Masters of Science in Church Management

Professional management, financial reporting and development are critical to ensuring our parishes and programs endure for years to come. That’s why the Archdiocese of New York (ADNY) has partnered with Villanova University to create a custom Master’s of Science in Church Management (MSCM) degree for students residing in the 10 counties of the archdiocese.The ADNY MSCM is an innovative, two-year graduate business program in the fundamentals of church and ministry management in a Catholic context. It’s ideal for those interested in serving as parish or cluster business managers, ministry managers, church-related social service managers and more. The 30-credit curriculum is designed for already-busy professionals and intended to be completed in 24 months, part-time. It is delivered entirely online. If you are interested in strengthening your ability to contribute to the Church’s mission in an increasingly complex world – and you want the convenience of an online program – then the ADNY MSCM is for you.

From the Villanova Course Catalogue:

MSCM 8625 – Organizational Management 

Description:

Parish as a system; group processes; organizational processes; shared problem solving and decision-making; change management; team building; conflict management; utilizing advisory councils; roles of communication and social skills; conducting meetings; communication networks. (My italics)

All skills so typical of the day-to-day administration of the Roman Catholic Church. And since it’s at Villanova maybe Massimo Faggioli can be a guest lecturer in the program.

SOURCE

Friday, January 1 is the the Octave of Christmas, the Feast of the Circumcision, a holy day of obligation. The following churches will offer traditional Masses.

Octave of Christmas, January 1

Connecticut

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT,  9:30 am, Solemn Mass, 11:15 am, Missa Cantata. Please call the church to register.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Bridgeport, 7 am, 8:15 am and 10:15 am, Missa Cantata. Please call the church to register.

St. Stanislaus Church, New Haven, CT, Low Mass, 2 pm

St. Joseph Church, Danbury, CT, Missa Cantata, 11:30 am

Sacred Heart, Georgetown, CT,  6 pm Missa Cantata

New York

Holy Innocents Church, New York, NY, New Year’s Eve Dec. 31, 11:30 pm; Jan. 1, low Mass 9 am; Missa Cantata 10:30 am.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, New York, NY, 10:30 am, Missa Canata

St. Agnes Church, New York, NY, 10:30 am

Immaculate Conception, Sleepy Hollow, NY, 2 pm Low Mass (only one Mass today)

St. Josaphat, Bayside, NY, 9:30 am.

St. Rocco, Glen Cove, NY, 11:30 am

St. Matthew, Dix Hills, NY, 10:30 am

St. Michael (SSPX), Farmingville, NY, 9 am and 7:30 pm followed by all-night adoration

St. Peter, Amagansett, 12 pm.

New Jersey

St. Paul the Apostle, Jersey City, 2 pm.

Epiphany, January 6

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT, 8 am.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, New York, NY, 7:45 am, low Mass, 7 pm Solemn Mass, procession with the Christ child, blessing and distribution of chalk

St. Paul the Apostle, Jersey City, 7 pm

On January 8, 2021at 7:30 PM at the parish of St . Joshaphat in Queens, a mass will be celebrated in honor or Our Lady of Prompt Succor. This is surely one of the more unusual Marian devotions – outside of New Orleans and Louisiana, that is. The Ursuline Academy of New Orleans provides this description:

THE STATUE OF OLPS

In 1809, Mother St. Andre’ in New Orleans wrote to her cousin, Mother St. Michel Gensoul, in France.  She asked her cousin to join her and bring more Ursuline sisters to New Orleans.  Mother St. Michel first had to ask for permission to leave France, so she prayed to Mary for a “quick and favorable” answer from the Pope.  Mother St. Michel promised to have a statue made honoring Mary under the title of Our Lady of Prompt Succor if her prayer was answered quickly.  (“Succor” comes from the word meaning  “to help” in Latin.) 

Even though France was at war and Pope Pius VII held captive, her letter reached the Pope in Rome.  A miraculously speedy permission was granted within five weeks!  As soon as she received permission, Mother St. Michel had the special wooden statue of Mary carved and covered in gold.  She and the other sisters brought it with them to New Orleans in 1810.  Her flowing robes were carefully carved so that she would appear to be moving quickly. 

SWEETHEART

In 1812, a terrible fire was burning the city.  The nuns placed a small statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor in the Chartres Street convent window facing the fire.  “Our Lady of Prompt Succor, hasten to help us or we are lost,” they prayed.  The wind then suddenly changed direction, and the convent was saved!  This small statue is known as “Sweetheart” and can be seen in the Ursuline Chapel on State Street. 

BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

In 1815, in the Battle of New Orleans, 10,000 British troops led by General Packenham attacked New Orleans.  The greatly outnumbered American soldiers, led by General Andrew Jackson, fought from behind bales of cotton.  Their families were afraid and fled to the chapel of the Ursuline nuns.  They prayed all through the night for a victory.

During Mass on the morning of January 8, 1815, news arrived that the British had been miraculously defeated.  The Americans suffered very few casualties!  General Jackson offered his thanks to Reverend Mother St. Marie Olivier de Vezin in person at the convent.  The Ursuline nuns promised to celebrate a Mass each year on January 8^th to thank Our Lady of Prompt Succor for her intercession. 

CORONATION

Pope Leo XIII approved the crowning of the “Miraculous Statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor” in 1894.  The faithful and appreciative citizens of New Orleans (and beyond) donated their gold and precious jewelry for the making of these crowns.  The coronation of Baby Jesus and Our Lady took place in a beautiful ceremony led by Archbishop Janssens on November 10, 1895 at the Dauphine Street chapel. 

Our Lady of Prompt Succor is the patroness of New Orleans and Louisiana, and she is special to all of us at Ursuline.  Because she guides us to Jesus and intercedes for us, she is like “a bright star on life’s vast ocean.”

Canon Jean-Marie Moreau, curently in residence in Sulphur, Louisiana, sends us the photos below. He regrets not being able to be present for the January 8 Mass!

Our Lady of Prompt Succor – with Andrew Jackson and the battle of New Orleans!

Third Mass of Christmas today at the Oratory of Sts Cyrill and Methodius, Bridgeport CT (Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest).

By Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla 

 The feast of St. Thomas the Apostle has been kept on this day, December 21 from at least the ninth century.  It was moved to July 3, the day mentioned by St. Jerome as the date of his martyrdom in India, by those who revised the calendar after the Second Vatican Council.  They did this so that his feast would not interrupt the major ferial days of Advent leading to Christmas.  They wanted to tidy things up, calendar wise.  They considered the feast of St. Thomas in later Advent out of place.  Their liturgical rationalism made them blind to the wonderful interruption of late Advent made possible by the feast of this apostle.

Today’s Gospel is the famous Gospel of “doubting Thomas”.  This Gospel is heard also on the Sunday after Easter, Low Sunday.  Heard on Low Sunday it makes sense as the continuing narrative of Jesus’ resurrection and appearances to the disciples. But it also makes sense in a discontinuous way today, four days before the celebration of the birth of Christ.  The celebration of Christmas makes sense only if one believes that the baby in the manger is the Incarnate Lord, the God-man, who came to save the world from sin and eternal death.  In an increasingly secularized world, this is either deliberately erased by a celebration of general good feeling and bonhomie. Or it is forgotten by Christians whose faith has been watered down lest they be uncomfortable in thinking about the real link between the wood of the manger and the wood of the Cross. 

It is precisely today’s Gospel that makes us remember the full meaning of the great feast which we are about to celebrate.  Thomas is not present when the Lord appears to his disciple in the Upper Room where they have locked themselves in in fear that they might be next to be killed. When they tell Thomas that they have seen the Lord, he says: “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”  Of course!– seeing is believing. 

The next day when Jesus appears again, Thomas is there, and the Resurrected Lord challenges Thomas to faith: “Peace be to you. Then He saith to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see My hands, and bring hither thy hand, and put it into My side; and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered and said to Him: ‘ My Lord, and my God.’ Jesus saith to him: Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.”  St. Thomas’ words are the words of faith: “My Lord and my God!”.  There have been very many paintings depicting this scene with Thomas touching Jesus’ wounds.  But the Gospel clearly does not mention at all this act of touching, for the question at hand is seeing and believing.  That is clear from Jesus words that follow St. Thomas profession of faith: “Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed. “

Those words:  they describe you and me, we who have not seen and believe, and that is the essence of faith.  That is why this feast is a wonderful jolt in late Advent, for it reminds us of who the baby born in the manger is and therefore reminds us of what faith in Christ means not only in general or doctrinally, but personally, for you and me.  

This year, a year of sorrow and woe, a year that challenges our faith, when on Christmas we place the bambino into the manger in the creche in our homes,  and when we gaze at the Sacred Host at the elevation at Holy Mass, let us utter those words of St. Thomas:  “My Lord and my God!”

Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla 

(Window from Harrisburg Cathedral, Pennsylvania)

For all fans of Sigrid Undset’s medieval novels, a beautiful photographic essay by Micah Mattix on the wooden churches of Norway – in The American Conservative.

Norway’s Stave Churches

At 6 am, Father John Ringley offered a solemn Rorate Mass at St. Mary’s Norwalk, CT. Deacon Stephen Genovese served as deacon and Mr. John Pia was sub-deacon.

As this calamitous year approaches its end, we would like to recall briefly several of those who died in the last 12 months. Their lives illustrate the amazing possibilities of Traditional Christian life in the radically secular city that is New York. One of these people was Archdeacon John DeMeis.

One fine day in the early 1980’s, when I was attending NYU law school, I had wandered over to the northern reaches of Mulberry Street.  In those years that neighborhood was semi-deserted even in the middle of the day and featured mainly garages and “social clubs.” I passed by an open door on the ground floor of a small building next to old St. Patrick’s church and peered in. Someone inside noticed me and invited me inside – it turned out to be a Byzantine church: St. Michaels’ Russian Catholic chapel! And the man extending the invitation was John DeMeis. From that day on,  for many years, I regularly attended St. Michael’s. But for John’s welcome, I never would have thought of entering there. I owed to him my main experiences of the Eastern liturgy – at that time, in the pre-indult days, the only fully satisfactory alternative for those seeking Traditional Christian worship. Wasn’t  John’s welcoming gesture a real, if modest, example of that  “evangelizing” that is so endlessly discussed nowadays ?

John DeMeis, a retired transit cop,  had deep connections with both the Eastern rite and one of the most obscure and unusual Catholic parishes of Manhattan. Our Lady of Grace chapel, a storefront church on Stanton Street,  was the spiritual home in New York City of the Italo-Albanians.  This people had migrated to southern Italy and Sicily in the 15^th century, fleeing Turkish oppression. In their new home they preserved the Byzantine rite, celebrated in Greek, but stayed in communion with Rome. Quite a few of them after 1870 joined the mass emigration from Southern Italy to the New World. 

Our Lady of Grace chapel was founded in 1906 by Fr. Ciro Pinnola, an Italo-Albanian priest from near Palermo (another source says the foundation was in 1904). He was married, a practice that was beeing repressed in in the other Catholic Byzantine communities in the U.S. In 1909, the chapel’s congregation numbered 400.

Regrettably, when Fr. Pinnola died in 1946, the parish ended as well. But John DeMeis and others labored to keep its memory alive. Even today, the Our Lady of Grace Italo-Greek Catholic Mission and Society preserves the memory of this community.  John DeMeis was devoted to this society – he later became its archivist and historian. The society (“OLOGS”!)  publishes a newsletter for the Italo-Albanian community several times a year and sponsors events as well. 

After 1990 I moved out of New York and returned to St Michael’s only now and then, on special occasions. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw John DeMeis ever again in person after that year. Tragically,  St. Michael’s Russian Catholic chapel, once a significant initiative of the Archdiocese of New York,  was evicted in 2019 from the home they had occupied since 1936. The space is currently occupied by a souvenir shop. The community, however, has continued – for the last two years they have been hosted by the parish of St. Vincent Ferrer and St.  Catherine of Siena(at St. Catherine’s).

I had the impression that John had moved on as well – deepening more and more his commitment to Eastern or Greek Catholicism. He was ordained deacon in 1990 and archdeacon in 1997. For many years he served as a chaplain to the police department.

John DeMeis died on August 19^th of this year at the age of 90. He is survived by his beloved wife Rita and their children and grandchildren. May Archdeacon John’s memory be eternal!

(Photo courtesy of Kristina DeMeis)

Our Lady of Grace Society Facebook page.