As “Making all Things New” continues its course, one decisive fact has emerged. The New York Times (of course) first highlighted it. It has been long known to every Catholic here remotely in touch with reality. Now Cardinal Dolan restates it in his inimitable way:

However, a perceptive journalist laser-beamed the real shortage: “Seems like you have a shortage of people!” Bingo!

She was right! Simply put, our people aren’t coming anymore. True, some of the shortage in older parishes is due to the fact that our folks have moved. The people that do come are as committed as ever. But, we still have to admit our numbers of committed, consistent churchgoers are down…. Still, though, we have to admit, our people aren’t coming anymore. On any given Sunday, the stats tell us that only somewhere between 15 and 28% of our folks show up!1)

That indeed is the problem. If only 15% of the Catholics regularly practice their religion, the financial resources contributed to the Archdiocese will shrink: everything from the Cardinal’s Appeal to the Sunday collection to two dollars in the box for a votive light. The number of vocations to the priesthood will correspondingly suffer. As time goes on, parishes will see fewer weddings, baptisms and funerals as well. And this decline has been going on for decades.

The Cardinal now concedes that the New York Archdiocese, taken as whole, has NOT suffered a crisis of “demographic change” – at least in the normal sense of that term. New York is no Buffalo or even Boston. The number of Catholics in the Archdiocese has even risen over the years. New York City remains the economic center of the country, even of the world. The crisis of the Archdiocese is not the result of impersonal forces over which the clergy could not be expected to have any control. Indeed, the Cardinal asks:

So, now our sacred responsibility is to win our people back! That’s what Pope Saint John Paul II called the new evangelization! That means asking why they no longer come, how we can attract them back, and what we’ve done wrong, a strategy Pope Francis is encouraging.
As one savvy priest remarked, “Let’s stop closing parishes and start filling them up!” 1)

Regrettably, this candid diagnosis does not appear to raise any questions in the Cardinal’s mind concerning the current policies of the Archdiocese. So, the Cardinal explains that 220 Parochial schools were reduced to 160 because 70% of Catholic parents “chose not to send their children to our excellent schools.” Were these parents asked their views of the “excellent” schools? A parish scheduled to be closed  under Making All Things New (probably Our Lady of Peace) had a petition signed by 3,000 supporting keeping the parish open, yet only 500 people attended mass each Sunday. If 1,500 had attended, according to the Cardinal, the decision to close “would not have been foreseen“ (=taken?). Thus, the decision to close appears as a punishment for the failure of the parishioners to participate. And, at the end of the day, the Cardinal offers once again only the existing, materialistic solution of downsizing:

“fewer, but now stronger, fuller, more vibrant parishes, better served by more available priests, in new communities no longer straitjacketed by demands of maintenance of huge, half-empty, in-need-of-repairs buildings….” 2)

For a second view of the situation, we have Father George Rutler, Pastor of two churches originally scheduled for closure that have survived the cut (for now). He identifies much more frankly and precisely the nature of the problems:

I think there’s a great deal of dishonesty and denial on the part of some people who engaged in the fantasy that we were entering a new springtime of the faith. The aggiornamento of Vatican II was supposed to bring in tons more people; it did just the opposite. So long as people refuse to admit there were mistakes made a generation ago — in catechesis, liturgy, addressing the real problems of secularism — they’re never going to make any real reform.

The primary fact is that most Catholics aren’t practicing the faith. Mass attendance in New York is about 12%. You’ve had about a 50% drop since the Second Vatican Council. Nobody will address that. They’ll acknowledge the fact, but they will not address the fact that there were some serious mistakes made in the last generation.

And solutions?

The first thing is to be realistic, to address the real problems in our society, secularity, instead of trying to be everything to everyone. It’s a great danger just to want to be friendly and liked instead of challenging in a prophetic way the errors of society and caving into them. St. Paul said to Timothy, “Do not be a man-pleaser.” This doesn’t mean going around and hitting people over the heads with bibles, but it does mean being Catholic, right across the board…. We’ve had a secularization of religious life. Women’s religious orders are collapsing, have collapsed. Nothing was done a generation ago to discipline the orders, and to truly reform them. The ones that are growing are the ones who are faithful to their founders’ charisms.

And a primary evangelical tool of the Church is the liturgy, and wherever the liturgy is banal, you will not have vocations. In many places it’s not a problem of heresy, it’s just a matter of sloth. People are just stuck in the 1970s. Young people don’t want to go to a church where there’s a septuagenarian playing very bad Jesuit hymns from the 1960s. 3)

I hesitate to criticize a priest who has made such unique contributions to Catholic life here over the last  decades, but I cannot follow Fr. Rutler’s further observations:

I think there’s a real problem of reaction from evangelization, a real problem of nostalgia rather than tradition on the part of many people as far as the Extraordinary Form is concerned…

The priest facing the people (in the ordinary Form – SC) becomes a kind of circular community lacking in transcendence. But a lot of people who embrace the Extraordinary Form run that risk too. They become ghettoized. It’s rather significant that in so many cases — I can’t cite numbers — but usually it’s been my experience that where the Extraordinary Form is, usually you have a static group of people, and you don’t have outreach for bringing others in.

So just using the Extraordinary Form is not the solution.4)

I would agree that JUST using the Extraordinary Form is not the solution. But clearly, given the average age of the current EF congregations, how can there be nowadays any question of “nostalgia?” Furthermore, it does seem a little peculiar for Fr. Rutler to talk about a lack of “outreach for bringing others in” when a Traditionalist community under his administration (Holy Innocents) just concluded a highly successful world-wide “outreach” campaign. A community, I should add, that has only been in existence since the end of 2007 as a predominately lay apostolate.

So the critical fact of Catholicism in this region – that only some 15% of Catholics regularly practice their faith – is finally being admitted. Both our writers agree that some questions may legitimately be asked of the current practices of the Archdiocese. We certainly welcome that! And Fr. Rutler identifies that a critical review of the policies and program of “Vatican II” must play a role in any real revival of Catholicism. Yet even he hesitates at the “Traditionalist” component of the solution. It seems it will take more patient work – or “outreach,” to use that term of Catholicspeak – on the part of Traditionalists before their indispensable contribution to the recovery can be more widely acknowledged even by those who should be our allies.

1) Cardinal Timothy Dolan, The Best Is Yet to Come (November 11, 2014) http://cardinaldolan.org/index.php/the-best-is-yet-to-come/
2) http://cardinaldolan.org/index.php/the-best-is-yet-to-come/
3) Burger, John; Beyond the New York Church Closings, Alateia (November 3, 2014) http://www.aleteia.org/en/religion/article/behind-the-new-york-church-closings-5852002303082496?page=1
4) http://www.aleteia.org/en/religion/article/behind-the-new-york-church-closings-5852002303082496?page=2

Report: Fr.Leonard Villa assigned there!

Confirmed!

We told you it was a little premature to break out the champagne. We have now have a report that St Thomas More parish on the Upper East Side will be closed and its parishioners “invited” to join St Ignatius Loyola and its Jesuits:

“Gasps were heard and tears were seen when Pastor Kevin Madigan informed parishioners this past Sunday at each Mass that their church was likely to close next August. It was a stunning blow for the vibrant church community that had received numerous assurances that St. Thomas More Catholic Church was safe.

St. Thomas More serves a highly affluent family community on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with regular Masses, as well as with many informative and noteworthy events. The church is free of debt and its operations are financially sound.”

From the Huffington Post.

In a way it is poetic justice, for St. Thomas More was established to offer an alternative to Jesuit dominance of the wealthiest neighborhood of New York City. I doubt anyone could have imagined that such a parish would be closed. but it continues a emerging pattern of the liquidation of smaller parishes (Our Lady of Peace, St. Elizabeth of Hungary have been announced; others have been rumored) in some quite well-to-do areas of the city. Areas with correspondingly high real estate values….

(above) The main window of the apse of St. Thomas More church.

From First Things. Wherein we hear where the founder has gone… and some of the costs of the enterprise.

Source #1

Source #2

Msgr. Joseph Ambrosio will be having a modified version of the 40 Hours Devotion at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Newark, New Jersey this coming weekend (Friday, Nov. 21st through Sunday, Nov. 23rd).

The hours of exposition are as follows:

Friday, Nov. 21 – 8:30am to 7pm
Saturday, Nov. 22 – 8:30am to 5:30pm (Traditional Mass for Peace at 3pm)
Sunday, Nov. 23 – 12pm to 5pm.

N. B.  A group will be meeting on Saturday Nov. 22 at Holy Innocents Church in Manhattan at 10 am to go as a group via NJ Transit to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Newark.  If you are interested, please contact Eddy Toribo, ejtm83@aol.com.

The parents of Regina Pacis Academy and its sister school, Cardinal Newman Academy, have organized an online auction to raise much-needed funds for the school.  Regina Pacis Academy is an independent Catholic school located in Norwalk, CT.  This year, by permission of Bishop Caggiano, the school has moved into the beautiful school building of St. Mary’s Church, Norwalk, CT.

If you could find it in your heart to support this school, you may go online to see many items to bid on in an online auction that culminates next Sunday, November 23, during the school’s fund-raising dinner.

Link to online auction

The school receives no funds from any parish or the diocese.  The parents raise all of the funds through a reasonable tuition and various fund-raisers including this one, the most important of the year.

According to the school’s website:

“Regina Pacis and Cardinal Newman Academies offer students their patrimony in the Catholic Faith within a classical education. Students learn to do all things well, aware that they act in the presence of their heavenly Father. Our teachers demonstrate their witness to the Faith, their dedication to education and their affection for their pupils. The reception of the Sacraments sustains the life of the schools.”

Students assemble for a daily morning assembly.

Father Paul Check, the school’s chaplain, leads students, faculty, and parents in the Angelus, the first of many prayers offered during the school day.

Last Spring, the school was honored by a visit of Bishop Frank Caggiano.  Here he is visiting a Latin class of Cardinal Newman Academy high school students.  The schools instruct all students in Latin, from Kindergarten through twelfth grade.

All students participate in weekly schola practice, receiving instruction in Gregorian Chant. The students chant the divine office once a month, sing at week-day school Masses and on occasion at  Sunday Extraordinary Form Solemn Masses.  Students, parents, and faculty have the opportunity to attend daily Mass before the start of each school day—and most do.  Regular Confession is also available to the students.

Last Spring his Eminence Cardinal Burke visited the school, offered a special Mass, and addressed students, parents and faculty.

Regina Pacis Academy is proud of its yearly drama productions.  Last spring’s play was Robin Hood.

A scene from the beloved annual Christmas pageant

Student Schola performs at the Christmas pageant.

Another annual event that is treasured at the school is the May crowning.

Here is a link to the online auction, where you can provide support for the school.

Online Auction

Regina Pacis Academy website

The Roman Forum has been asked by a number of friends attending the Summer Symposium from June 29th through July 10th, 2015 to organize an eleven-day “introductory tour” of the Greek world preceding the gathering in Gardone Riviera. Fr. Richard Munkelt and Dr. John Rao will be the tour guides. There is space for twelve more participants.
At the moment, the planned date of departure is June 14th, arriving the next morning in Athens. After four nights in Athens (from which we will be visiting Delphi and other surrounding sites of importance), we will tour Epidaurus, Mycenae, Sparta/Mystra, and Monemvasia by means of private vans. From Monemvasia we will travel north by boat, staying a night on the island of Hydra, passing Salamis to spend one last evening in the Athens area. Participants may leave for home from Athens on June 26th, but those taking part in the Summer Symposium will fly to Venice. Tour guests attending the Summer Symposium will remain two nights in Venice, proceeding to Gardone on June 28th.
There will be one lecture each day, either by Fr. Munkelt or Dr. Rao, dealing with Greek History and Culture, as well as Early and Byzantine Christian Civilization.
Exact cost is not yet known. The estimated  amount is c. $2,300 (possibly less).   NB: Participants’ travel costs to and from Greece are not included.

Anyone interested in taking part should contact the Forum at this address/email by January 15th, 2014.

Roman Forum Greece Tour
An Introduction to the Hellenic World
11 Carmine St., Apt. 2C
New York, NY 10014
drjcrao@aol.com

Announcing an international conference on liturgical formation in the light of the new evangelization, Sacra Liturgia USA 2015, to take place in New York City from June 1 to 4, 2015.  This conference continues the work of Sacra Lituriga 2013, in Rome, organized by Bishop Rey of Frejus-Toulon.  Speakers will include Raymond Cardinal Burke, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, and our own Father Richard Cipolla.  More information will be posted as it becomes available.