding were erected inside the church, and most of the stained-glass windows were taken out — over the objections of preservationists — and replaced with clear glass. The city Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the removal of stained glass and exterior sculptural masonry associated with religious imagery.“

“The altar and stained glass now reside in the warehouse. The 16-foot-high gilded crucifix is stored in crated sections, Jesus lying akimbo in the garage.”

“The church’s richly carved pews, among the city’s most elaborate, went to a church in Chicago. And marble statues of Joseph and Mary landed in Bridgeport, Conn. (The All Saints complex, which includes an attached parish school and parish house, was sold in March for $10.85 million to the developer CSC Coliving. A modernization of the school and conversion of the church into a school auditorium, designed by Tang Studio Architect, is underway, and the Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School plans to move into the two buildings next fall on a long-term lease.)”

(Above) The crucifix high above the main altar of All Saints (photo taken 2012): (below) as packed away in the warehouse (December 2021 photo).

Then, there is the parish of St Thomas the Apostle, Harlem:

“In 2008, some 30 stained-glass windows from the imposing neo-Gothic Church of St. Thomas the Apostle on West 118th Street in Harlem, designed by the Mayer of Munich studio in Germany, were removed and reconditioned after a preservation campaign failed. Those windows were later installed upstate, in the new Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Church, in LaGrangeville. Other windows went to St. Brigid’s Church in the East Village. And last year, 14 smaller windows from St. Thomas depicting angels were shipped to a church in Taiwan. (As for the 1907 church complex of St. Thomas the Apostle, it was sold to Artimus Construction for $6 million in 2012; the church was truncated, and its remaining front portion now serves as a vaulted event space called Harlem Parish.)”

Mr Zwilling, the Archdiocesan spokesman, repeats mantra-like, everything he has been saying for years:

“Our churches, beautiful as they are, are not built as museums — they’re built to serve the spiritual, the pastoral, the faith needs of the community,”

Mr. Zwilling does not explain why the closing of parishes (and schools, and Catholic residences) has to be repeated again and again. Nor does he enumerate the “spritual, pastoral and faith benefits” so far achieved by Making all Things New (the last big restucturing push). The Times reporter is not inclined to press him on such things. Nor does he comment on the apparently disproportionate impact of these closures on the churches of Harlem (and, I should add, of other poorer areas of the city). The reporter duly notes on the margin the objections of preservationists (he doesn’t mention the parishioners). But what significance do their views have? After all, according To Mr. Zwilling, the works of art assembled (in “museums”) over generations are:

“artifacts that ‘help tell the story of the history of a church that is important to people who, back when the church was being built, contributed either monetarily or through their labor…’”

Yes, these “historical artifacts” were once important to those people who built these churches – but no longer are to us. In this manner, the great artistic heritage of the Catholic people of New York is appropriated by the Archdiocese and scattered all over the world.

1. Just in time for Christmas!

Strolling by the locked and forlorn Centro Maria today – in the distant past the parish of St.Ambrose. Closed by the Archdiocese in 2020 and reported sold (resold?) in January 2022 for $25 million. (Hells Kitchen Development Site Sells for $25M (Bldup Newsletter, 1/10/2022)

It now awaits demolition – how long before that occurs?

For the historical background of the parish, the womens’ residence and the sale, see these reports:

Soon to Go. The School and Church of St. Ambrose–539-547 West 54th Street (Daytonian in Manhattan, 10/12/2022)

The End of the Churches – the Former Parish of St.Ambrose (The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny, 10/28/2021)

The Churches of New York XLVI: Losses 5 (The Society of St Hugh of Cluny, 10/1/2013) (On the two former parishes of St. Leo and St. Ambrose)

Formerly the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, The Harlem Parish is now an entertaiment venue. Currently it’s the location for a flamenco show:

This passionate, traditional Spanish flamenco performance is heading to NYC this month starting Friday, September 9th, and it was just released that the show will take place at The Harlem Parish, located at 258 West 118th Street.

Over 100 years old, the Harlem Parish was built in 1897 and is one of the most grand spaces in NYC. It has hosted a number of events with well-known brands including Spotify, SoulCycle, and BET, and all events hosted at the Harlem Parish are catered by Harlem-based restaurants with 10% of all proceeds donated to Harlem-based organizations.

 For more on the building see:

The Harlem Parish (with many more photos of the interior)

The Church of St. Thomas the Apostle

Next to the rectory of the closed church of St. Stephen on East 29th Street.

(Below) The same shrine in 2015.