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)

A full congregation at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, was treated to a beautiful Solemn Vespers with Seven Copes for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on Thursday evening. (Nearby, the San Gennaro Festival was in full swing.) Very Reverend Enrique Salvo was the celebrant, assisted by six priests. Assisting in choir was the Most Rev. Pierre-André Dumas, Bishop of Anse-à-Veau and Miragoâne, numerous clergy and members of the Order of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. The Basilica Schola Cantorum and Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Jared Lamenzo, performed the sumptious Solemn Vespers K 339 of Mozart and other pieces by Mozart, Bellini and Cherubini. Our Society was a sponsor of this ceremony.

This past Saturday, August 12, Fr. Leo Camurati, O.P. celebrated a Missa Cantata in honor of Blessed Michael McGiveny in the Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in Raritan, NJ.

Diana Calvario shared these pictures:

His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke celebrated a Solemn Pontifical Mass in honor of Our Lady of She-Shan for Catholics in China yesterday evening at the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist in Stamford, CT. The event was organized by the Cardinal Kung Foundation. A reception followed in the piazza after the Mass.

In Greenwich, CT, the weekly Saturday 8 am Missa Cantata has been moved from St. Roch’s Church to a room in the school building next door. To find the Mass, enter the door facing St. Roch Avenue. The Mass is upstairs, down the hall.

The Traditional Mass and processions for the Feast of Corpus Christi celebrated around the tri-state area.

I have aleady written of the sombre, little-known funerary chapels of Paris. They commemorate the victims of political crimes and tragic accidents between 1789 and 1896. To these I must add Notre-Dame-des-Otages, dedicated to the memory of the hostages massacred by the Communards (the Commune was a proto-Communist movement) in 1871. Unlike the other chapels, however, the current church was built in the twentieth century and completed in 1938. It later became a fully functioning parish church.

Notre-Dame-des-Otages is situated in the Belleville district, far from the Parisian centers of business and tourism. Traditionally a poor area, I am told it has recently been “enjoying” gentrification. The church is located in the Rue Haxo, where most of the executions took place on May 26, 1871. The current structure replced a series of prior chapels dating back to 1889.

Located on a nondescript street, the facade does not make a very strong impression. The interior is one of the few attempts to employ the Art Deco style in ecclesiastical architecture. Although pleasant and interesting, I regret to say it reminded me somewhat of a subway station. An inscription encircles the main altar:

Sanguis Martyrum Semen Christianorum

This, and references on two plaques commemorating the dead of the wo world wars, are strangely enough the only allusions I could find to the rather unusual dedication of this church.

I gather the commemoration of these martyrs later became somewhat of a political embarrassment for the Church. After all, hadn’t thousands of Communards been massacred by the government in crushing their uprising? And aren’t communists some of the best Christians, as Dorothy Day and later Pope Francis have claimed? In any case it was only in this year 2023 that five of the martyrs were beatified, on Saturday, April 22nd in the church of Saint Sulpice (which is currently functioning as the Cathedral of Paris). Henri Planchat, Ladislas Radigue, Polycarpe Tuffier, Marcellin Rouchouze et Frézial Tardieu will be commemorated on May 26. But there were many more martyrs under the Commune between May 24 and 27 in 1871 – the most prominent of all being Archbishop Georges Darboy of Paris. He had been a resolute opponent of Ultramontanism – does this still count against him?

From the Gospel of today – St. John v. 46 to 59:

“…Jesus autem abscondit se, et exivit de templo.”

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