Staten Island Catholic

Buddhist-Catholic or Catholic Buddhist

2012-01-13T12:31:00.000-05:00

There was an interesting obituary in the Advance recently, which exemplifies the utter lack of strength and fidelity in our local Catholic church. An old woman died who, although a graduate of a Catholic high school and Catholic college, is described as "a member of Manhattan’s Jewel Heart Buddhist Center and the Gurdjieff Foundation, where she taught classes in meditation." She was not described as belonging to any parish, yet she was given a funeral Mass at St. Peters church, with burial at St. Peter's cemetery. It is possible that on her deathbed she could have disavowed her heathen and New Age beliefs, but if that were the case then why would those affiliations be trumpeted in her obituary? I guess the message that Monsignor Dorney is sending is that one can be a Buddhist and Catholic at the same time. Does our church stand for anything anymore? Why do these hollow men who lead us seem to be desperately attempting to remake our Church into a syncretic and universalist sect? Why are our priests so scared of being Catholic?

Reconciliation Monday

2011-12-27T17:10:00.000-05:00

The Monday before Christmas was designated Reconciliation Monday by the Archdiocese. The Archbishop requested that every parish offer the Sacrament from 2 to 8pm that day. The Advance reported as a fact that every parish would do so on that day. I went looking to partake of Confession that evening after work but encountered at least 3 dark, locked-up parishes before finally finding one that was interested in saving souls. Are Staten Island priests too lazy to cooperate with the Archbishop's initiative? I just don't get it. Even the one parish I found that was open made no mention of the fact on their outdoor bulletin board. I guess it's yet another Catholic event open only to those "in the know".

Assorted news items

2011-11-20T01:46:00.000-05:00

Jesuit retreat house Mt. Manresa celebrated its 100th anniversary with a gala ball at Snug Harbor. Neither the word "Jesus" nor "Catholic" or even "Christian" appear anywhere in the article. Instead, the retreat house's own executive director, Fred Herron, lauded Mt. Manresa for being a "spirituality center" that "the community has turned to during critical moments." The Chairman of the Board, Rich Nolan, proudly pointed out how Mt. Manresa suspended its normal operations after 9/11 and became a haven for rescue workers. He emphasized the spirituality center's dedication to "the community." The article described Mt. Manresa as a place that offers "retreats" for all classes of people, including the divorced, alcoholics and drug addicts. The attendees were quoted several more times in this small article pledging their undying dedication to the sacrosanct, but vaguely delineated "community." One unnamed person summed up Mt. Manresa's mission by saying that it offered the community the opportunity to "look within to see the direction your life has taken and the choices you face in the future." I've never read such mealy-mouthed drivel in my life. If this were an Evangelical Protestant celebration, I'm sure they would have taken the opportunity to praise Jesus Christ or promote their own church. In this case, these professional Catholics were either too embarrassed by their nominal faith to mention it, or too inexperienced in evangelization to know how to bring it up.

The Archdiocese of New York partnered with Radio City Music Hall in sponsoring an essay contest on the theme "What the Blessings of Christmas Mean to Me." An eighth-grader at Sacred Heart won the contest with a (to me) maudlin list of nice things that happen to him throughout the year. The pastor of the school proudly pointed out how it "... just shows the kind of education that children get in Catholic schools." I'm not sure if he meant that a Catholic education enabled him to write an essay of this quality (Good Lord, how bad must the public schools be!) or if we should be impressed by the sentiment expressed in the essay, which seems devoid of Christian content (although I concede that the Advance may have left that part out). In either case, the student body of Sacred Heart certainly got an education when a scantily-clad Rockette showgirl came to the school to present the prize to the boy, which doesn't seem all that appropriate to me. I hate to seem like I'm picking on a kid, but I wonder what he's being taught in school and at church when the the only thing he can express about the birth of our Savior is this "raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens" kind of sentimentality.

St. Theresa's and St. Peter's churches are participating in an interfaith Thanksgiving celebration this week at the Victory Blvd. mosque. Who will they be thanking ? The Triune Christian God? Allah? Jehovah? Krishna? Also, the annual interfaith seder at St. Theresa's is already scheduled for next year! I'm still advocating for that interfaith Good Friday service so the Jews can hear about how Jesus died to save mankind. They tell us that the whole point of these dramas is mutual understanding, yet it seems all we do is go to Passover seders and listen to rabbis lecture us. Well, maybe one of these years they'll consider my suggestion!

Wagner College, a Lutheran school, recently put on a production of "“Catholic School Girls”, an offensive portrayal of nuns in the 1960s. The play prompted a minor kerfuffle in the letters section of the Advance. One lady, who claimed she is a "certified Catechist with the Catholic Church", wholeheartedly supported the play which, she claimed, accurately portrayed the Church during a time of "change in Church doctrine". The assertion by this "certified Catechist" that the Church changes its doctrines was refuted in a subsequent letter by a very well-informed and intelligent Catholic lady.

Goodbye St. Peter's, Hello P.S. 59!

2011-11-07T17:08:00.000-05:00

After receiving a death sentence back in February, it has now been announced that St. Peter's church will be leasing the former St. Peter's Girls High School to the city for use as a 372 seat public elementary school. Details of the plan are sketchy, but it will cost the taxpayers a mere $5.69 million dollars to convert the school into a school (does that mean chiseling out the stone crosses, whitewashing religious pictures and other assorted iconoclasm?). It's already being predicted by those "in the know" that the school will inevitably expand to encompass grades 6 through 8 and that, because of low enrollment in the plethora of area public schools, P.S. 59 will be made into a "special" school...most likely meaning violent and disturbed children. Does the perfidy of Monsignor Dorney know no bounds? It wasn't enough that his lack of leadership helped destroy the school and the parish, but now he stabs the neighborhood in the back by parking yet another problematic institution in their backyard. The property value of all those beautiful old homes and ritzy condos are about to drop precipitously.

Moore Catholic marks golden anniversary

2011-11-07T14:51:00.000-05:00

What do they have to celebrate? I know that the administrators, teachers and students can be proud of having a well-funded and well-regarded private school, if not an academically exceptional one. What I mean to ask is what do Catholics have to celebrate about the continued existence of Moore Catholic High School? The school does have a Catholic identity, but what does that really mean? There are probably crucifixes in the classrooms, they most likely still attend a communal Mass at our Lady of Pity on big occasions, and students are required to take a "religion" class. Certainly there is a Catholic tinge to the place, but what does that really amount to? Does the occasional sight of a priest and Catholic iconography impute holiness? In my day the students at Moore had a reputation for being thuggish, materialist and rebellious. There were saints there who persevered, but the school wasn't exactly known for strong devotion. (If only the general public knew about the large body of practicing Satanists and the witchcraft books in the school library!). By all impressions, things really haven't changed and seem to have gotten somewhat worse with these over-privileged, entitled, destructive goons. Now that they have a football team to worship, they have descended into new depths of sports idolatry. At best, one can say that Moore is better than the public schools, but let's not kid ourselves that it is in any sense a real Catholic school, whose primary mission is to prepare a Catholic soul for adult life. I don't see any evidence that it is anything more than a private school "in the Catholic tradition", as the motto goes these days. How is that something to celebrate?

Wrestling, Islam, and Goodfellas

Anecdote (last paragraph)

No prom for pranksters at Staten Island's Moore Catholic High School

Neighbors of Staten Island's Moore Catholic High School tired of music blaring from field

Staten Island Priest Has Huge Collection of Statues, Relics

2011-07-29T08:28:00.000-04:00

Catholic New York ran this story about a Staten Island priest and his unusual hobby. According to the article, he owns between 300 to 400 statues, from life-size to less than a foot tall, and an unspecified number of relics, presumably numbering in the hundreds as well. (There seems to be a theme lately with statues and Staten Island priests.) The article goes on to say although "...he can’t cite an amount, his collection has cost him a great deal. 'This is where my money goes', he said." Well, although a priest is entitled to do with his money what he wants, and it's not a bad thing to like statues or relics, I'm not sure this should have been a newspaper story. I think it kind of makes him and, by extension, the priesthood, look a little weird. Will a man who is publicly known for hoarding hundreds of little statues (figurines) be the type of person who inspires young men to consider the priesthood? It might endear him to crazy Italian grandmothers from Bensonhurst, but what about everyone else? I think people might consider him eccentric at best, genuinely strange at worst. I think it's time to start divesting himself of his hoarded treasures. The little statues might make good Communion or Confirmation presents. The larger ones could enliven his bare, Vatican II church. I don't know what church law says about relics, but surely it's not proper for one man to keep hundreds of them locked in his drawer. Collecting can be fun, but after a while, collections start to own us, rather than the other way around. The Son of Man had no place to lay his head, let alone the storage space to hold some vast collection of pretty things.

Where are the excommunications?

2011-07-06T11:36:00.002-04:00

In response to the new gay "marriage" law in New York, Bishop DiMarzio of the Brooklyn Diocese (which also includes Queens) has instructed his Catholic schools not to honor any of the politicians who voted for it or accept any honors from them, nor to allow them to speak at the schools. At least Bishop DiMarzio is showing some outrage over this abomination, and taking some action, although it is by no means enough. What is he going to do about the Catholic legislators from his diocese who voted for this bill? I'm not familiar with these politicians but I noticed that a lot of them had Italian, Irish and Spanish surnames, so presumably at least some of them purport to be Catholic. Why aren't they excommunicated already?

Similarly, in our own diocese of New York, Archbishop Dolan's utterly passive response to this attack on the Faith has been nothing short of scandalous. He did nothing to try to stop the bill, and now that it has passed he's done even less. According to my count, there are 43 State Assemblymen from within the New York Archdiocese (see the wikipedia list from District 60 through 103). Of those assemblymen, there were 10 votes against the bill, 32 for it and 1 absence. Of those 32 "yes" votes, I see a lot of names that imply a Catholic background: Rodriguez, Kavanagh, O'Donnell, Benedetto, Spano, Cahill, et al. Of our Staten Island representatives, Lou Tobacco and Nicole Maliotakis voted against gay marriage. Michael Cusick and the openly gay Matthew Titone voted for it. Where are the excommunications?

In the New York State Senate there are, by my count, 20 legislators from the New York Diocese (see the wikipedia list from District 23 through 42). Of those, only 5 voted against gay marriage and 15 voted for it. Of the 15 who voted for it, I see names like Rivera, Serrano, Carlucci, Bonacic, et al. Of our 2 Staten Island Senators, Diane Savino voted for gay marriage and Andrew Lanza voted against it (although his cowardly delay only served to help the opposition). Where are the excommunications?

As for Governor Cuomo, although he works and temporarily resides in Albany (under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the gay-friendly, dissident Bishop Howard Hubbard), his official abode is outside of Mt. Kisco in Westchester County, which places him under the spiritual authority of Archbishop Dolan. Where is the excommunication, Archbishop?

The fact is that gay marriage couldn't have passed without the support of men and women who claim affinity with and membership in the Catholic Church. That testifies to the complete failure of the Church over the past 40 or 50 years to inculcate the Faith in its young members and to use its authority to correct those men and women who publicly defy the Church's teachings. These people don't believe in the Catholic Faith. Why do we tolerate them in our Church?

If the bishops refuse to do what is needed, why don't our priests do something? Write, preach, speak out! If any of these pagans ever go to Mass and presume to receive the Eucharist, I believe Canon Law # 915 states that those who persist in manifest grave sin are not allowed to receive Communion. Priests have the discretion to refuse Communion to anyone they choose. I've read of priests refusing the Host to people who were chewing gum, or who were drunk, or who were wearing some sort of obscene T-shirt. Why couldn't an individual priest, acting on his own authority, refuse the Body of Christ to a notorious and unrepentant public sinner such as Andrew Cuomo or one of his legislative myrmidons? Please, somebody DO SOMETHING!

Welcome to Babylon

2011-07-04T10:04:00.000-04:00

At the midnight hour on June 24th, 114 cowardly and perverse Albany politicians (many of them Catholic) decided to legalize "homosexual marriage" in the State of New York. This is a sickening abomination. Our commentary here will be limited to the disgraceful complicity of the Catholic Church hierarchy in New York. Yes, complicity. What else does one call it when the so-called opposition effectively laid down and surrendered without doing anything but issuing a few token words of disapproval? There was no reason to expect any help from gay-friendly bishops like Hubbard in Albany and Clark in Rochester, who probably raised a glass in triumph when they heard the news, but we had reason to expect better of Archbishop Dolan. As the head of the nation's largest diocese and the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, his lack of leadership in this fight has been a scandal of historical proportions. So far as I am able to discern, his actions in defense of marriage consisted of writing a blog post and giving an interview to a radio show in Albany. Even the New York Times commented on the Church's impotent response to this history-making attack on Christian civilization:

"It was befuddling to gay-rights advocates: The Catholic Church, arguably the only institution with the authority and reach to derail same-sex marriage, seemed to shrink from the fight.

As the marriage bill hurtled toward a vote, the head of the church in New York, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, left town to lead a meeting of bishops in Seattle. He did not travel to Albany or deliver a major speech in the final days of the session. And when he did issue a strongly worded critique of the legislation — he called it “immoral” and an “ominous threat” — it was over the phone to an Albany-area radio show.

Inside the Capitol, where a photograph of Mr. Cuomo shaking hands with Archbishop Dolan hangs in the governor’s private office, the low-key approach did not seem accidental. Mr. Cuomo had taken pains to blunt the church’s opposition.

When he learned that church leaders had objected to the language of the marriage legislation, he invited its lawyers to the Capitol to vent their frustration.

Mr. Cuomo even spoke to Archbishop Dolan about the push for same-sex marriage, emphasizing his respect and affection for the religious leader. An adviser described the governor’s message to Archbishop Dolan this way: “I have to do what I have to do. But your support over all is very important to me.”

By the time a Catholic bishop from Brooklyn traveled to Albany last week to tell undecided senators that passing same-sex marriage “is not in keeping with the will of their people,” it was clear the church had been outmaneuvered by the highly organized same-sex marriage coalition, with its sprawling field team and, especially, its Wall Street donors.

“In many ways,” acknowledged Dennis Poust, of the New York State Catholic Conference, “we were outgunned. That is a lot to overcome.”

Rumor has it that the bishop limited himself to lobbying for protective language in the bill to shield religious institutions from prosecution if they refuse to conduct gay marriages. How much more humiliation can we take? How much more craven and cowardly can these bishops become? Rather than begging for crumbs from the table of Caesar, Archbishop Dolan and the New York Church should have positively welcomed the chance for martyrdom. He should have thrown defiance at these dogs and dared them to do their worst. Let them confiscate St. Patrick's Cathedral and turn it into a gay re-education center. Let them abolish the Catholic schools. Let them throw our bishops into prison. We can get other bishops. We can build other Cathedrals when we win back this state. Let them persecute us for His name's sake. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Better to go back into the catacombs than compromise with evil. Better to lose life and lucre than make common cause with Babylon and continue to die this slow, lingering lukewarm death. Better to die than deny the Faith.

Now that it is all done, writs of excommunication should be issuing forth from chanceries all over the state. This bill could not have passed without the votes of many, many Catholics, including that of Governor Andrew Cuomo. However, the bishops will do nothing. If they don't excommunicate people like Cuomo for advancing policies that kill unborn children, they're not going to do anything about a mere gay marriage vote. Most of the bishops are cowards at best, and deep cover enemies of the Church at worst. However, the Holy Spirit changes hearts, so let us pray that He revives the souls of the whited sepulchers in mitres, who have done so much damage to the Faith, by acts of both omission and commission.

Gay marriage almost a reality in New York. Silence from Catholic leaders.

2011-06-15T11:55:00.001-04:00

The New York State legislature is one vote away from making same sex "marriage" legal in New York, and apparently it's all come down to our esteemed Staten Island Senator Andrew Lanza. The Republican, Catholic Lanza (a graduate of Farrell high school) would like us to believe that he is so ignorant and uninformed that he has made it to 47 years of age without forming an opinion on the subject. I hope that this indecisiveness is just a ruse to mollify the liberals, so that after he votes against gay marriage, he can point to his long deliberation on the matter as proof of his judiciousness and fair-minded consideration. However, being from such an overwhelmingly Republican and conservative district as he has, I would have thought Lanza would have slightly more backbone.

In any case, my reason for writing on the subject is to point out yet again the complete and utter silence on this monumental moral debate from our supposed Catholic leaders on Staten Island. Archbishop Dolan did nothing but write a blog post, but even that is more than our co-vicars Finn and Dorney have done. Perhaps they might eventually get around to writing a letter to the Advance, like they did with the Nativity controversy in December, but that's not a given. I heard a prayer intention for Monsignor Dorney at Mass a few weeks ago, so I suppose he's not feeling well, not that he ever did anything for the Church while he was in the bloom of health. With these kinds of leaders, it is such an absolute embarrassment to be a Catholic on Staten Island these days.

I understand that not every priest is going to be a dynamo of action and a leader of men. But shouldn't our leadership positions be filled by men of such caliber? There are roles for shy and retiring priests in monasteries and theological seminaries and helping positions all through the Church, where they can pray, think, write, work and contemplate the Divinity all day long. Heck, Saint Andre Bessette the miracle worker was nothing but a porter, janitor and all-around handyman, and he became a great saint. But listless and passive personalities shouldn't be made pastors and bishops and "co-vicars" of hundreds of thousands of souls, when what is required of such positions are aggressive leaders who are prepared to fearlessly teach and proclaim the Gospel and engage in moral combat with the world. What do we get instead? A couple of men whose most vigorous action in living memory was to try to sell the St. Margaret Mary convent to the Moslems.The evangelicals are standing up for morality. Why can't the Catholics?

Well, it's leaderless resistance in the Catholic Church again. Please write and call Senator Lanza and tell him to vote no for gay marriage.

Fiddling while Rome burns

2011-06-13T18:46:00.000-04:00

I've written about the Little Italy parish before. This was the place whose hot-shot, do-nothing pastor made a big announcement about cutting a Sunday Mass and limiting Confession time because of a lack of attendees. This parish is back in the news for dedicating yet another hand-carved, $10,000 wooden statue, this time to St. Michael, the patron saint of police. The cops were just trying to keep up with the firemen, since they had gotten their own $10,000 statue of St. Florian the previous year.

Good Lord! $10,000 for a statue??? In the first place, that is a ridiculous price. How true is the old saying that a fool and his money are soon parted. Salesmen of magic beans will be flocking to Rosebank in droves now. You can find many similar looking statues on the internet for much lower than that, and the artist who made these is definitely no Michelangelo. The mass produced stuff looks even better. In these hard economic times, when we just had multiple Catholic schools close down on Staten Island, these statues are an insult.

Second, although this effort was headed by a layman, John Sollazzo, it was initiated by the pastor of the parish. This is his priority?? Artistic frivolities? What a silly waste of time and money. If this priest were a leader, he'd tell his flock to spend their time evangelizing. Then he'd tell them to spend their money helping deserving Catholic kids go to the parish's high-priced elementary school. So many of our pastors seemed to have missed their calling as ham comedians or interior decorators. What an embarrassment.

Rapture ready on Staten Island

2011-05-27T08:33:00.000-04:00

Staten Island had its part in the story of radio pastor Harold Camping's latest failed end-of-the-world prediction. A 60 year old local man, Robert Fitzgerald, spent $140,000 of his own money buying bus and subway ads proclaiming Camping's prediction that the Rapture would occur on May 21st. This retired bachelor from Port Richmond is also the author of a self-published book on the subject called, "The Doomsday Code". The story received some national play, and significant local attention, due to the large amount of his personal fortune spent on this project. On May 21st, he had the faith to go to Times Square and, in front of crowds and TV cameras, proclaim his beliefs and wait to be beamed up. Of course, no Rapture occurred, so he admitted his disappointment and went home, to general mockery.

Our interest in this is thus: With all this attention focused on Camping's prediction, and the local man's notoriety, you would have thought the Staten Island churches would have seized upon this as a golden "teachable moment". It would have given us the opportunity to speak out about the abominable Rapture fallacy, and explain that it is a modern doctrine, popularized in America in the 19th century and that the vast majority of Christians don't believe in it and have never believed in it. It could have been pointed out that it is un-Scriptural, illogical and amoral. Since so many of the non-denominational churches focus so heavily on the Rapture and the End Times, that would have been a very effective strike against one of the major tenets of these heterodox faiths, which have stolen so many Catholics. Instead, I didn't see one letter in the Advance from a Catholic priest, nor did the Advance even quote a priest in its many stories on this subject. I imagine that if a priest had been contacted, he would simply have responded with a shrug, since they are as ignorant of the religious systems that have emptied their pews as they are uninterested in combating them.

Secondly, Mr. Fitzpatrick is a graduate of St. Peter's Boys school and a fallen away Catholic. He lives in Port Richmond and is listed in the phone book. Has any priest tried to reach out to him and lead him home? He is obviously a very troubled and confused man. He needs help and love. I should hope that the Church is trying to bring back this very prominent lost sheep, but knowing how things are...I can only hope.

Staten Island parishes: come into the 21st century...

2011-05-12T10:35:00.000-04:00

ParishSoft, a website which sells software packages for liturgical churches (Catholic, Orthodox and Episcopal), is having a conference on Staten Island on June 9th. I'm not sure if they do websites, but I would assume that's part of the package. So many Staten Island parishes are in dire need of something like this. Take a look at some of the parish links on the right hand side of the page here. A few parish websites are very good. They are attractive, easy to navigate, and "sell" their parish very well. One notable examples is St. Clare's. Most of the others are ugly as sin, antiquated, rarely updated, bizarrely designed, and confusing. They look like they were designed around 1997, the Stone Age of the Internet. And even worse are the parishes that don't even have websites. Parishesonline.com, a parishsoft product, lists the basic info (address and Mass times) for all U.S. parishes, so at least there is that bare-bones web presence for derelict parishes. In this day and age, a public organization seems unprofessional and disreputable without a professional web presence. The good news is that I don't think your average parish needs to spend a lot of money with this company in order to put up a web site. If you have any parishioners under 30, they should be able to put up a website with ease and at minimal cost. (Doteasy.com provides free web hosting. Domain name registration costs about $15, sometimes cheaper). If you don't have any parishioners under 30, or think that you don't need to communicate with the world through modern forms of communication, then maybe your perspective is in need of updating and your priorities need to be reviewed.

More indifferentism from the Catholic "leadership" on Staten Island

2011-04-15T11:49:00.000-04:00

The pastor at St. Teresa's recently hosted his annual indifferentism-fest at his church, in which Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Hindus and Unitarians took part in a Jewish Seder and then exchanged awards and mutual congratulations. The pastor called this gathering a "little Assisi," referring to the vile, pantheistic worship service Pope John Paul II originated in 1986, in which Buddhist idols were placed on the altar of St. Francis' shrine, and the successor of Peter prayed with animists, witch doctors and other assorted pagans. Indeed, this spiritually destructive ceremony at St. Teresa's was a miniature of the abomination of desolation at Assisi. I wonder how many souls were damaged or lost by this secular humanist ritual. How many children and adults came away with the impression that there is no difference between religions, that all paths lead to God, that there's really no reason to be Catholic, besides a sentimental attachment to a cultural heritage? This isn't what Father O'Hara was ordained to do. The Great Commission of Christ was to convert the entire world to Faith in Him, not to promote feel-good indifferentism and to bring Him down to a level of false equality with false gods. After all, Jesus said that no one comes to the Father except through Him. That's a pretty clear and unambiguous statement. What exactly does Father O'Hara do to convert these people to the True Faith, and thus save their souls? I think we all know the answer to that question.

As an aside, I wonder again why this event always involves us participating in a Jewish seder? Why don't we invite the Jews to a Stations of the Cross, or to Easter Sunday Mass, if the purpose of this organization is mutual understanding?

No Latin Mass on Staten Island

2011-04-14T12:46:00.001-04:00

After reading a lot recently about Vatican II and the suppression of the old Latin Mass, I looked into attending one on Staten Island. I wasn't exactly surprised that, according to the Latin Mass NYC website, there are no regularly or even irregularly scheduled Latin Masses on Staten Island. Sacred Heart hosts one every so often, usually around 3:30 on Sunday afternoon. The most recent one took place in the Spring of 2010. I wasn't able to attend that one, but according to a commentator on this website, there was a good crowd at a 2007 Latin Mass there, although mostly older. I remember back in the late 90s, Holy Family would have a Latin Mass in the chapel (not in the main church!) once a month, but that seems to have fallen into desuetude. There seems to be a website for the Staten Island chapter of the New York Latin Liturgy Association, but there is no useful information on it.

Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu propio, Summorum Pontificum, ordered pastors to provide the Latin Mass if a stable group of parishioners requested it. Under the Novus Ordo regime, it has never been easier to have access to the Latin Mass. Yet Staten Islanders either have no desire for it, no knowledge of it, or are so passive, timid and lacking in initiative that they are unable to actually do anything to bring it about. Whatever the reason, it's a sad situation that the "Mass of the Ages" is nowhere to be found, or seemingly wanted, on our "Holy Island".

Catholic Church Shopping, Part XII: Gone in 25 minutes

2011-04-14T01:17:00.001-04:00

The next stop on the ecclesiastical safari was a beautiful, Shore Shore parish that was founded in 1922. (By the way, I'm from the old school Staten Island where everything south of the expressway was "South Shore". I guess the newcomers would call this area "East Shore"). It has a pretty interesting history. Before the present church was constructed in 1928, the parishioners first worshipped in a Revolutionary War-era tavern, and then in a wooden chapel that was transported from the old Vanderbilt estate (present day Miller field). At some point in those early days, the founding pastor even erected a huge mission church a mile and a half away, to accommodate the seaside vacationers. They still hold one Mass there every Sunday.

I attended a 1:15 Mass at the main church and was surprised to see it packed with around 150 people. Hardly anyone genuflected when they entered their pews and absolutely no one sang along with the female organist, who sat in the choir loft. However, they didn't seem to display the infectious boredom usually associated with such lack of piety. The pastor of this church is a young Indian priest, but the priest who said this Mass was a short, stocky, White man. He was attended by two altar boys (shocker) and a young, male lector in a suit (another shocker). The sound system was excellent, and the priest had a very articulate and commanding voice. I eagerly looked forward to hearing his sermon.

He seemed to be tearing through the Mass at a manic pace. At one point, as he was saying a prayer over the gifts, he gave the universal "hurry up" gesture with his upraised hands to the men with the collection baskets. Needless to say he used the short form of the Gospel reading about the resurrection of Lazarus. By this point he was starting to sound like a cattle auctioneer. His sermon had a good and sensible message. He said that even though there are only 2 weeks left until Easter, we can still have a "good Lent" if we manage to break at least one bad habit and resurrect our souls like Jesus resurrected the dead Lazarus. I liked listening to this priest. He was obviously intelligent and well spoken. However, he wrapped up his sermon in about 40 seconds. I kid you not. Literally 40 seconds. He then resumed his frantic race to set a new world's record for fastest Mass. I don't know if he succeeded, but he managed to get it done in 25 minutes, which is the fastest time I've ever witnessed for a Sunday service.

This was a disgrace and a shame. I can't think of a single good reason that a priest would have for treating the Mass, and the congregation, so disrespectfully. Do any other religions or Christian denominations have to endure a clergy that is so bored with worship that they race to get it over with as quickly as possible? Do any other faiths have a laity that is so docile and indifferent as to tolerate this? Or maybe the laity wants it like that? I know that I've often heard a priest praised because he keeps his sermons short. If that's our attitude, then why do we go to Mass? To fulfill a Sunday obligation?...as if anyone under 60 still remembered or adhered to such old-fashioned ideas. There's certainly no sense of community and certainly no edification or inspiration, and polls show that most Catholics don't believe in the Real Presence anymore. So why do they go?

Year of the Mass: Break out the felt cloth and the Elmer's glue! Helloooo New Springtime!

2011-04-11T14:52:00.000-04:00

Back at the end of 2010, in response to the blatant abandonment of the Church by the vast majority of American Catholics, Archbishop Dolan wrote a column in Catholic New York calling for 2011 to be the Year of the Mass: a diocesan effort to celebrate, promote and appreciate the divine splendor and significance of the Mass. He then called together 4 liturgical experts to implement this plan, and warned us that we were going to be hearing "a lot about the Mass from your parish priests, your deacons, catechists, and from me." Three and a half months later, we are seeing the first fruits of this endeavor: a 1970s-ish banner you can hang on your church to encourage people to go to Mass. It says, "Come to Mass in the Lord's House on the Lord's Day". The 3x6 ones are $130 and the 3x9 ones are $160. I've seen them prominently displayed outside most of the churches on Staten Island, including the ones that are on the verge of death. I hope they've all assigned extra ushers to deal with the returning hordes. Because as we know, there's nothing that changes the hearts of cynical, spiritually indifferent, fallen away Catholics like warm, fuzzy banners.

I'm glad that the banners contain a specific call to action (come to Mass), as most Catholic sermons don't even have that bare minimum. But one of the basic rules in advertising is to "sell the sizzle, not the steak". These pathetic banners don't sell the sizzle or the steak. It doesn't resort to branding strategies, by making the Mass or the Catholic faith seem at all desirable, on a subconscious level. Nor does it employ a direct response type of pitch to appeal to the conscious intellect and explain why exactly going to Mass is beneficial to you. It just contains a slogan and a none-too-inspiring picture, and expects us to fanatically obey its directive, like some Communist youth cadre. I hope they can come up with something better than this.

They should have taken a lesson from the men at NYPRIEST, who seem to know how to present an idea (and an idea that's a really tough sell, at that) in the most attractive and convincing light. See this video for a contrast in marketing techniques. Oh, I almost forgot that the NY diocese's Year of the Mass also offers web site banner ads and bulletin inserts from the USCCB. Well, I guess it's a lot easier than actually having to talk to people.

Catholic Church Shopping, Part XI: Asymmetry

2011-03-20T09:01:00.001-04:00

I next visited another North Shore church of modernist design, which was only completed in 1990, although the parish has been around since 1966. It is not to my taste. The stained glass windows are cartoonishly juvenile, the seating pattern is sort of a half circle, and the shape of the church is- how should I put this?-something that could only have originated in the nightmares of some deranged mathematician.

A lady with a beautiful voice led the singing from the pulpit. No one sang. They all just sat there like dumb brutes and did not even pick up a missalette. It was embarrassing. The priest, who was assisted by two altar girls, was a thin, neat looking fellow, who did a good job of almost hiding his nervousness. I'm not sure what his name was, but there is a priest at this parish w ho is a filmmaker. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the priest I heard, as he wove a very detailed and vivid story through his homily about how he ordered Chinese duck for dinner on the first Friday of Lent. Rather than actually suffer a little for Christ, he decided to eat it anyway, figuring God would forgive him. The next day he took a hike along a river, and had his conscience twinged by the beautiful sight of a group of ducks swimming in the water. Then they flew away and pooped on his head, in an act of revenge I suppose. He then clumsily segued from that into a story of a lady he visits in the nursing home, who cannot speak. He then wrapped up these two stories by explaining that fasting during Lent is actually good for us.

This was an abysmal sermon, allayed somewhat by the good quality of the sound system, mirabile dictu. What was remarkable about this Mass was what he did after the reading of the Mass intentions. One of his altar girls brought up a handful of post it notes from the back of the church. On them were written the special intentions of the parishioners. The priest read each and every one of them aloud. There must have been 50, and they took about 10 minutes to read. "For my brother's operation, pray for him", "that my daughter will become the girl she one was", "that my son will find a job", "that my graddaughter will break her addiction", "that my husband will pass his tests", "for my grandson, who has Lyme Disease", "for my son, who has cancer", etc. I was taken aback and blown away. These were real-life concerns of real people. This was truth in all its rawness. People were hurting and longing and hoping. They needed help. They needed prayer. After having to endure so much phoniness in church for so many years, so much forced participation, fake communalism, ersatz music, so many asinine and out-of-touch sermons...this much raw authenticity almost brought tears to my eyes.

The rest of the Mass was unremarkable, except for the fact that as soon as Communion began, a mad rush to parking lot ensued.

Catholic Church Shopping, Part X: Ho-hum

2011-03-20T08:55:00.002-04:00

The next stop on the tour was a place that, at least at one time, was an Italian National Parish. Its church is a modernist design, built in 1988. Some of the stained glass windows aspired to representational art, as opposed to cartoonish or abstract figures, but their Jesus looked like he came off the cover of a 1970s record album. With his long hair, world-weary gaze, and slightly ticked off expression, He looked like all He wanted to do was pack up His guitar and His dog, move to Colorado and sing Gordon Lightfoot songs. I went to a 9:00 Mass and was shocked to see about 200 people present. Not all of them were senior citizens, although the preponderance were grey-heads.

The organist was a large, bald fellow who resembled Kevin Malone from "The Office". He had a wonderful, deep singing voice, although the songs were none too memorable. He was accompanied by a large choir of tween-age girls, who had to wear extremely ugly lime-green choir gowns. In a first for any choir I've ever known, they seem to have been too shy to actually sing loudly. Even though they had a microphone and a large group, they whispered their lyrics almost to the point of inaudibility. That was too bad, since they would have sounded beautiful. Hardly anyone in the congregation sang, or even pretended to pick up a missalette.

The priest was Filipino. I wasn't surprised, since in my experience the junior priests and the foreign priests with bad accents are usually given the early morning and late afternoon Masses, so the pastor can focus all his energy on the main performance: 10:30 Mass or thereabouts. Actually, whenever a pastor has a subordinate to order around, he usually has him say most of the Masses, no matter how bad his accent. In any case, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that this foreign priest was actually quite well spoken. He made a point to enunciate his words, so that I probably understood a good 80%. That day's Gospel was the one in which Jesus says that the people who only say "Lord, Lord" will not enter his kingdom, but only those who do the will of God the Father. The priest gave a solid, if unspectacular, sermon.

He did challenge us to examine our lives and question whether our works are pleasing to the Lord, but still, for such a very important topic, I felt that he could have went a little deeper and gotten a bit more specific. After all, most of us are spiritually complacent. If we ever deign to examine our souls, we will almost invariably pronounce them up to snuff. Conscience has a way of being rationalized away. That is when it is the priest's duty to say, "Have you broken the First Commandment, in this, that, and the other specific? Have you broken the Second Commandment, etc. Ok, you've kept all the Commandments? Then you've done nothing more than your duty! Do you proudly proclaim your Faith in Christ, in word and deed? Do you evangelize? Do you give to the poor? Do you volunteer? How about the Beatitudes? How about the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy?" Even the Pope says that priests need to start preaching on "uncomfortable" topics. I almost feel that discomfort needs to be the primary emotion conveyed, to ensure that an effective sermon was given. We are in barbaric spiritual warfare in this life, but we are fat, lazy and ignorant. However, what we usually hear from the pulpit is supportive and congratulatory.

The priest could also have pointed out that this Gospel passage is a devastating proof text against Protestant Sola Fide. Still, I was pleased to hear a priest at least say something of substance for a change.

By the way, this church's history is intertwined with that of the adjacent Catholic high school, which was once Staten Island's premier co-ed institution of secondary ed. In recent years, this school has built a professional looking football field and really ramped up its worship of the sports idol. To that end, I think it has made an effort to recruit star athletes, whether Catholic or not. (One of its star football players, who was killed in a drunken driving accident last year, had his funeral service in a nearby Pentecostal megachurch.) I found myself taking the bus with these sterling examples of Catholic students last year and listened to them curse and fight and disgrace themselves with obscene discussions the entire trip. To top it off, when they came to their stop, they called the female bus driver an f***ing b***h for no reason whatsoever.

Positive news: Priests for Life save Baby Joseph

2011-03-14T10:40:00.000-04:00

Father Frank Pavone of Staten Island-based Priests for Life has managed to bring Baby Joseph out of the Canadian death clinic and bring him to a U.S. hospital where doctors still abide by the Hippocratic oath. Way to go, Father Pavone!

The Gymnasium Transformed; or, Our Lady of White Flight; or, St. Slovenly's; or The Gravedigger of St. Peter's

2011-03-14T04:33:00.004-04:00

I've written before about the South Shore parish which recently knocked down its old church and built an eight million dollar mega-monstrosity in its place. I paid them a visit a few weeks ago, and it was as disturbing and disorienting as the architectural drawings promised.

The first thing that strikes the observer is the overwhelming, callous massiveness of the thing. Situated near an intersection in a quiet, suburban neighborhood, it seems to revel in its gaudy, unnecessary obtrusiveness. If they just wanted to increase the seating capacity, they didn't have to build something like this. They didn't have to erect this giant, brick middle finger, which seems to be flipping off passing motorists, the other Catholic parishes on SI, and the world in general, while boasting about its large endowments, mad skilz, and uncommon prowess with the ladies, like some stereotypically hyperbolic rapper. Indeed, if this thing were a person, it would be wearing a velour track suit, a diamond-encrusted American-flag belt buckle, a hubcap-sized gold medallion around his neck, puffing on a giant cigar and blowing smoke in your face. That attitude might appeal to the My Cousin Vinny demographic on the South Shore, but it doesn't say much for the taste or judgment of the people who approved this construction. It achieves size without grandeur.

The architects claim that it was built in the "architectural tradition of basilicas, with a high main nave and lower side naves or transepts". If that was their intention, I think they failed miserably (and I think the pretensions of the pastor are evident in the church's description as a "basilica", but that's a separate subject). As can be seen in the next picture, the transepts are hardly much lower than the nave, despite how it looks from the outside. One simply feels like they are in a big round room.

Besides which, why bother to claim this spurious continuity with the architectural tradition when what you've created is such an obvious dislocation from that tradition? From its cartoonish and abstract stained glass windows (some of which were designed by a local Episcopalian priest, who, by the by, lives with another Episcopalian priest in a magnificent, landmarked Victorian mansion on a North Shore hilltop), to its felt banners, its amorphous shape, its light and feminine atmosphere, to its enthronement of the priest/M.C. at the center of the sanctuary area with the subsequent banishment of the Tabernacle to the side, this church is the embodiment of "the spirit of Vatican II", and a rejection of the past. A Pentecostal megachurch? Maybe. A Brooklyn reception hall? Ok. But a basilica? Nah. Only in the most superficial way could it be interpreted as part of the Catholic architectural heritage. Can anyone conceive of Good Friday happening here?

Notice the throne. Notice the Tabernacle. Who are we worshipping?

Whatever its architectural shortcomings, the place was packed when I attended. There must have been 500 people there, dressed in their Sunday worst, as they did on my first visit. I even saw some people in shorts, due to the unseasonably warm weather. It was kind of sad to think of all the suffering North Shore parishes and Catholic schools, like St. Peter's, when this place was engorged with parishioners and surplus cash. Not too many decades ago the South Shore was a sparsely populated backwater, where a congregation of this size would have been unthinkable. But then Black faces began moving into traditionally White North Shore neighborhoods and everyone fled below the Expressway as fast as they could. The exodus from Brooklyn added impetus to the population shift. So, the Church must follow its flock.

The priest was a tall, thin man, who almost looked like he could be a brother of the pastor. The Gospel that day was from Matthew, where Jesus told the disciples that even a person who lusted after a woman in his heart had committed adultery, or that a person who called his brother a fool will be liable to Gehenna, etc. It is a very important and deep Gospel reading. He chose to read the short form of the Gospel. As a digression I must ask WHY we even have short forms of Scripture readings. Unless one is saying Mass on a sinking ship, I see no reason to even make truncating the Word of God an option. Are we so eager to get out of Mass 30 seconds faster? Are we scared of the politically incorrect parts of the Bible? I just started a petition on this subject: http://www.petitiononline.com/noshtfrm/petition.html. Please sign it if you agree with me. Anyway...

The priest started off by insulting Catholic girls. He spoke of a class he taught, in which a girl mentioned that she reads the Bible with her boyfriend. The priest quipped, "Obviously she wasn't a Catholic girl!". The audience guffawed. I thought that joke was distasteful. The rest of his sermon was ok. It was obvious he fancied himself a good speaker. Maybe that was why he shortened the Gospel. However, while he did a good job of rephrasing Jesus' words in contemporary terms, and made some incisive points, he said nothing, to my mind, that touched our individual consciences or spurred us to holier life or more transcendent understanding. If we sin simply by our thoughts and words, then shouldn't we confess the evil intentions we allow our minds to entertain? How do we bring our thoughts under control and consecrate our lives so as to achieve greater holiness? Hmm? Well, I guess we got some jokes instead.

A large choir, situated to the right of the altar, supplied the music. It was led by a nicely-dressed young cantor, who had to gesture to the seemingly confused choir about when to sit, stand or sing. Again, another architectural gesture to the zeitgeist. Choirs used to be hidden in the older churches, and for a good reason. This is not a concert. The music is an aid to prayer, not the main attraction.

I apologize for the length of this posting, but there was so much to comment on here. A few more interesting items: this is a "tithing" parish. I have never heard that concept used in the Catholic Church. There's a lot of activity in this church. There is a Miraculous Medal Novena, volunteer snow shovelers for senior citizens, Eucharistic Adoration, RCIA, a 50+ club, a bereavement ministry, contemporary choir, separated and divorced ministry, book group, Adult Faith Formation group, a singles group, and a group for children and teens coping with loss or a painful family situation. On the iffy side, one can "memorialize" some of the Episcopalian priest's icons for only $10,000. There is a prayer group (probably charismatic) who meet for prayers of "praise, singing, centering and intercessory prayer". Centering prayer is a well-known New Age meditation practice from the 1970s, characteristics of which were condemned by Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope.

Lenten news

2011-03-05T10:41:00.004-05:00

Ash Wednesday is next week. It is the day which begins a cold and rainy season of moral introspection and penitence; it is one of the two High Holy Days for A&P (ashes and palms) Catholics, when the missing millions come back to church to score a freebie; and is is the kick-off of an important season of ecumenical silliness for Catholic clergy, when they will pray with Jews for the coming of the Messiah, and invite Protestant sects into our churches to teach us what the Gospel really says. The following paragraphs detail some of the Ash Wednesday events that have been advertised in the Advance. Some seem worthwhile; some seem outrageous. Judge for yourselves. But one note to my Cultural Catholic readers- remember to get your ashes as late in the day as possible, so as to avoid the embarrassment of publicly acknowledging your allegiance to Christ and membership in His Church.

Father Benedict Groeschel will come to St. Francis seminary (sorry- St. Francis Center for Spirituality, guffaw) on Ash Wednesday. Starting at 6:30, Confession will be heard, followed by a Mass and distribution of ashes. The article says that Mass will be followed by a "conference" on the subject of "The Call of the Gospel". A free-will offering is requested.
The disobedient, and apparently entrepreneurial, Jesuits of Mt. Manresa are also sponsoring an Ash Wednesday event. Entitled "An Ash Wednesday Evening of Reflection", for a mere $30 per person, you will get dinner, Mass, Confession and they'll throw in some ashes for free. By contrast, Alberto's on Bay St. is only charging $29.95 for 2 entrees, a bottle of wine and dessert for two. You can also purchase a $50 gift certificate there for only $25. Wow!
The disobedient Jesuits at Mt. Manresa are also sponsoring Taize prayer programs every Friday during Lent. Taize was the French "ecumenical" monastery founded by a Protestant, Roger Schutz, in 1940. While Taize is currently headed by a Roman Catholic layman, and "Brother" Roger did receive Communion from the hands of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, he never did renounce Protestant theology or formally join the Catholic Church. He apparently wanted Taize to be a bridge between the Catholic and Protestant worlds, sort of how the Anglican church sees itself to be. So, while there may be nothing overtly offensive in a Taize prayer program, surely the disobedient Jesuits at Mt. Manresa could have found something indisputably and genuinely Catholic to offer during Lent. Perhaps the Spiritual Exercises by the Dead White Male who founded their order?
Our Lady of Mount Carmel - St. Benedicta R. C. Church will be hosting an ecumenical prayer service every Thursday evening during Lent. Four Protestant ministers and one disobedient Jesuit from Mt. Manresa are scheduled to speak.
A confusing article here, from the usually incomprehensible SI Advance. St. John's Episcopal and St. Mary's Catholic church (whose school is being closed down) are cooperating on ecumenical events this Lenten season. I think it says they will be having a joint Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner, Ash Wednesday distribution of ashes, and Bible studies. Can ecumenism save a dying parish? Is the answer to declining membership more doctrinal compromise?
St. Rita's is kicking off the Lenten season with an opera performance of Verdi's Requiem. I suppose that one could make a tenuous connection between the Requiem and a Catholic memento mori, but surely there could have been something better to do. I'm sure most people will come simply to hear the beautiful music.
For a free-will offering, you can attend a Lectio Divina on March 16th, at the St. Francis Center for Spirituality, which will include Confession, Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, prayer and Scripture reading.
Also, Melissa Lanza, author of the book "In His Presence," will speak on Tuesday and also March 22 and 29 at Mother Franciska House of Prayer . The suggested donation is $10. I could buy the book on amazon.com for $12.29.

Captain Fantastic at St. Clare's

2011-03-04T11:40:00.000-05:00

I received an email from St. Clare's announcing that the St. Clare Musical Theatre is putting on a show this Saturday at 8PM. They will be performing Elton John's Greatest Hits. This is kind of an odd and inappropriate choice for a Catholic grade school, in my opinion, as Sir Elton is an open homosexual and one of the world's most prominent gay activists. His tunes are kind of catchy, in a flowery, queenly way, but are very much associated with gay culture and lifestyle. I think of the movie Hamlet 2, in which the fictional Gay Men's Chorus of Tucson did an extraordinary rendition of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." So, while his songs might not be so offensive, I have to wonder why he was chosen, and if perhaps there might have been a better choice, considering the venue.

We're now on Facebook

2011-02-18T16:54:00.002-05:00

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Staten-Island-Catholic/130599767009370

Another one bites the dust. R.I.P. St. Peter's

2011-02-16T02:24:00.001-05:00

Despite giving us reason to believe that there would be no more school closings, the Archdiocese just announced that it will be closing the venerable St. Peter's Girls High School in June and moving the elementary school to the shuttered St. Paul's school complex on Clinton Avenue. The high school girls would be integrated into Notre Dame and Moore. According to the Archdiocese, the high school would only have a mere 95 students in the Fall, thus making it financially unviable. Students and alumni are understandably devastated. So, in the latest humiliation for Staten Island Catholics, the Mother Church of the island, our oldest parish, in our most populous and urban neighborhood, can't even keep their school open.

Predictably, many people are blaming the Archdiocese, but the culprits are endless. For one thing, rising costs have to be a factor. Tuition is $6900 a year. That is far, far above what my Catholic school tuition cost when I was in school, even adjusted for inflation. I can't imagine anyone who could afford that, especially if you have more than one child. In addition, since the Vatican II church's own lax theology has produced a vocations crisis, lay teachers are a considerable expense, as they do insist on being paid. On the other hand, St. Peter's Boys school has over 600 students, a brand new facility and is by all accounts flourishing. Are North Shore Catholic parents mysteriously having a preponderance of boys for some reason? Or perhaps it has to do with the fact that the boys' school is located in leafy Livingston, while the girls' school is located in gritty New Brighton. It's a fact that what was once a largely Irish/Italian/Polish neighborhood back in the 60s is now predominantly black and Hispanic. And as we know, most of us Catholic "ethnics" aren't too big on integration and multiculturalism. That doesn't reflect too well on our Faith, but it's a fact we must acknowledge- the school's base has fled from the area and is not too inclined to send their kids to school there.

Or maybe the problem begins at the top. I don't usually mention people by name here, but any pseudonyms would be transparent in this case. What exactly has Monsignor Dorney done to increase students and parishioners? I don't know much about him except that he has been pastor of St. Peter's for as long as I can remember, and his magnificent church seems to be crumbling about his ears, literally and figuratively. His sermons are dreary and demotivational in the extreme, delivered in a tone resembling that of Ferris Bueller's teacher on Ambien, although I can tell he was well educated. He does not seem to be in good health. He is the co-vicar of Staten Island, whatever that means. He has displayed no leadership over the island's Catholics as far as I can tell. He has officiated at funeral Masses for at least one pro-abortion politician I can recall. He supported the sale of the Margaret Mary convent to the Moslem American Society. I really can't see the man doing anything to evangelize, promote or defend the Faith.

I attended a recent Mass at St. Peter's. A glance at the bulletin showed that there was literally nothing going on in the biggest church and most historically prestigious parish on Staten Island. There were some announcements for events in other churches. Monsignor Dorney was listed as the only priest in residence. There were a mere 50 people at the 12:00 Mass. Surprisingly, there were a few young people. The music was performed by a middle-aged guitarist who I believe plays in a band at Adobe Blues on weekends. With his 1840s style grey mutton chops, he resembles a mild mannered school teacher, but I can testify that this guy can seriously rock out on a Saturday night. He toned it down for Mass, and played the usual syrupy 70s tunes that seem positively out of place in this Gothic style cathedral. Monsignor Dorney gave a sermon about Gandhi. It was excruciating. All in all, it was just a sad and depressing experience. Seeing how the church is run, it is no wonder to me that the school is in the shape it's in.

Wrestling, Islam, and Goodfellas

2011-02-16T01:40:00.000-05:00

A few items of interest: of all the things we Catholics need, Mount Manresa feels that they are serving us best by hosting a $30 per person talk by a Fordham professor about the glories of Islam. Wasn't Mount Manresa founded to be a retreat house for the spiritual edification of Catholics, not an event venue for the Staten Island Council of Churches?

Moore Catholic high school is again hosting a major "pro"-wrestling extravaganza in its school gym. Tickets are between $20 to $30. This is embarrassing. Has Moore ever hosted a Catholic speaker? Or a vocations meet and greet with religious orders? Anything related to the Faith? I don't think so, but they roll out the red carpet every year for these vulgar barbarians and the slack-jawed, bloodthirsty morons who pay to see them pretend to fight.

Not a Staten Island story, but it bears on the state of our Church. Catholic New York ran an announcement for a talk at a Manhattan church. For $15, you will get to watch the movie "Goodfellas" in a Catholic church, and then get to hear a talk by a Fordham professor. Enough said.

I'm ok, you're ok. Why be Catholic?

2011-02-08T01:18:00.003-05:00

The annual Christian Unity jamboree was recently held at St. Teresa's. I'm sorry I wasn't able to attend. I'm sure it would have been as amusing and frustrating as the last one I witnessed. The usual suspects got together to sing "We Shall Overcome" and honor Martin Luther King. So....this might be an awkward question, but how's that unity thing coming? Are the non-Catholic participants any closer to recognizing their errors and re-uniting with Christ's Church? Or were they confirmed in their beliefs by the general promotion of "tolerance", "diversity" and "co-existence"? Let us remember that this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was begun with the intention of having Catholics pray for the eventual conversion of all Christians to Catholicism. However, like so much in the Church, the original meaning was subverted and the idea was co-opted by the liberal destroyers. The next disgraceful surrender on the calendar should be Father O'Hara's annual Passover seder.

St. Patrick and Female Impersonation

2011-02-07T23:36:00.004-05:00

Staten Island gays will "honor" St. Patrick's Day with a dinner dance at the once-respectable Cichon Post American Legion in Port Richmond. The event will be hosted by female impersonator Lady Clover Honey. Not really a Catholic issue, but I wonder how the Cichon family, one of whom is the pastor of Assumption/St. Paul's, feels about this.

Gospel here! Get your Gospel here! Red Hot Gospel! Only $10!

2011-02-07T22:11:00.005-05:00

The heretofore unknown to me Mother Franciska House of Prayer is sponsoring a series of religious talks at their location on the campus of St. Joseph Hill Academy. The "suggested donation" for each talk is $10. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is the Gospel for sale? Isn't the Gospel something that belongs to everyone? Shouldn't priests and nuns want to seize every chance they can get to preach the Gospel and save souls, whether or not there's a profit involved? Isn't this the very definition of simony? I realize it's only a "suggested" donation, but if it's important enough to them that they mention in the newspaper, I would guess that it would be a very strong suggestion at the door, which few people would have the strength to resist. I for one would be discouraged from attending an event with such a suggestion. However, I would have no problem with them humbly asking for money in an unobtrusive way once I arrived. I would be happy to donate money to the good sisters, if I were able. But to post admission like this is very distasteful, and reflects very badly on our Faith and our commitment to evangelization.

For our priests: how to learn how to speak...

2011-02-01T11:20:00.006-05:00

Toastmasters International is a world renowned organization devoted to promoting effective public speaking and leadership skills. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Catholic priests I've encountered need to join one of these groups, in my opinion. There are several groups that meet on Staten Island:

North Shore Toastmasters Club- Club #: 6927, Dist #: 83, Est: 09/01/1994
6th Floor Conference Room 56 Bay Street, St. George, Staten Island, NY, 10301, United States 718 727 6575 Meeting Time: 7:00 pm, last two Mondays

New Day Toastmasters- Club #: 665371, Dist #: 83, Est: 06/30/2004
Staten Island University Hosp. North, Seaview Ave Conf. room off the Cafeteria -- 2nd Flr., Staten Island, NY, 10305, United States (718) 816 5991 Meeting Time: 7:00 p.m., Last Thurs.

Richmond County Toastmasters Club - Club #: 3817, Dist #: 83, Est: 03/01/1976
Staten Island University Hospital-North Site 242 Mason Ave - Medical Arts Pavilion, Staten Island, NY, 10305, United States 718 967 4628 Meeting Time: 7:00 p.m., 1st & 2nd Wed

Business Leaders Toastmasters - Staten Island
address:43 Ramona Ave /
Meeting Place Staten Island, NY 10312
contact:Arlene Trunzo
phone:718-317-0949
email:cmyrealtor@aol.com

Even for those priests who seem comfortable speaking to a large group, Toastmasters may help you put together a coherent thought, or help you deliver it in a way that is memorable and inspiring.

In addition, I heard about this website- http://www.audiosancto.org/ - which has recorded sermons in mp3 format that priests can listen to for inspiration of delivery and content. I haven't listened to it yet, but it has been highly praised by orthodox Catholics.

Staten Island news

2011-01-18T01:14:00.005-05:00

A few items on Staten Island Catholicism:

The disloyal Jesuits at Mt. Manresa are advertising their weekly Zen Buddhist "interfaith" meditation session, taught by their RESIDENT SENSEI, Kenneth Byalin. They are also touting their recent Breakfast with Santa and a talk by famed anti-war activist "Fr." Daniel Berrigan, who seems to have given an entire speech without even mentioning God, an amazing feat for a priest. Does this really sound like a faithful, Catholic organization? How do they stay afloat financially?? Surely it's only a matter of time before they end up selling off some or most or all of their beautiful property to developers, such as is happening now with St. Charles seminary...
...I should say "St. Charles Mission Center", which is considering selling (they describe it as "leasing") a huge chunk of their land to developers. Two years ago they were talking about converting the mansion into assisted living units. Since the Center for Migration Studies moved to Manhattan, I really don't know what goes on up there. Every once in a while, they'll host an expensive talk by a Catholic speaker, but surely that doesn't pay the bills. A few decades ago this was a thriving seminary. Now it's deserted. Just more of the fruits of Vatican II. How long before the entire property must be sold? Is there anything in history comparable to the intentional self-betrayal and suicide of Catholicism since the 1960s? The nearest comparison I can think of is the decline of mainstream American Protestantism in the 20th century, but even that sad example doesn't sink to the level of the Catholic Church's monumental implosion.
The Archdiocese announced that 4 old and beloved Catholic schools on Staten Island will be closed. St. Sylvester, St. Roch, St. Margaret Mary and St. Mary will not reopen in the Fall. I'm sure the economy had something to do with the low enrollment, but I think the Church has been the architect of its own problems over the past few decades: horrible catechesis, zero pastoral care, apathy, heresy, stupidity, and cowardice have resulted in loss of faith, decline in parishioners, declining vocations, declining birthrate (the Pill has decimated the traditional large Catholic family, with zero opposition from the pulpit) and so we're left with the unbelievable situation of St. Margaret Mary school, located in a huge Italian Catholic neighborhood,with a student body of only 74 (that's an average of 9 kids a class).

Still, I think the parents are being unfair, when they accuse the Archdiocese of greed. If the school is so financially unviable, how on earth do they expect it to remain open? Why do they think they deserve subsidies? Their children will still get a Catholic education, but at a different, nearby school. However, judging from the empty pews at Sunday Mass at St. Margaret Mary, and the hysterically ignorant comments from the people in the video at the silive article, maybe it's a good thing that the school is closing, since their students obviously haven't been learning their Faith, basic elocution, or logical reasoning all these years.

SI clergy to city: "Please Masters, allow us to exist!"

2010-12-28T11:31:00.004-05:00

So, our Catholic leaders on Staten Island finally got around to responding to the removal of the Nativity scene from the ferry terminal. And what did they do? Monsignors Finn and Dorney, along with Reverend O'Hara from St. Theresa's, wrote a letter to the Advance. They whined that our feelings were hurt, and offered as a remedy- in all seriousness- to allow ALL the religious symbols of the season to be displayed in the Ferry. So, our Catholic leaders believe that it would be an acceptable solution for the likeness of our Lord, humanity's Savior, to be displayed along with the Channukah menorah, the Moslem crescent for Ramadan, and whatever other symbols any other religion chooses to put up. I'm sure the Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, Jains, pagans, Festivus followers, et al, have major or minor holidays in December, so if these priests' suggestion is followed, the Ferry terminal would look like a pantheon of gods. That would be equally as unacceptable as our Lord being banished. There should have been protests, there should have been street theater. There should have been live nativity scenes, with Catholic volunteers dressing up as the primary characters. There should have been ACTION, not just a pathetic letter to the editor from our tired, fatuous leaders.

The Suicide of the Catholic Church- in microcosm

2010-12-14T09:39:00.016-05:00

I attended the "Little Italy" church again this Sunday, since I wanted to go to their Christmas fair and possibly find some good deals on Christmas gifts. The 11AM Mass had about 70 people, all arranged in the "traditional Catholic seating pattern" I've described so many times. The large size of the church made it seem more sparsely attended than it actually was. The organist was a white-haired lady with a reedy voice who sat up in the choir loft. There was no choir. There was hardly any music, as that word is traditionally understood. Because of the horrible sound system in this church, I could not understand a single word she sang, or distinguish between the notes she played. It was a slurry of horrible, muffled noise that droned through the church, hymn after hymn. I didn't notice many people singing.

The celebrant was not the wunderkind pastor, who recently received this ridiculously fawning profile in the local rag, but a Filipino priest who is the curate. His English was better than that of most foreign priests, but he still neglected to speak as loudly as he needed to be heard through that awful sound system. His sermon was not inane, but merely banal. He spoke about how he had met a man who had suffered loss, but still remained hopeful and joyful. The priest said that we should look forward with great anticipation to the coming of Christ in this Christmas season, etc. Nothing stupid or offensive; merely forgettable. I'm surprised I remembered that much.

No, the highlight of this Mass was when the pastor arrived post-Communion to make a few announcements. Without even taking off his winter coat, he told us that he was eliminating the 11:00 Mass. With only 700 people coming to 5 weekend Masses, he felt that 5 Masses weren't justified. It is a humiliating fact that only 700 people- in such a large Italian Catholic area as Rosebank- come to Mass, but that's a completely separate issue. I agreed with the decision, if not his reasoning. I really don't see the need for a parish to have multiple Masses on Sunday, unless the number of people attending Mass exceeds the capacity of the church. It seemed to me like the proliferation of Sunday Masses began with some Vatican II mania for catering to "the people" and their ever-changing whims. Our schedules are not so tight on Sunday mornings that we need 4 different Masses to choose from. Unless a congregation is overflowing the church, we should have one Mass, where the entire parish can worship together, build community, and where the choir and priest can focus all their energies on 1 "performance", so to speak. However, my guess is that the pastor's decision was purely an accounting measure, with a bit of self-interest thrown in: less customers equal reduced services, which means less expense and more free time for him.

That impression was reinforced by his next announcement, that he was reducing the time for Saturday Confession, because of low attendance. It would now run from 4:00 to 4:30, instead of until the current 4:45 because, he explained, only a mere THREE PEOPLE usually come to avail themselves of the Sacrament. The tone with which he made this announcement betrayed no more emotion than if he were reciting the Bingo numbers.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. THIS was the spiritual leader of a community of souls?? If only 3 people are going to Confession on Saturdays, it is self evident that the people of that parish are sunk in unbelievable spiritual complacency and abysmal ignorance of their own Faith. And if their pastor's only response to such a disgraceful fact is to cut the Confession time by 15 minutes, then he is a man who is completely lacking in the even the most basic necessary mental or spiritual qualities of a priest, and should be relieved of his post for gross incompetence and deriliction of duty. I know that this pastor is relatively new, but I believe he has been there for over a year, and this is a reflection of his spiritual leadership. Such a revelation should be a fire bell in the night for any responsible pastor. I would think that a priest who was actually concerned about the souls of his flock would see the glaring need for a lot of sermonizing on the subject of sin, repentance and salvation, and a sustained and powerful effort to catechize, to evangelize and to win souls. But this pastor apparently is more concerned with his high flying diocesan career, his precious time and aesthetic fripperies, like purchasing $10,000 statues. But what else would one expect but bureacratic, placeholding sinecurism from someone whose clerical role models are the Dhimmi pastors Finn and Dorney?

After this joke of a Mass, I went to the school Christmas fair, where scowling parents tried to sell me $5 coffee mugs and hordes of ill-behaved tweens and teens chased each other around the gym.

Who will stand up for Jesus?

2010-12-12T14:00:00.003-05:00

The Advance reports that the city has removed a manger scene from the Ferry terminal after receiving some complaints. A menorah and a "holiday tree" will remain, as they are not religious symbols, according to the officials. This sort of anti-Christian assault is nothing new in this country. But my question is what will our Catholic "leaders" on Staten Island do about it? What action will they take? What kind of example will they show? Will it be one of courage and constructive proactivity? Or will they scandalize us with their cowardice and craven submission to the secular order? In light of the whole Midland Beach mosque controversy earlier this years, one can safely guess what the answer will be.

In a postscript, this article tells us the answer to the question posed in my headline. The black Protestant ministers of Staten Island will stand up for Jesus in this latest battle of the culture wars, while our Catholic priests and bishops cringe in terror and do absolutely nothing...as usual.

Sympathy for the Devil

2010-11-24T10:13:00.005-05:00

Disgraceful goings-on in this Archdiocese, under the leadership of our so-called "conservative" archbishop: Cardinal Hayes High School hosted a big event honoring Regis Philbin and Helen Gurley Brown for their donations to the school. Archbishop Dolan himself said a Mass that day and announced that Ms. Brown was donating a million dollars to the school for "scholarships and special programs". Perhaps realizing the scandal here, Catholic New York downplayed Brown's presence at the ceremony and her donation, as if it were an afterthought or an incidental occurrence that took everyone by surprise, as if she showed up on her own and decided to make her donation on a whim. But it is hardly plausible that a million dollar gift from one of America's most notorious public figures wasn't a centerpiece of this event and didn't happen without the full foreknowledge of everyone involved. And whoever wrote or edited the article knew that this was a disgrace.

Helen Gurley Brown is evil incarnate. She is one of the Sexual Revolution's original insurgents. She has perhaps done more than anyone else to corrupt American womanhood over the past 50 years, with her incessant propaganda for sexual hedonism. Her gift is blood money of the most corrupting sort, as she has always used her very influential voice to make abortion acceptable to American women. And what does our putative spiritual shepherd do when this vile whore proffers a treasure made off of broken lives, ruined souls and dead babies? He extends his flabby hand, takes her donation and says thank you. What a moral lesson it would have been for that high school and this archdiocese if the archbishop told her to keep her filthy money and repent! His action teaches those young men that money trumps all, even honor. A Gina Aceto wrote a letter to Catholic New York to express her outrage.

I thought that Brown was the only objectionable issue at that ceremony, but now I see that Regis Philbin is a divorced man. I wonder if he took Communion from the Archbishop's hands?

On a similar note, Catholic New York had a small item about how Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius XM satellite radio, was given an award at the Telecare Award of Excellence luncheon, which is sponsored by Telecare TV, some sort of Catholic production company, headed by a Monsignor Jim Vlaun. Cardinal Egan attended the luncheon as well, since he had collaborated with Karmazin to start the Catholic Channel on Sirius radio, where it is one of 130 channels that subscribers can listen to. In Karmazin's long and sordid career, he has pumped so much moral filth into the American mind, that it's a sure bet he's a greater evil than even Helen Gurley Brown. Yet, the Catholic Church honors this mass poisoner of souls because he gave us 1 channel out of 130 on a radio station that is quickly going downhill. Again, why don't our priests and bishops seem to have a moral compass or any common sense?

Crypto-Catholics

2010-11-12T20:41:00.005-05:00

This ad for St. Adalbert's school appeared in a Staten Island magazine for parents. In an interesting move, the word "Catholic" appears nowhere in the ad. Why?

In addition, if you look closely at the photograph, you'll see a group of students with an elderly veteran who is making a peace sign. Typical of modern America and fatuous modern Catholicism, this picture represents our repulsion for anything that suggests dignity: all must be degraded in the service of equality. So someone-maybe the smart-a** students or the hip photographer- saw this elderly veteran in his VFW uniform, and decided it would be hilarious to have him act the fool and impair his dignity. It's an affront to this modern age, with its mixed-up standards, to tolerate any notion that implies that one person or one value is better than another. Therefore, dignity, holiness, morality, reason, beauty, must be mocked, undermined and destroyed in pursuit of lunatic egalitarianism and relativism. "Who does he think he is, with his grey hair and his medals? Does he think he's better than us??"

PLanned Parenthood on Staten Island

2010-11-11T22:46:00.003-05:00

In a recent church bulletin was an insert from the Respect Life Committee of the Staten Island Vicariate, warning us that Planned Parenthood has opened up a mobile clinic on Central Avenue and Slosson Terrace on Mondays from 10-4. They expect to be open three days a week next year, in the office space of Community Health Actio n on Hyatt Street. The Respect Life Committee, which is made up of Dolores Celentano, Joann Fitzgerald, Deacon James Stahlnecker and its chairman Rev. Peter Byrne, announces that they are holding prayer vigils at the clinic each Monday and want other people to join them.

Victory in Midland Beach!

2010-07-23T07:48:00.004-04:00

The anonymous board of trustees of St. Margaret Mary church finally met and anonymously voted against the plan to sell the vacant convent to the Moslem American Society. This is wonderful news. However, it is a disgrace that the Archdiocese and the pastor allowed this contentious issue to linger for so long, creating so much bitterness and ill-will. This plan never should have been approved in the first place, but once it became public knowledge and the intense opposition materialized, the archdiocese should have expedited a decision on this one way or another. Instead, for 2 months they've allowed this issue to boil over. There have been weekly protests, with signs like "Get out of my country"; there have been dueling Facebook pages; we've been lectured by our own Archbishop on tolerance; and the national media has focused its gimlet eye on Staten Island and its supposed bigotry. As we've seen in numerous other instances, our Church is utterly clueless about public relations; it's like they purposely do whatever will reflect most negatively on the hierarchy and Catholicism.

Nevertheless, we achieved victory eventually. And the lesson we can take away from this is that a significant percentage of the clergy and the bishops are wolves in sheep's clothing who don't give a damn about ordinary Catholics or Catholicism and who would sell us down the river for 30 pieces of silver or a pat on the head from the liberal media. It was a defiant and united people who stopped this outrage and forced the church to do the right thing in the end. Let us not forget that we ordinary Americans and Catholics have real power when we stand together and fight.

So, the mosque plan is finished. Good. But now what will be done with the vacant convent? In all this hubbub about the MAS, have Catholics experienced any shame at the fact that our religion is declining so rapidly that we are forced to sell off our religious buildings? Does the hierarchy experience any shame at the lack of vocations illustrated so dramatically in this vacant convent, not to mention the legions of shuttered churches? I wonder how many of the anti-MAS protesters are A&P (ashes and palms) Catholics, or simply functional pagans; I didn't see too many people at Mass when I visited St. Margaret Mary. I would hope that this controversy would impress upon us the need for a mass rededication to the Faith. We shall see.

Correspondence with the Archbishop

2010-07-22T11:01:00.002-04:00

I recently sent a letter to Archbishop Dolan expressing my displeasure with the MAS situation, and urging him to stop this deal immediately, instead of inexplicably allowing the issue to linger and fester throughout the summer. I received the following absurd form letter, which defended Fr. Fennessy, whom I never even mentioned in my letter, and criticized me for blaming all Muslims for the World Trade Center attack, an accusation I never made.

Dear Mr. ***********

Thank you most sincerely for your letter of...Your thoughtfulness is deeply appreciated.

Father Keith Fennessey is, in my judgment, a fine priest and pastor of the archdiocese, undeserving of the criticism that he has been receiving.

As to the proposed sale of the convent to the Muslim American Society, the archdiocese consented to it when the pastor wrote in favor of it. Since then, he has decided to withdraw his support for the sale, and the parish is attempting to resolve the matter.

The Muslim American Society is in dialogue and communication with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and as such one must be careful about drawing conclusions. Also, as your bishop, might I suggest that it is very unfair to link all Muslims to the attack on the World Trade Center. It was not that long ago when Catholics in the United States were suspect because of their ties to the Vatican, and such bigotry should not be revisited by Catholics on others.

With prayerful best wishes, I am,

Faithfully in Christ,

Most Reverend Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York

Archbishop Dolan shows support for gay groups?

2010-07-16T11:24:00.003-04:00

Michael Voris recently publicized a visit by Archbishop Dolan to a Manhattan parish which is well known for being "gay-friendly". I encourage everyone to watch this video. During the visit to St. Francis Xavier, Archbishop Dolan was videotaped smiling and cheering as the parish's gay and lesbian groups were presented to him. A defender of the Archbishop could say that the speaker's description of these gay groups was somewhat ambiguous, as they were lauded for their efforts to help "LGBT Catholics return to the Sacraments and find an adult place in the Church of their youth", so the Archbishop could easily have thought that they were faithful Catholic groups trying to help gays live chaste lives in accordance with Catholic morality. However, an examination of the facts would disabuse us of that notion. The Archbishop is well aware of the stance of this parish and their gay groups; they march in the Gay Pride Parade every year under the banner of the parish and are quite public in their affirmation of the gay lifestyle. The archbishop wrote a letter to the lisping, effeminate pastor ordering him not to allow the gay groups to march under the church's banner. They complied by simply turning the banner around, an act of passive aggressive defiance, as everyone knew exactly who they were and who they were affiliated with. I bring up this story because it tells us New Yorkers something disturbing about the man who was appointed to be our spiritual shepherd. But on a more local level, I ask if this man is really going to have enough courage to quash the deal with the MAS, if he doesn't even have enough backbone to deal with an openly gay advocacy group in a Catholic church.

El Pueblo Unido nunca sera' dividido

2010-06-17T15:49:00.003-04:00

The "priest" who sold the convent to the terrorist-connected mosque has now written a letter to Archbishop Dolan saying that he is withdrawing his support for the sale, because he now feels that the sale would not "serve the needs of the parish". As if this Judas was even capable of recognizing the needs of his parish. Remember, this is the same man who sold the convent in secret to a Moslem organization with terrorist ties, for less than it was worth, and then called his own flock racists and bigots for objecting. Nevertheless, this is fantastic news. The Archdiocese felt the heat from an enraged people and probably leaned on Fr. Fennessy to fix the mess he made. This incident shows that we the people have power- a power most of us never exercised and never knew we had. We just have to stop being so afraid- of our neighbors, of the names that the Left will call us, of standing up and fighting for what we believe. This whole battle against the MAS is very, very encouraging. It's not over yet by a long shot, but this is the looking like it's the end of the beginning.

Meet the Neighbors

2010-06-10T09:36:00.002-04:00

This video montage contains a clip of MAS Freedom Foundation Executive Director Mahdi Bray cheering for Hamas and Hezbollah.

What is to be Done?

2010-06-10T09:35:00.001-04:00

What do we do now? According to the Advance, the ball is in the court of the Archdiocese. Archdiocesan spokesman Zwilling says that the trustees of the property consist of the pastor, 2 lay people, Archbishop Dolan, the vicar-general, and the Supreme Court. I say we keep writing and calling the archdiocese. The address and phone number are:

1011 First Avenue
New York, NY 10022
212-371-1000

Let's make their ears burn.

I see here that Archbishop Dolan is feeding us another load of BS about tolerance and hospitality, so I'm not sure how receptive he will be about the concerns of his flock. Try to leave a comment if you like, but his Eminence's blog, like silive, is not too friendly to opinions that question the PC orthodoxy.

Mosque meeting

2010-06-09T22:58:00.008-04:00

I attended last night's meeting of the Midland Beach civic association and luckily made it in before the doors closed. There was an Arab Protestant church handing out fliers at the door which stated that they would like to buy the convent for the full asking price and they would ensure that the Cross would never be removed from its walls. I thought that argument was very effective. As I entered the building a woman handed me a 40 page expose' of the Moslem American Society, written by the Investigative Project on Terrorism. This damning report fleshed out in more detail what everyone already knows about the MAS- it was established as a front group by terrorists, it's currently linked with terrorists, and it seeks to infiltrate, conquer and convert the United States to Islam.

The meeting began with an address by one of the three MAS representatives, a young and affable physical therapist. Although all three were foreign born and spoke with accents, they were all very, very slick. The primary speaker spun the expected line about the MAS- they're a peaceful organization which works with children, feeds the hungry, stands for tolerance, etc., to which the audience responded with furious shouting. The thing is that Staten Islanders have been educating themselves about the MAS for about a month now and we have seen the facts about this organization in black and white; no amount of denials or slick presentation can change what this organization, and Islam itself, really are.

The floor was opened to questions and the first speaker, who looked Arab, turned out to be the famous anti-Islamic writer Robert Spencer. I've read Spencer's book, "The Truth About Mohammed" and found his arguments about Islam indisputable, although I object to his neo-conservative associations. However, the man knows Islam and Islamic radicalism backwards and forward and posed some pointed questions to the MAS men about their connection to the Moslem Brotherhood and their president's public defense of certain terrorist groups and individuals. Their answers were evasive and unsatisfactory.

Other speakers came forward with equally incisive questions, citing the Koran, investigative reports, and the public statements of the MAS' own leaders, to show that this group is untrustworthy and unacceptable. One man had a great point about the MAS' boasts of charitable programs. He pointed out that prison gangs, like the Latin Kings, also perform charity and write children's books, etc., but such public displays don't really mean a thing when such groups are also involved in crime and violence. He cited the MAS leader Mahdi Bray's public defense of 3 men who were arrested for terrorist activities. At one point a Middle Eastern-looking priest got up and shouting about how he loved Jesus and Jesus was God, etc. He had to be quieted down by ushers.

Surprisingly, most of the speakers seemed to be women. At least, most of the best speakers were women. The men who got up mostly spoke in weak, quiet voices and rambled on endlessly about irrelevancies. The women of this community, who are generally reputed to be loud and obnoxiously pushy, gained my undying respect. They certainly were loud and pushy, but for a great cause, which was to defend their families and homes from a threat. As the saying goes, "The female of the species is more deadly than the male". They were all like Joan of Arc: brave, defiant and eloquent. One lady called Father Fennessy a Judas and asked the MAS why on earth they would want to come to a community that doesn't want them. Another challenged the speaker's constant declaration of respect for Jesus, and demanded to know if he believed that He was the Son of God. Another Iron Lady said that the FBI had told her the MAS was on the terrorist watch list and swatted down the MAS man when he unctuously addressed her as "sister". One woman cited the Koran's dictate to slay the infidels and demanded to know if we were infidels. Another cited the MAS' well known terrorist ties. An Egyptian woman detailed the barbaric treatment of Christians in her home country. At one point, the crowd shouted down a white civic leader and an Arab Catholic priest from Brooklyn, who had been invited to testify to what good neighbors the MAS mosque in Brooklyn are. The meeting was adjourned early when the "priest" in the crowd, who turned out to be the pastor of the Arab Protestant church, started shouting and got a group of people to start chanting.

Although at one point one of the MAS men started lecturing us on the Bible, they were generally polite and calm and faced an extremely hostile crowd without losing their temper. But that's what the public face of any organization is supposed to do. The overwhelming evidence has shown that this organization supports terrorism. The overwhelming evidence is that the Koran itself supports violence against non-Moslems. With the exception of the sex abuse scandal, the sale of the convent to this group is probably the most outrageous and scandalous thing I have ever seen the Church do.

The natives were as furious as any mob I've ever seen, and rightfully so. It was like a valve had been opened that let out decades worth of frustration and anger. We Americans, and we Catholics, have been forced to swallow so much insulting BS about so many things (Islam being one) for so long, without being able to say anything about it because of politically correct censorship. The newspapers won't print how we really feel; the radio or TV won't interview us; internet forums like silive delete any comments they deem incorrect; last night we finally had our say.

Trahison des Clercs

2010-06-09T07:25:00.010-04:00

The co-vicars of Staten Island, Msgrs. Dorney and Finn, have sent an open letter to the Advance calling for openness and civility from Catholics attending tonight's meeting with the Moslem American Society. This letter is an outrage.

If anyone should be admonished to display "civility", it should be the Moslems. Have Catholics held public protests calling for the subjugation and forced conversion of Moslem nations? Have Catholic priests preached terrorism and suicide bombing from the pulpit? Have Catholics cut off the heads of innocent Moslems? Have Catholics attacked and destroyed mosques or other Moslem holy places? Have Catholics waged a campaign of assassination against Moslem clerics? Have Catholics fired machine guns into crowds of Moslem worshippers? Have Catholics ethnically cleansed entire regions of Moslem people? Have Catholics flown planes into buildings full of Moslems? No, but these are all crimes that have been and are being perpetrated by Moslems all over the world against Catholics and other non-Moslems, yet our own Catholic leaders feel the need to publicly lecture us on proper behavior!

They give a passing nod to the "legitimate questions" of the Midland beach residents, but then reveal what they really believe are the self-evident answers to those questions, when they sing encomia to the MAS' "sensitivity" to the community, and express gratitude to the MAS for "its commitment to dialogue and to fostering a better understanding between Catholic and Islamic faith communities". So what these fools are really saying is that they understand that the ignorant, uninformed Catholics of Staten Island have heard a lot of crazy rumors about their good buddies in the MAS and gotten all stirred up by fear mongering, but once the MAS meets us face to face tonight and says "We are not terrorists", we need to believe them, shut up and get back to being good, quiet sacrificial lambs again.

Why, oh why, have we been cursed with these weak and feeble minded shepherds? What they value most is not the good of their flock or the promulgation of the Faith, or even the safety of their community. Like other non-entities in this politically correct age, what motivates these weak men at their core is to be seen as tolerant, open-handed multiculturalists who get plaudits from liberal newspapers and get invited to fine banquets with politicians. These men are not made of the stuff of a Thomas More or John Fisher. These are the types who bend with every wind and base their values on the prevailing opinions of the powerful. Any priest with a brain or a backbone would have nixed this sale at the very beginning solely on the basis of the disheartening symbolism, never mind the issue of having a terrorist-affiliated group in the neighborhood. Instead, these simpletons take the MAS' sweet words at face value and see the golden opportunity to win brownie points from the media by an act of submission to Islam.

These men need not be heeded. Canonized saints who are now in heaven went on Crusade to defend Christendom from Moslem takeover, so modern Catholics do not need to feel guilty about fighting this current invasion of our nations, despite what the Advance and the Judases in the Church try to tell us. This sale must not stand. We've been betrayed by our natural leaders in the government and in the Church. It looks like we'll have to stand up for ourselves, and I intend to do so tonight.

Meet the MAS

2010-06-08T08:20:00.004-04:00

There will be a public meeting of the Midland Beach Civic Association Wednesday, June 9th at 8:00 PM to discuss the convent sale to the terrorist group. The address is 1126 Olympia Blvd. Be there and voice your opposition, loudly and forcefully.

Mosque pastor leaves parish

2010-06-04T10:13:00.003-04:00

Fr. Fennessy, who sold the convent to the terrorist-affiliated Moslem American Society, announced in last Sunday's bulletin that he is stepping down from his position to care for his ailing, 98-year-old mother. Whether this is fact, or the clerical version of "resigning to spend more time with my family", I don't know. And what impact this will have on the convent sale remains to be seen.

Convent sale not a done deal

2010-06-01T09:08:00.003-04:00

Due to the popular uprising, the Archdiocese is now saying that the sale of the convent to the Moslem American Association is "not final". Spokesman Joseph Zwilling says that "There are still steps that need to be taken on a civil and church level." The Midland Beach Civic Association is holding a public meeting soon to discuss the matter. The Advance says that it's on 6/9 while the Association's Facebook page says it's on 6/10.

The Moslem American Society

2010-05-22T12:10:00.004-04:00

In the recent story on the sale of the St. Margaret Mary convent to the Moslem American Society, our joke of a local newspaper didn't bother to tell us anything about this organization. A basic Google search reveals so much.

The Moslem American Society was founded in 1993 by American members of the Moslem Brotherhood. The Moslem Brotherhood should be familiar to many Americans, as it was the group that influenced so many of the terrorists who have spilled so much blood all over the world. Bin Laden himself was influenced by the Brotherhood and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, was a member. It was founded in Egypt in 1928 on the principle that “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations." The Brotherhood's goal was to submit society to sharia law. In keeping with these basic Moslem ideals, the Brotherhood began to engage in a wave of bombings and assassinations, which led to its suppression in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries. However, it remains a powerful underground force.

With the influx of Moslem immigrants following the passage of Ted Kennedy's 1965 Immigration act, the Brotherhood began to take root in America. Like other subversive groups, they have established numerous front organizations, one of which is the Moslem American Society. The members of this new group were specifically instructed to lie in response to questions about its links to the Brotherhood, but the truth eventually came out. Nevertheless, they still lie about their ultimate goal, which remains a Moslem takeover of America, either through mass immigration or conversion, and the institution of sharia law. Over the years, its leadership has learned the way of the chameleon, and changed its appearance and its words to match that of any loyal American. They praise the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and express their admiration for American freedoms. Yet, underneath they remain what they were founded to be: a front group for terrorists and Islamic conquest. And our Catholic clergy, who are either simpletons or traitors, allow them to establish a cell in Midland Beach.

Betrayal in Midland Beach.

2010-05-21T19:45:00.007-04:00

The pastor of St. Margaret Mary parish in Midland Beach has secretly sold the church's convent- a convent the people of the parish scrimped and saved to build- to a group that is going to convert it into a mosque and Moslem community center. It's a mystery why this group would want to build in Midland Beach, which was a lily White area with few Moslems the last time I checked.

The motivations of the pastor, Fr. Keith Fennessy, can only be guessed at this point, but he is apparently a fanatical, left-wing multiculturalist, as he had rejected an offer from local developers in order to sell it to the Moslems, and whenever parishioners try to talk to him about this situation, "he accuses them of being bigots or racists." In a further insult, the street on which the convent is located is named after a Fire Captain who was killed on 9/11. The people of the parish and the community are so outraged that they are now calling for the pastor's dismissal (which won't happen) and impotently wondering what legal actions they can do to reverse this "done-deal" (which is nothing).

Whatever his motivations, this is a disgrace of monumental proportions. Does this priest have any comprehension of the disheartening symbolism of this action? We are supposed to be the Church Militant, carrying the Cross of Christ aloft, marching off to victory or martyrdom. Instead, we have compromising cowards for leaders, who actively connive to hand over our holy places to our enemies, who will now tear down the crucifixes and the icons, whitewash the Holy Name, and recite their infidel incantations over the building to "cleanse" it of the spirit of Christ. And our weak, Quisling priests and bishops will smile through their flabby, vapid faces and congratulate themselves for their masochistic act of degradation and submission to the enemies of the Faith. They probably take comfort in the thought that Allah and St. Ted Kennedy are smiling upon them from above, if these men believe in a spiritual world at all.

I realize we're supposed to love our enemies, but we're not supposed to surrender to them. And although most individual Moslems are not our physical enemies, Islam as a spiritual system is our age-old adversary, by Koranic injunction dedicated to our conversion or conquest. It is only by the Grace of God- and the swords and artillery of Catholic warriors- that Christendom was not reduced to complete dhimmitude in the past, when canonized Saints preached Crusade and fought under the banner of the Cross. In contrast, our Church today, like our political leadership, seems to be actively working for the other side. This action is an insult and an outrage. I look forward to seeing what the community and parish opposition will do.

The Validity of Homosexual Vows of Chastity in Religious Life

2010-05-20T19:44:00.004-04:00

This is off the topic of Staten Island Catholicism, but I had to recommend one of the best articles I've read in a long time. It deals with the question of homosexuals in the priesthood. A lot of Catholics (some of them sincere), when they want to express their toleration of homosexuality but do not want to seem like full-blown dissidents, will say that it doesn't matter if a priest is a homosexual so long as he is celibate. This penetrating and well written article demolishes that argument and I would recommend all to read it. It originally appeared in the New Oxford Review, which I encourage everyone to subscribe to. Catholic publishing, like almost all magazines and newspapers, is in a severe crisis and needs all the help it can get.

Incestuous, "elder abuse" by Staten Island priest

2010-04-29T09:14:00.003-04:00

The verdict just came down in the case of the 86 year old Staten Island priest who was accused of compelling an adult, female relative to perform a sex act on him, while he was visiting Texas. Father Stephen Valenta, whose home was at the St. Francis friary- oops sorry- I meant the St. Francis Center for Spirituality- has been sentenced to five years probation after making a deal with the prosecutors and pleading no contest to a lesser charge of "injury to the elderly". He now will reside in a "monastery-type home for priests during his probation, and can't leave unless someone goes with him."
Except for a couple of cases, Staten Island really hasn't been touched by the church sex abuse scandal. Our priests may be apathetic, uninspiring, and sometimes heretical, but they seem to have kept their noses clean when it comes to the more vicious crimes, thank God. At first I thought this accusation was bogus. After all, how would it be possible for an 86 year old man, who by all accounts is in poor health, to force an adult woman to do such a thing? Also, several lay people who know him came forward to testify to his upright character. Now he pleads no contest to this charge and is sentenced to supervision in some sort of monastery/halfway house. Sure sounds like an admission of guilt to me. I see that his own "ministry" (which for some strange reason is based out of Iowa) seems to have stripped its website of every reference to him. Very sad.

Michael Voris on Staten Island

2010-03-29T16:31:00.008-04:00

A few weeks ago I attended a speech by nascent Catholic celebrity Michael Voris at Holy Child church. Mr. Voris started a Catholic media company in 2008 and has recently begun to garner a lot of attention on the internet for his uncompromising orthodoxy and hard-hitting reporting on Catholic issues. Mr. Voris is a 48 year old Notre Dame graduate, a one time seminarian, and a former Emmy award-winning news anchor. At least that's what he's told us.

I have no reason to distrust him, but I'm finding it increasingly odd that I have not been able to find one single piece of independent information about this man on the internet, except for what he himself has revealed. And all of the various websites that rave about him are simply repeating the facts he's provided in his own biography and interviews. I have no solid reason to be suspicious, but I'd like to know a bit more about the man before I'm comfortable seeing him elevated to the position of orthodox Catholicism's public face in America. Where was he born? Who are his parents? Where did he go to school? Why did he leave seminary? Is he now or was was he ever married? Does he have children? Are there any skeletons in his closet that could potentially embarrass the Church and the faithful should they be revealed?

Barring my unease over how little we know about him, I really like the guy. He's a powerful and dynamic speaker, he's zealous and intelligent. So I was eager to hear him in person.

There were a lot of people at the church, although it was by no means full. It might have helped if it were advertised a bit more. The announcement I received said that he was speaking at 7:30, but the Stations of the Cross were just beginning at that time. I didn't mind. The Stations are always spiritually salutary. I'd never seen a priest just stand at the altar and recite the prayers though. Usually, they make the little pilgrimage to each station along the wall. I was disappointed at that. Anyway, Voris came on the stage at 8 and was introduced by the parish pastor.

His theme was "Christ and Caesar" or something to that effect. He spent too much time, in my opinion, merely reiterating the Gospel stories which we all know, but the speech was ultimately a rousing success. His peroration was especially fantastic. He said things that need to be said from Catholic pulpits over and over again, but never are. He basically told us how we need to suffer for the Faith, because there is no value in any other life than one in which we take up our Cross and follow Him. We need to be proud of our Catholicism and publicly witness to it, despite the repercussions. It was an excellent speech.

It made me feel ambivalent though. It was kind of odd to see a layman up there preaching the Gospel from the altar, with a priest sitting meekly in the first row. It made me sad that the clergy has so abdicated their responsibility to preach the Gospel with the power of the Spirit that we need a layman to get up there and give us spiritual meat. I for one have never in my entire life heard a priest speak with such passion and inspiration. I'm sure it was a novel experience for most of the people there as well. Still, I couldn't help feeling ashamed for the Church that a layman from Michigan had to come all the way to Staten Island, NY so we could be inspired with the Gospel message. This parish has multiple priests in residence. Why aren't they giving lectures and inspirational sermons on Friday nights? Why aren't they evangelizing? Why aren't they tending to the spiritual needs of the flock? Why did they need to bring in Michael Voris? (no offense to him).

One last thing- in keeping with Catholic tradition of audio ineptitude, the sound system completely failed at one point, but luckily it was only about 2 minutes before the end of his speech.

Mysticism, gay Jesuits, and Catholic abortion providers

2010-03-18T10:12:00.003-04:00

Just a few links that piqued my interest: The first is this very perceptive article from the NY Times, about the death of mysticism in contemporary religion, specifically Catholicism. The writer is absolutely correct. When was the last time you felt transcendence in a Catholic Church? When was the last time you felt the Spirit of God at Mass?? The last time I felt those things in Church, my priest was a man who took his vocation and our Faith seriously, whose attitude spread to the entire congregation. What I see now in my church-shopping travels are priests who seem to view themselves as bureacrats or administrators of some sort, who rush through Mass in 30 minutes, who would rather tell jokes than preach repentance, who would prefer to talk about the Yankees than the Gospel.

The other article was also from the Times. It was the obituary of a gay Jesuit who was one of the key figures in the gay rights movement for over 30 years. There's a picture of him marching in a gay rights parade with 3 other priests, all wearing their clerical collars. Can someone tell me how this man was permitted to remain in the priesthood for one second after "coming out"?

The 3rd article is about how the group which represents Catholic hospitals has come out in support of President Obama's health care bil l, despite the fact that abortion supporters are telling their people that it will allow federal funding of abortion.

Catholic Church Chopping, Part IX: The Purell Parish

2010-03-06T09:22:00.009-05:00

The next place I visited was a North Shore church which had- for the usual reasons I suppose- (falling membership, lack of money) been administratively joined with a nearby parish whose membership has become predominantly Mexican. The church building was one of the uglier specimens of modern church architecture. The church space was square, with primitive, cartoonish stained glass windows adorning one wall and an enclosed chapel/cry room. The traditional paintings and statues only served to emphasize the incongruity with their surroundings. The heavy concrete ceiling resembled a packing crate and gave me the feeling like it was going to fall down on us at any moment. Directly over the altar the architect had installed a gigantic tube. The purpose, I assume, was to cast down light upon the priest. Instead, I kept expecting to hear a loud flush and see the appropriate product come flowing down the pipe.

The music chosen by the pianist was probably the worst I've ever heard. All of the songs were written in the 80s and 90s and were consequently horrible. No melody, no tempo, no life; just a bunch of random notes that made these hymns utterly un-singable. The lyrics were hippy-dippy and were supposed to convey joy, but the hymns were dirge-like when played. It was utterly depressing and discouraging. No one sang.

The priest spoke in an odd, sing-songy manner, which made me think he might have been drunk, but as he held himself pretty steady on his feet, I suppose it was just a vocal idiosyncrasy. His sermon actually made sense. He compared sin to drug addiction- how we start off with just a little bit and before we know it we're sinning more and more and can't stop. That would have been a great theme for a sermon, but unfortunately he delivered it as if his intended audience were 12 year olds. I would have loved to hear the adult version.

The most embarrassing part of the Mass took place after the handshake of peace. The priest came down into the aisles and shook hands with everyone in sight. When he returned to the altar, he took out a big bottle of Purell, dispensed himself a dollop, and spent 30 seconds rubbing his hands with it. He then left the bottle on the altar for the rest of the Mass, right next to the Body and Blood of Christ. First of all, it's incredibly insulting to shake hands with someone and then disinfect yourself right in front of them. If he's so concerned about catching swine flu, he should just forgo the handshake and remain at the altar, as most priests do. Secondly, leaving a bottle of Purell up there on the altar next to the Eucharist was sacrilegious in my opinion. He made himself, the Mass and our Faith look absolutely ridiculous.

On a positive note, this parish has Stations of the Cross, a Bible Study and is having a "Mission". However, in yet another instance of bizarre Catholic thinking, the Mission is held during the week at noon, and the Bible study is at 9AM on Saturday mornings. Come on- let's try to schedule these things so people can actually come!

I returned to this church again this week. The pianist had a small choir this time and the hymns were slightly better, although still sub-par. No one sang. There was a different priest this time, a mustachioed gentleman who looked like an old cowboy. He had a loud, booming voice, which was good. Unfortunately, his sermon rambled from one disconnected platitude to another. When the handshake time came, he too went and shook everyone's hands. As for the Purell, it retained its position of honor on the altar next to the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, Humanity's Savior and Lord of the Universe.

Archbishop to flock: "get off my back"

2010-02-04T09:56:00.005-05:00

The Catholic New York contained an interesting article from the archbishop last week. Usually these columns from the throne aren't really worth reading, since their entire purpose is to say absolutely nothing and offend no one, but I found this one slightly noteworthy. Archbishop Dolan grudgingly acknowledges that there is a lot of criticism of priests in this archdiocese, but then petulantly belittles the criticism by 1. giving an anecdote about how the holy Cure de Ars (the patron saint of priests) was a target of criticism, and 2. how he (the Archbishop) gets complaints about his priests from both liberals and conservatives. The implication here is that 1. if even a saint was criticized in the past, that must mean that criticism of priests today is invalid and baseless, and 2. if both liberals and conservatives are complaining about priests, that must mean that the criticism is invalid, and that priests are talking a wise middle road.

Archbishop Dolan wallows in self-pity for a while, saying "[p]riests can't seem to win", it "seems 'open season' on priests", "[p]riests might as well hang a bull's eye on the clergy shirt", etc. Then he changes tack and attacks the critics with the charge that they are reviving the ancient heresy of Donatism!

This column was insulting, from a number of perspectives: his dismissal of the magnitude of the problem and the way he flippantly reduces the critic's legitimate complaints to "homilies or occasional crabbiness". Good Lord, it's so much more than that; just read my blog, just listen to your flock. For goodness sake, go undercover to one of your outer borough churches and see how your priests are driving the Church into the ground.

In addition, his liberal/conservative argument was sneaky, I thought. There are no liberal or conservative positions when it comes to Catholicism. There's either faithfulness to the Magisterium or unfaithfulness to the Magisterium, orthodoxy or heterodoxy. Put those terms in place of "liberal" and "conservative", and I think you'll see the actual basis of the respective complaints. The so-called conservatives are most likely complaining about heretical sermons, feminist nuns, gay rights advocacy, indifferentism, and all the rest of the panoply of outrages and active destruction that suffering Catholics have to deal with. The so-called liberal complaints most likely have to do with priests who show too strong a devotion to Catholicism, and too little dedication to the Democratic party agenda and progressive overthrow of our Faith. The point is that the real situation is not as rosy as it looks from the vantage point of the Cathedral, and if the Archbishop really doesn't know that, he should quickly inform himself, instead of defending the indefensible.

Catholic Church Shopping Part VIII: Little Italy

2010-02-01T13:36:00.004-05:00

The next stop on the tour was a big church in a North Shore neighborhood of Staten Island known for its narrow, labyrinthine streets and its large Italian population. This neighborhood is home to a famous Marian shrine that is an official national historic site, where a big holy day celebration is held every year, which for some reason involves a lot of gambling and dancing to the oldies. Anyway...

The parish has been around since 1902, but the old church was replaced in 1957 with a tan brick structure, whose design and materials I have seen used in other boroughs around that time period. The Vatican II era church must have thought that Catholics were too spoiled by all those centuries of beauty and grandeur, so it decided that we needed to look at blank brick walls as penance. As a nod to the past, and to avoid total disorientation, a large Byzantine-style mural was painted in the apse. I noticed an Italian flag beside the altar, but no American or Vatican flag, but I may have overlooked them. The Stations of the Cross seemed to have been taken from the old church. The only bulletin was in Italian.

The pastor of this church, at only 38 years old, is already a real big shot in this archdiocese. He's a professor of canon law at the seminary in Yonkers and was recently appointed judicial vicar of the Interdiocesan Appellate Tribunal, which is the highest court in the state for annulment cases. I believe it was he who said the Mass I attended, as the priest was young and had an air of leadership.

It seemed surprisingly sparse for an 11:00 Mass, with maybe around 75 people. The organist sang from the usual canon of modern church music, which is to say that the hymns were nothing remarkable. They were not the worst she could have chosen though. Surprisingly for a Catholic church, a few people were actually singing along. She probably didn't want to push her luck though, so she didn't sing more than 1 verse of each hymn.

The only thing to remark on about the Mass was that the sound system was screwy, as is usually the case in Catholic churches. Like some primitive tribe cowering before their first encounter with a missionary's flashlight, the concept of electronic amplification seems incomprehensible and terrifying to Catholics. The sound system is usually just terrible in Catholic churches while, as I've often complained, the tiniest storefront church has enough hardware to host 50 Cent. We just don't seem to get it. The priest's lavalier worked fine, but the microphone at the pulpit was so bad that the lector was almost inaudible. We were able to make out when he stopped speaking, which was the only way we knew when to give the responses.

As for the sermon, the priest chose to speak about that day's second reading, which was Paul's famous disquisition on love (as an aside, the lector not surprisingly chose to read the short form of the reading. I will spare you my rant on that subject). The priest had a good speaking voice. However, his subject- love- was a difficult one, being so broad, and I'm afraid he wasn't up to the task that day: love, love, love, blah blah blah, love is a charism, love is a choice, etc. More vague and ethereal platitudes. I didn't follow any of it.

Incredibly, this Mass was yet another sprint to the finish line. Some local priests seem to be trying to break some sort of record. I timed it at 35 minutes.

Mt. Manresa

2010-01-30T17:36:00.015-05:00

In our continuing pictorial documentation of Staten Island's Catholic institutions, today we'll look at Mt. Manresa Jesuit retreat house. I've previously written about some of the scandalous activities that go on at this place, but today I'm only dealing with images and history.

In 1911 the Jesuits purchased one of Staten Island's grand estates for the purpose of establishing a lay retreat center, as had become popular in Europe. In addition to the original 20-bedroom mansion, the Jesuits constructed several new buildings through the years. In 1964, the old house was knocked down and replaced with a modern conference center/office building/dining hall. A more complete history can be found here. The center continues to host a wide range of retreats and public programs. My class went there for a retreat in high school and I remember being very impressed by the facilities. I would not describe them as opulent, but to me the dark wood furniture, the well-stocked library, the soft arm chairs and the tasteful, serious decor was the last word in comfort, such as you would find in rectories, traditional funeral homes or the club room of a Victorian gentleman. If a man was going to give his life to the Church, I thought, this was the way he deserved to live. Anyway, here are some pictures.

The original mansion:

Its dining room:

The entrance:

The water tower, dating from the 1800s:

Shealy Hall, I believe:

Stairway up the hilltop...

...which has a great view of the Manhattan skyline

Entrance to the Sacred Heart grotto:

Catholic Church Shopping Part VII

2010-01-26T17:13:00.006-05:00

The next place I visited was a 101 year old church in an old section of Staten Island whose many well-preserved buildings give the place a late-19th century atmosphere. The church was absolutely gorgeous and looked like it had been built yesterday. I expect that there had recently been a lot of money expended to gussy the place up. Since it was named after one of the most popular Italian saints and was located in a heavily Italian neighborhood, I was surprised to see so many Polish names on the stained glass windows as well as a Polish-American pastor. A relatively small church, it was filled with over 100 people at a noon Mass.

Most of the people entered their pews with the sadly familiar one-quarter genuflection and the sign of the blob. The "choir" consisted of one young lady who sang syrupy modern hymns to the accompaniment of a guitar. Her voice was fine, but the effect was that of listening to a minstrel at a Renaissance Faire. I almost expected her to break into "tra-la-la" and "hey nonny nonny" at any moment. There was no way I was joining in such an effeminate sing-along, especially since NO ONE else in the entire church was singing, except for a few older women under their breath.

The priest was a stocky middle aged man who rushed through the Mass in 35 minutes with the tone and attitude of a bored telemarketer reciting the same sales script for the thousandth time. The readings and Gospel received the same treatment, and he even opted (no surprise) to use the "short form" of St. Paul's famous analogy about how the body of the Church has many parts. As an aside, I ask again- WHY do we even have a short form of Bible readings??? Are we Catholics so impatient to get out of church that we must truncate the Word of God, just so we can leave 30 seconds sooner? This is pure insanity.

As for the sermon, it was obvious that the priest fancied himself something of an intellectual, as he quoted Alan Bloom, Machiavelli, cited a wide range of historical incidents, introduced philosophical conundrums and enlightened us with current Biblical historiography. Unfortunately, his rambling disquisition lacked any coherence or relevance and, like most Catholic sermons, was vague, nebulous, disjointed, superficial and thus completely useless and discouraging.

He began by bemoaning the modern embrace of cultural relativism, which has the effect of breaking down any notion of good and evil. If all cultures are equal, then what would we do if we were the British governor of India and witnessed a Hindu widow about to engage in suttee? Or, in another example, if the U.S. lost the War of 1812, what would we do if we were the British governor of a conquered South Carolina and witnessed blacks being bought and sold? We have to believe in objective truth, Father declared, or else we would have to tolerate these evils! He then went into a bizarre digression about the lives and careers of the 4 Evangelists. (According to him, Mark was always getting rejected by the Apostles, like a little brother). His point, I think, was that the miracles of Jesus were witnessed and objectively attested and thus we should realize that Faith is not a blind leap but a logical extrapolation from the facts. Great point. But what did all these discombobulated ideas amount to? The assertion that there is objective truth? That Jesus Christ performed miracles? For crying out loud! Why would you waste your time arguing these basic truths to a group of people sitting in church worshipping Jesus Christ????? These truths are so so obvious that it is almost insulting to actually give a sermon on the topic. If they are mentioned at all, it should only be as the basis of a sermon on much deeper subjects. We wouldn't be here if we thought that Jesus was a fictional character! We wouldn't be here if he thought that there was no objective truth! We are neither atheists nor 5 year olds! On what planet do our priests live??? What kind of Catholics do they expect to produce, feeding us spiritual pap like this week after week, year after year, decade after decade??

On a positive note, the church had the best sound system of any Catholic church I've ever been to. I could actually hear the priest talk, which was a welcome surprise. The next progression would be to hear something worth listening to.

Church Shopping Part VI: Sts Currier & Ives

2009-12-27T17:45:00.003-05:00

The next congregation I visited was located within a historical village populated by restored 17th, 18th and 19th century buildings. The church itself was built in 1862 in the Romanesque Revival style and is a New York City landmark. The antiquity and charm of the church and its surroundings bring to mind sentimental scenes of Christmas caroling, riding in a one-horse open sleigh, and other images of old-time Americana, hence my nickname for the parish.

It is a beautiful brick church with wonderful stained glass windows. There were about 150 people crowded in at a noon Mass, with room for about 40 more. A young lady wearing a choir robe led the congregation in the entrance hymn of Adeste Fidelis- in Latin and English. She had a heavenly voice, one of the best I've ever heard. A good percentage of the congregation was even singing along with her, but that Catholic miracle can perhaps be explained by the fact that it was Christmas carols we were singing. People like and know those songs. The real test comes during the rest of the year, when most congregations usually sit mute during the hymns, and usually for good cause owing to the unsingable nature of most modern hymns.

The Mass proceeded without incident. There were only 2 things I shall comment on. The first was during the second reading. The reading was Col: 3:12-21, and the young lady reading it (not the singer) rather conspicuously omitted the last few sentences, which contained Paul's famous admonition for wives to be subordinate to their husbands. It made me wonder why these few sentences were left out. Is this a politically correct parish, where they dare not offend the feminists? Why do Catholic misalettes even offer a "short form" of this reading, or any reading? Are we ashamed of the Word of God? Are we looking for any angle to make the Mass go faster, even by 30 seconds? The whole thing was absurd.

The second thing I'd like to comment on is, of course, the sermon. The priest appeared to be Filipino, and spoke English with a bit of difficulty. He started off reiterating, almost word for word, that day's Gospel reading. That really gets under my skin. WE JUST HEARD THE GOSPEL! WE'RE NOT IDIOTS! WHY ARE YOU REPEATING IT??? As it was the feast of the Holy Family, he then went on to lament the disintegration of so many families today and attributed that state of affairs to the fact that families don't spend much time with each other nowadays. O....K....I suppose that is one cause of the problem. Would you care to offer a solution, Father? Since one of the conspicuous sins of our Staten Island community is crass consumerism, would you care to admonish us with the prophetic role of your office and declare that mothers should stay home to take care of their children, that fathers do not need to work like slaves to buy million dollar McMansions, 4 Escalades and every ridiculous gadget that Best Buy dangles in front of our faces? Unfortunately, he let a potentially edifying point remain undeveloped and descended into platitudes. He went on to tell us that the Holy Family is the ideal family because Joseph worked hard to support his family, Mary was holy, and Jesus didn't embarrass his parents by flaunting His divinity over them. I kid you not. Like pretty much every Catholic sermon I've ever heard, it was vague, meaningless and thus without any value whatsoever. I suppose I should thank God that it was merely banal, and not heretical or moronic.

Nevertheless, it seemed like a vibrant parish with good people. Perhaps I'll come back for a second look.

Church Shopping Part V: Roman Senate

2009-12-13T14:48:00.008-05:00

The next stop on the tour was a stately North Shore church that resembles the ancient Roman Senate, - a high ceilinged rectangular building with an apse and slightly jutting columns against the walls. Except for primitive, 1960s-style Stations of the Cross, the decoration was traditional and admirable. It had beautiful stained glass windows and old fashioned statuary. There were banners on the walls, but unlike the felt rectangles bedecked with warm and fuzzy socialist slogans ("We are Church", etc.) you find in modernist parishes, like the Gymnasium, these banners displayed Renaissance art. Whoever decorated this church had some taste.

There were about 130 people, racially mixed, at a 12 noon Mass on a rainy Sunday. The processional set the tone for the entire experience of Mass at this parish. The organist asked us to join in singing a particular hymn, but did not tell us where to find it in the hymnal and then didn't even play the organ or sing anything. It was like something from Waiting for Godot. The snowy-haired priest looked like the priest from Everybody Loves Raymond. He used a cane and hobbled up the aisle behind his altar girl, looking like he was going to topple over at any moment. The first part of the Mass went by uneventfully, and then the priest limped over to the pulpit to give his sermon.

He had a surprisingly youthful voice and knew how to establish a connection with the congregation by looking at us and speaking somewhat conversationally, but not informally. Unfortunately, his sermon was as disjointed and banal as those of most other priests. He began by talking about an infomercial for an exercise machine he had recently seen which promised results with only 20 minutes of use each day. Father then mused how much spiritual benefit we would obtain if we devoted 20 minutes each day to God. That was a GREAT point- the next logical step would have been for him to expand upon it and tell us HOW to commune with God each day and gain those spiritual benefits. Sadly, his idea remained undeveloped and he abruptly veered off onto an anecdote from Grandma's favorite newspaper columnist, Irma Bombeck. She had written about an incident in church where she witnessed a mother admonish her child for smiling at the other congregants, which led Father to speak vaguely about our "God of Love" who wants us to be happy, and how we should be joyfully celebrating the upcoming birth of Christ. His peroration was memorable to me, as it included both a Scriptural quotation (unusual for a Catholic sermon!) and an insipid, sentimental misinterpretation of said Scripture. He said that when we go to Heaven, we want God to say "Well done, good and faithful servant" (MT 25:21) BECAUSE "You made my people smile"! That sermon certainly made me smile (for the wrong reasons) but I'm pretty sure that our eternal reward will not be based on our ability to amuse others.

The next portion of the Mass was even more entertaining. After his sermon the priest went to the altar and waited as one of the ladies went to the pulpit and read off the names of the winners of the church raffle! She then announced that there would be supermarket gift cards for sale in the foyer after Mass. Why are modern Catholics so clueless about...well, everything??? In what universe is it considered sensible, appropriate or reverent to interrupt a 2000 year old religious ritual in order to announce the winners of a game of chance and hawk products to the worshippers? Do they not realize the effect that has??

Recognizing the priorities of the parish, the ushers respectfully refrained from taking up the collection while the lady was announcing the raffle winners, and waited until the priest began to say the blessing over the gifts. The rest of the Mass proceeded with similar unsynchronized confusion- over when to stand and sit, silence during the responses, etc. What was most surprising was that the entire Mass lasted only 30 minutes. I'd never witnessed a Mass with a sermon last only a half hour. The rain on my coat hadn't even dried yet.

Despite all the bumbling, I left with a good feeling about this parish. I can't say why, because if I had witnessed some of these things at other parishes, with other priests and other people, it would have set me off. Maybe it was because I felt like the people and the priest were genuine, sincere, and faithful. I have no explanation for my positive reaction, but I liked the place.

Catholic Church shopping Part IV: the Gymnasium

2009-11-22T11:41:00.003-05:00

I have written before about the next church I visited. This large parish on the South Shore has torn down its old church and is building a humongous modernist monstrosity in its place. For the time being Mass is held in the school gymnasium. There's really not that much to say. I didn't see any bulletins, so I can't comment on the life of the parish. It was a mid afternoon Mass and still drew a lot of people, perhaps 200. There is a large school connected to the parish, so in those situations I wonder if Mass attendance is mandatory for continued enrollment. The people certainly didn't seem like they wanted to be there. The altar was located at half court, against the wall, which gave it a theatre-in-the-round feel. The Indian priest gave a convoluted, uninspiring and unmemorable sermon. He spoke at length about what Hindus believed and said some vague things about that day's reading from the Book of Revelation. The music was played with skill by some musicians on the stage. and consisted of the post Vatican II second tier standards that grate on your nerves after a lifetime of hearing them. One thing I will remember about this church is that the congregation was perhaps the most slovenly group of people I have ever seen. Perhaps one or two older folks were dressed appropriately, while the majority were clad in jeans, t-shirts, sweatpants, shorts, and velour jogging suits (the uniform for Staten Island women) . The Gymnasium proved to be yet another disheartening experience for me.

As Sting sang, "Don't stand so close to me"

2009-11-22T11:23:00.005-05:00

This photo in the current issue of Catholic New York accompanied an article about a diocesan pastors' convention. I've made sardonic references on this blog to the "traditional Catholic seating pattern" which means sitting as far away from everyone else as possible. This picture illustrates why no one has ever tried to tackle this pernicious habit of ours, which tells the world that we fear and dislike each other: if the pastors are doing it amongst themselves, why should the laity do any different?? Here we have a Mass for priests only, with the majority crowded in the back of the church, perhaps because they couldn't find a pew all to themselves, like the priests in the foreground. Maybe they're afraid of the non-existent swine flu plague. I've been to several churches recently that have canceled the handshake of peace due to swine flu fears. Maybe they'll cancel Mass next. What a joke.

Father and his boyfriend.

2009-11-12T19:44:00.002-05:00

The Advance ran an obituary the other day for a priest, Rev. Daniel Cassiero, who had served in several Staten Island parishes and schools during the 70s, 80s and 90s. Passing away at the fairly young age of 66, the Advance detailed the various milestones of Father Cassiero's life and career. Towards the tail end of the standard obituary verbiage, the following bombshell was inserted nonchalantly:

"Father Cassiero retired from the VA in 2004 and moved to Albuquerque with his partner, Craig Stoebling. While there, he enjoyed volunteering for the VA pharmacy in Albuquerque.

“He served in a variety of ministries, where he was known for his humor and the quality of his preaching,” said Stoebling, his partner of 10 years."

Whoah.

Obviously, these 2 short sentences don't provide too much information, but I think the fact of a gay priest merits some notice and discussion. I have questions. When did he first break his vow of chastity? If it was during his time in the Church, is it possible that no one noticed that he had taken up with a "partner"? And if they did, why was nothing done about it? He served as an Air Force chaplain over the course of 9 years, with a brief interlude as master of ceremonies at St. Patrick's Cathedral. How did this young and obscure priest from the boonies of Staten Island obtain such a prestigious position? Why does the phrase "Lavender Mafia" come to mind? After retiring from the Air Force, he then became a public school teacher in Virginia. That seems very odd. What was the reason for his early retirement and subsequent career as a public school teacher? Why Virginia? He then returned to the Island and taught at a local Catholic high school. How did he explain his unusual career path to whomever interviewed him at Moore? After getting a Masters in social work, he then spent the remainder of his working life as a social worker with the VA. Why? Did he have a religious function there or was his position purely secular? How was that allowed by his superiors? What kind of priest was he? Was he the kind of priest who inspires young men to consider the priesthood? Or was he the kind of effeminate gay priest who repels young men from anything having to do with religion? If he was breaking his vows, and living an unnatural lifestyle contrary to the Magisterium, how faithful and orthodox could his leadership have been? What could his "quality" preaching have been like if his lifestyle was in such contradiction to basic Christian morality? I would be interested in hearing what his former parishioners have to say about that.

I went to the website of the Albuquerque parish that is burying Father Cassiero. The church describes itself as "a multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-cultural inclusive Christian Community." To be charitable, the wording may be unintentional, but "inclusive" is usually a euphemism meaning that "the rainbow flag flies here".

And again, to be charitable, the quality of journalism at the Advance has sunk to such horrendous levels that their inept grasp of the English language may have misrepresented Father Cassiero's business partner as something totally different. Judging from his Facebook page, I would say not though. (Note- the Facebook page has been changed- here is the original picture:
It took the sex abuse Gethsemane of recent years for the Church, led by Benedict XVI, to take positive action against the pernicious cancer of homosexuals in the priesthood. God willing, the Pope's directives will be effective. How many actively gay priests are still in the priesthood is anyone's guess, although I've heard too many high-pitched lisps and slack morality from the pulpit to think that the number is negligible. No doubt we'll see more reports in coming years of priests retiring to sunny climes with their boyfriends and an Archdiocesan pension. But let us not respond to these monstrous revelations with either resigned silence or meaching tributes to their sense of humor, their prize winning gardenias or the delicate skill with which they threw a tea party. Let us name them for what they are: liars, con artists, oath-breakers, deceivers, and a Fifth Column of corruption within Christ's Church.

Another hidden treasure on Staten Island

2009-11-09T07:20:00.006-05:00

The Advance reported on a convent that I myself only recently found out existed on Staten Island. The "Sister Disciples of the Divine Master, a branch of the Pauline family" has a fairly large spread hidden on a small side street off of the top of Bradley Avenue. I only discovered it by accident and no one I know had ever heard of it until I told them. I had meant to investigate it and take some pictures but never had the chance. The large fence surrounding the property also seems to discourage snooping. However, the sisters are making an attempt to be hospitable and are opening up their chapel to visitors Monday through Saturday, 1-6. On the first Sunday of every month they also host a prayer hour from 3-4, followed by a coffee and cake social. The article states that they make a living weaving and embroidering liturgical vestments.

St. Francis Seminary

2009-10-24T10:39:00.010-04:00

In our continuing pictorial documentation of Staten Island's Catholic institutions, today we'll look at the St. Francis seminary, now known as the St. Francis Center for Spirituality (!) Located in bucolic splendor at the highest point of Staten Island, on ritzy Todt Hill, I really have little information about it except that it was once a Franciscan seminary. One source says that it has been there since the 1800s, although the main building looks somewhat more recent. It once encompassed 24 acres of beautiful woodlands that are very conducive to spiritual introspection and inner peace, but with the modern lack of vocations, the land was put on the market in the 90s. Fearing the ugly, generic overdevelopment that plagues the rest of the island, our environmental groups made a stink and pressured the state into buying and preserving the land, while the Franciscans retained ownership of the buildings.

Some Franciscans still live there. One, a Father Ed Holden (not sure if he's still there), used to have a weekly column in the Advance in which he answered religious questions from correspondents. The questions always seemed scripted to me, and the subject matter was usually frivolous ("will my cat go to heaven?"), but sometimes he ventured into quite unorthodox territory (praising Martin Luther, saying we should accept homosexuality, etc.). I was always embarrassed by his column. Another Franciscan who lived there, Fr. Stephen Valenta, was indicted in April by a Texas grand jury on the charge of "compelling" an adult female relative to perform a sexual act on him. The charge sounds bogus though, as the priest is 85 years old and physically impaired. I have seen no updates on the story from our local rag. The Franciscans conduct some very nice programs which are open to the public, although I haven't attended any. I have been to midnight Mass at their beautiful chapel though and was very impressed by the facility. Here are some pictures:

The main building:

St. Francis;

A hillside shrine:

The peaceful pond:

One of the stations of the cross meandering through the hills:

Degeneration of the Jesuits

2009-09-22T23:17:00.007-04:00

The Advance's religion section on 9/19/09 had an announcement about an upcoming workshop at the Mount Manresa Jesuit Retreat House. The one day "Mind, Body, Spirit Workshop" "is designed as an introduction to a holistic approach to total well being and will include talks on 'The Miracle of Dietary Supplements' from Dr. Jerome Charyn; 'Meeting the Noonday Devil,' with Fred Herron, and the interpretation of the art of Mandala, with Sr. Maureen Skelly, S.C.H. The day will also include yoga with Fr. Edward J. Quinnan, S.J. and tai chi with Victoria Drumbakis." A $40 donation is suggested.

This story really needs no commentary. The disloyal Jesuits are up to their usual subversion of the Catholic Church. Here we have a major Jesuit institution sponsoring a workshop on New Age, Buddhist and Hindu religious exercises and meditation techniques. Even if it could be argued that these are neutral activities, I would ask what business do the Jesuits have in devoting their time and resources to such things? Have they forgotten their mission to win souls for Christ? Or are they now in the life coaching and personal training businesses?

However, at least some of these activities are not neutral; Mandala is a meditative art having "spiritual and ritual significance in both Buddhism and Hinduism". Yoga as well is a meditative practice associated with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. And to what is all this meditation directed? Certainly not Christ. These devotions were invented to draw the soul to Hindu deities or to at least put one's soul in an spiritual state conducive to the beliefs of those religions. If the Jesuits want to teach silly fat women how to de-stress, they should tell them to say the rosary. For crying out loud, their own founder, Ignatius Loyola, wrote the Spiritual Exercises, a landmark guide to spiritual discipline and transcendance. It is a major scandal that what was once our Church's premier order has not only turned to Eastern religion for answers but is leading the flock there as well. These wicked shepherds will have a lot to answer for on Judgement Day.

The motto of the Jesuit order is Ad maiorem Dei gloriam (to the greater glory of God). The question today is which god or gods the Jesuits seek to glorify? You Jesuits "..hast gone a whoring from thy God..." (Hosea 9:1); it is time for repentance.

Sacred Heart of Jesus dumped by Catholics

2009-08-31T11:05:00.005-04:00

This is kind of a weird story about mixed-up Catholic priorities and general confusion in our Catholic institutions. This article talks about how the Archdiocese is putting pressure on Catholic school principals to stop half day Fridays in the Catholic schools. It has long been a tradition here that Catholic schools would take their students to Mass on the first Friday of the month, in keeping with the devotion to the Sacred Heart, and then be dismissed early. I remember the practice in grade school, and how much I enjoyed those days. I like attending a "special" Mass with all my classmates and then going home around 10:30. Since we all lived in the neighborhood and had someone at home waiting for us, there was no inconvenience: it was like a feast day.

Now, because a bunch of self-centered soccer moms find it annoying to deal with their kids a mere three hours after dumping them off at school, the Archdiocese wants to discontinue this age-old tradition. However, it seems like the tradition had been gutted long before this. Judging from the article, the schools apparently don't even take the kids to Mass anymore. They let the students out early so they can supposedly honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus on their own time! (Like that will happen). So basically, the kids go to school for 3 unproductive hours and go home. There are so many troubling aspects to this story, but I'll only address a few.

First, I find it extremely disturbing that the schools seem to have stopped taking the students to First Friday Mass a long time ago. Did it get to the point where parents were objecting to the fact that their kids were actually participating in religious activities during school hours? Have Catholics ceased to find value in devotion to the Sacred Heart? I don't understand why mandatory Mass attendance was stopped. Secondly, the current system whereby students are released early on Fridays, without having attended Mass during school hours, is a blatant deception on the part of the Catholic schools. After all, if the schools really wanted the students to be able to take advantage of the promises of the Sacred Heart, which involves receiving the Eucharist on First Friday, then they would allow them to come in later, not leave earlier, since weekday Masses are generally held in the morning! So, letting the kids out early without having taken them to Mass is an obvious con and is, in reality, simply some sort of perk for teachers or a bureaucratic shenanigan of some kind. It obviously has nothing to do with the Sacred Heart devotion. Third, the parents quoted in the article seem primarily upset about lost school hours and not getting their money's worth, not that their kids are being deprived of an immense supernatural benefit. This attitude seems typical among modern Staten Island Catholic parents. Materialist to the core.

What should be done is to reinstate mandatory attendance at First Friday Mass. It is a disgrace that the schools don't do this anymore. Jesus Christ Himself made very concrete promises about this devotion. We would have to be fools not to do everything in our power to abide by that. As for the half day, I think it is preferable that the custom remains. It sets the day apart as something holy, almost like a Sunday. However, I understand that for a lot of schools, where many students live at great distances and many mothers work, it may not be practicable to have half days. Therefore, principals should make a decision based on their school's special circumstances, but always keeping in mind that the spiritual aspect should take precedence.

Positive News

2009-07-27T19:48:00.004-04:00

I was shocked to read this story about how the Archdiocese of Boston, MA is reviving the practice of Perpetual Adoration after 40 years. Yes, you read that right- in that city of over 600,000 people- in an archdiocese of over 1.8 million Catholics- in that Mecca of American Catholicism, the basic Catholic devotion of Perpetual Adoration has not been practiced in 40 years! It's no wonder that Boston has been electing baby killers and degenerates for the same period of time. It's no wonder that Boston was Ground Zero of the abuse scandal. It's no wonder that people can honestly speak about the "collapse" of Catholicism in Boston. Our brethren up there must be either immoral, amoral or just plain stupid. But I digress. I bring it up to thank God and give well-deserved accolades to the Guardians who keep the flame alive at Staten Island's Perpetual Adoration chapel at Alba House. I'm so proud that a remnant of Catholics in our little bedroom community can perform such a beautiful act of worship and sacrifice while mighty Boston had seemingly become the church that forgot Christ. Bravo!

The "Confession Crisis" and James 3:1

2009-06-07T21:00:00.000-04:00

This isn't technically a Staten Island story, but I just have to comment on it. A Vatican big shot is complaining that the Sacrament of Confession has been in "deep crisis" for decades and he blames the problem on the faithful, who have become unable to distinguish between good and evil. I am just flabbergasted at the ignorance and arrogance of such an ivory tower pronouncement, which just goes to show how out-of-touch with reality our hierarchy is. I wonder if these cardinals and bishops ever have any actual contact with real people or real parish life, or do they exist in some amber-preserved, perpetual 1964, where they read Kung and Rahner and eagerly await the fruits of the aggorniamento.

The concept of sin has practically been banished from Catholic discourse in the United States. When was the last time you heard a priest even mention the word? All we hear from the Father Feel-Goods of the American church is pablum of the "God-is-love" variety. Even in connection with something like abortion, on which the Church is quite vocal in opposition, the women who murder their own babies are treated like innocent victims. And when blatant public sinners like Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry, who are accomplices in the deaths of millions of babies, receive Holy Communion from the hands of our nation's bishops, what are we being told about the need for Confession? Sin obviously doesn't exist, so what need is there for repentance?

This "crisis" is nothing more than another symptom of the dumbing-down of American Catholicism, which can be laid square on the doormat of the clergy. If you meet American Catholics under the age of 60 who know anything about the Faith besides how "accepting" God is, I'd bet the farm that most of them are either autodidacts or they were catechized by older, well-informed relatives. Our priests have simply abdicated their duties. Sheep naturally go astray, but it is the job of the shepherd to guard them vigilantly and, if necessary, to keep them in the flock with pastoral correction: sometimes by the sound of his voice, sometimes with the crook. Unfortunately, our shepherds are too distracted by things like ecumenical games, political causes (of the Left and Right), active dissension, aesthetic fripperies (church improvements, ecclesiastical accoutrements) or just the languid enjoyment of a comfortable sinecure.

As I pointed out, the priests are petrified of even mentioning things like sin, Hell or repentance anymore. However, Confession is still available at most churches for those "in the know". But even in this, look at how the priests discourage this Sacrament. In every single church I know of, Confession is only offered late on Saturday afternoons for, at most, a half hour! At some churches, the scheduled time is only 15 minutes! Just visit the links to Staten Island churches on the side of this blog. This is insane. First of all, I don't think Saturday afternoon is a very convenient time for most people. That's really the one day working people have to attend to their private affairs, whether it's home repair, banking, entertainment, family activities, etc. I'm not saying it shouldn't be offered on Saturday- it should, since we need to be prepared to receive the Eucharist the next day- but there should be other times it is available and certainly for longer than a half hour. Churches used to offer Confession before every Mass on Sunday. Other churches offer it during the week.

Our Lady of Victory in downtown Manhattan is a great example. Confession is offered every weekday from 8am to 9am, from 12 noon to 1:30 pm and from 5:00 pm to 5:30. These times make it very convenient for workers who want to go to Confession but who don't want to go out of their way on Saturdays to do it. In addition, the ample opportunity offered by this church makes me feel encouraged to take advantage of it. When a priest only offers this Sacrament for a half hour each week, it looks to me like he's only doing it grudgingly and I would thus feel uncomfortable and self-conscious about going to him. If the dearth of penitents is the excuse a priest gives for the paltry time he devotes to it, I guarantee that if a priest would actually start emphasizing the need for this Sacrament and explaining the benefit one gains from it, he would have his hands full hearing Confessions.

So, please spare me the laity-bashing. If we've gone down the wrong path, it's because our shepherds have been lax. "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more severely than others." James 3:1

My Eastern Sojourn

2009-06-07T18:50:00.004-04:00

After leaving the Bunker, I serendipitously found myself driving by Christ the King chapel in Port Richmond. This little "mission chapel" is attached to St. Mary of the Assumption church, which is a about a mile away and which is now predominantly Mexican. I don't know why or when this little chapel was created, but it's always been fascinating to me. There's nothing else like it on Staten Island, to my knowledge. When we've built churches, we've built them big. The only small chapels we have are connected with a church, a school or a larger Catholic institution. However, this chapel was at least a mile away from a church and didn't look like it could fit more than 50 people. Was it perhaps built for the private use of a retired bishop or a wealthy Catholic family? Maybe some savvy priest snatched it up on the cheap from some insolvent Protestants? Whatever the story was, it's always had an allure for me, since I have never seen it open in my entire life. However, this Sunday it was.

As I drove by, I noticed a brown-skinned man walking into the building. I saw my opportunity and parked the car. I figured it was a Spanish Mass, since the neighborhood is heavily Mexican and I noticed on the sign outside that the chapel hosts some Spanish Masses. Nothing much really surprises me anymore, but I have to say that I genuinely experienced shock when I walked through that door.

Through a thick cloud of incense, I beheld a congregation of about 30 Indian people listening to a sermon by a priest bedecked in a robe that looked like something out of the Arabian Nights. Judging by the style of the women's saris, it was obvious they were Indian. The priest's language and cadence also seemed familiar to me from Bollywood movies. I unobtrusively chose the last pew, but only after I sat down did I realize that the church was gender segregated and I had sat on the women's side. I was feeling too self-conscious to get up and change sides though. I was the only non-Indian there and received more than one double-take.

However, I did not feel unwelcome. I assumed that these people belonged to one of the Church's Eastern rites, so I felt like I was still worshipping with fellow Catholics, despite the exoticness of the ritual. Believe it or not, the priest actually preached one of the better sermons I'd heard in a long time. Perhaps to accommodate the American guest, he alternated languages as he preached, just like they sometimes do in Bollywood films. He was passionate about his subject and spoke at length and at some detail about the cooperation of grace and free will in salvation. His sermon was a happy mixture of the theological and the concrete. I was halfway thinking about joining this church, as you just don't get this kind of adult-level discourse from the pulpits of American Catholic churches. The traditionalism of the worship was also gratifying.

The priest faced away from the congregation, as used to be done in the Catholic Church until the 1960s. I imagined that the liturgy was probably quite ancient, since I know it was Thomas the Apostle who evangelized India. It would be hard to conceive of all the problems of Latin rite experimentation taking place here. The very thought of altar girls, hippy guitarists, pandering liturgical democratization, clown Masses, et al would probably be unimaginable to these people. That's the safeguard of Tradition, that what is true and valuable will be preserved and passed down. We Latin Catholics turned the very heart of our faith over to revolutionaries in the 1960s and look what's happened to us. I would have preferred to receive the Faith of my ancestors than the experimentation of leftwing clerics.

The music was sung by the congregation a cappella. They were quite a bit off at times, but it didn't really matter; they weren't on American Idol. Their singing was an act of worship, and they all participated. Strangely enough though, the priest seemed to abruptly cut them off a few times, but I don't know why. Most of the liturgy, excepting the Our Father and a few other things, was in their language but that didn't really matter. I know the basic plot of Christian mysteries: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again; this is my Body, this is my Blood, etc. It's not necessary to understand every word in order to participate in worship. I am entirely unsympathetic to those whiners who never "understood" the Latin Mass. Everyone had a missal with a translation directly next to the Latin of the Mass. Geez, someone attending Mass every week of their life can't help but naturally absorb the Latin. I would think that by the time they were 30, a regular church-goer would be able to comfortably converse with Caesar Augustus. I think the anti-Latin partisans are just intellectually lazy or not actually regular church-goers. There are definite benefits to an unchanging, elevated liturgical language. Although I can't speak from real experience, I think I would even prefer to hear the Mass in Latin than the prosaic American tongue I hear in the agora.

There were certain things about this service I didn't understand. A man and woman went up to the front for what seemed to be a special blessing. As soon as the people received Communion, they began leaving the church or going into a side room for some sort of refreshments. So I asked an older man who exactly they were. And this was where I received my second surprise: he told me that they were an Indian Orthodox church!

Sure enough, a little googling confirmed that they were the Malankara Orthodox church. Over the years, I'd read many times about a Catholic church allowing a non-Catholic religious group to worship in our church, such as when their own church burned down. However, with so many abuses happening today, I wasn't sure if that was really allowed. I thought it was slightly scandalous. Although it's unlikely that any American was going to be converted to the Indian Orthodox church, it still smacked of indifferentism. Would I next see Protestants preaching against us from our own pulpits? So, I emailed the archdiocese.

I figured the head of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs would have the answer, and indeed, he was quick to reply that it was ok. I asked him if he could cite the relevant section of canon law or papal encyclical that allowed it, and he replied that he didn't know and said I should ask a certain other priest in the chancery office, but he gave me no contact info. I felt I was just getting a runaround, so I put my question to the experts-at-large on the internet.

Sure enough, an online priest quoted me numbers 137-142 of something called the Ecumenical Directory, a Papal document published in 1967 and subsequently revised a few times. In it, non-Catholic use of Catholic churches is permitted with the local bishop's approval. So, there you have it. It is allowed, but is it right?

Catholic Church shopping, part III: The Bunker

2009-05-23T11:22:00.005-04:00

Although I was eager to sample a couple of churches this past Sunday, I had to choose only one since almost every place has the same schedule. So I randomly decided to go to a church on our North Shore that I will call "The Bunker".

The parish, which I believe has been around for over 100 years (although the present church was only built in 1968) is one of Staten Island's two traditionally Polish parishes. St. Stanislaus, which I've written about before, is the other. However, while St. Stanislaus is still made up mainly of Polish immigrants, this one seems to be pretty well assimilated and diversified by now. The only visible signs of its heritage were an icon of the Lady of Czestochowa and the names of some of the older parishioners in its meager bulletin.

The church was of modern design. I entered into a brown-paneled foyer almost totally devoid of adornment, with a ceiling so high that I felt like a bug trapped in a tall cardboard box. The bare pamphlet rack was the very picture of depressing, containing only the Sunday bulletin and a local exterminator's business cards. It can be guessed that there was no one there to welcome visitors. The oversized, cathedral-like doors to the church were shut tightly, further emphasizing the cold and unwelcoming atmosphere. When I passed through them, I beheld the ugliest church I have ever been in.

Imagine, if you can, a church without any windows- hence "The Bunker". Actually, there were rows of square-foot, frosted glass blocks lining certain sections of the floor, not that that alleviated the dismal atmosphere in the least. I mean, submarines have periscopes, but no one would claim that they make the vessel feel light and airy in consequence. And to be totally accurate, there was a single, enormous floor-to-ceiling semi-opaque window on one side of the sanctuary which had the aesthetic purpose, I suspect, of casting a dull light down upon the altar on Sunday mornings. However, because the church was insanely designed with Frank Gehry-like asymmetry, the window is hidden from at least 3/4 of the congregation. The church had an extremely high-pitched ceiling, which somewhat resembled that of the Air Force Academy Chapel, but whereas that place contains windows and ornamental variation, the ceiling of the Bunker was an exercise in flat, dark brown monotony, with row upon row of identically colored slats that seemed to go on forever. While the high ceilings of the great cathedrals convey the grandeur of God and a feeling of being under Heaven, this place made me feel like I was trapped in an inescapable pit. It gave the impression of being in a cavern, a feeling which was reinforced by the vast distances at play under the roof. I couldn't even see the people on the other side of this mammoth space. There were about 130 people attending Mass that day, spread out- in traditional Catholic style- as far away from each other as possible.

When I sat down, I read the 2 page bulletin and was surprised at how little activity there was going on in this church, especially considering that the parish operates a grade school and seems to have a lot of parishioners. (I wonder if attendance at Mass is a condition of enrollment). All of the announcements were for social events and entertainment: a dinner dance, a musical, a Chinese Auction. Not only that, but apart from cheerleading tryouts and a fashion show at the parish school, they were all happening at other parishes: I felt like I had walked into a morgue.

The people seemed eager to confirm that impression. I don't believe I saw anyone even pretend to sing a hymn. Hardly anyone even cracked open the misalette to follow the readings. The manner of dress ranged from casual to slovenly to Jerry-Springer-guest. The unshaven man in front of me, wearing some some sort of jogging outfit, even set a new record for irreverent "genuflection". I'm used to the "one-quarter genuflection" and the "sign of the blob" but this guy simply swatted some invisible flies away from the front of his face when he entered his pew. His 3 boys copied him exactly. The general feeling of boredom was palpable, especially among the men. They were yawning, constantly shifting their weight from one leg to another, sighing loudly, leaning wearily on the back of the pew in front of them, staring at the ceiling with undisguised impatience. Not that I didn't feel the same way, but their actions only served to further discourage the rest of us and, in addition, I'm sure their children were taking to heart how daddy really feels about church. No one seemed like they wanted to be there.

At the head of this somnambulistic ceremony, was a priest who made Bob Newhart seem like a dynamic and charismatic personality. Even if he had given the world's best sermon, his soft spoken, droning monotone would have made me want to pull my hair out. However, he did not give a good sermon. Speaking on the Gospel reading of JN 15:9-17, (Love one another as I have loved you), he blathered on with one vague generality after another. The closest he came to being specific was when he said that we should encourage one another. Please Fathers, give us some meat! Tell us how exactly to love one another as Christ loves us. What do we do? Why is it imperative? What does it all mean? Be specific. Be excited. Inform me, inspire me, build up my faith. Enough with the platitudes. Are our clergymen simpletons or do they just think we all are?

Two thoughts on preaching: first of all, priests used to have a saying: "Never underestimate their intelligence but always underestimate their knowledge." The horrible leadership of the American Church of the past few decades has left its flock spiritually disarmed. Our enemies are correct when they say that most of us are woefully ignorant about the basics of our Faith. That doesn't mean we're stupid. Teach us like Jesus taught. He spoke plain, hard truths to adults. Do the same.

Secondly, one of the best public speakers I have known once told me 3 rules for successful communication to an audience, and I've seen his teaching borne out. 1. Speak louder than normal. 2. Speak faster than normal. 3. Move around the stage. This third one may not be applicable to a priest, because the pulpit is a symbol of authority and I've always found it patronizing and pandering when priests would come down among "the people" to give their sermon. However, that doesn't mean that the priest can't be animated, look at the people, move his arms, etc. Public speaking is a completely different thing than talking on the telephone. You're a tiny little figure in front of a large room; you have to speak and act differently in order to get people's attention and be effective.

One last comic observation: the walls of the church were lined with about 20 enormous speakers the size of artillery pieces. They were the kind of speakers you would see on stage at an outdoor heavy metal concert. I thought for sure this was going to be one church where the priest's voice would come through loud and clear. However, in keeping with Catholic tradition of audio incompetence, it was a muffled, crackling and sputtering transmission that came through the sound system, like Father was broadcasting from the space shuttle and speaking through a handkerchief.

I tired to sit through the whole thing, but it eventually became intolerable. The lack of participation, the dreary priest, the oppressive architecture, the atmosphere of boredom and resentment became too much. When the "cool-dude dad" in front of me smiled approvingly on his two sons as they defaced the image of the church's patron saint on the front of the bulletin, I left.

First thoughts on new Archbishop

2009-05-04T00:16:00.006-04:00

I have a generally favorable impression of New York's new Archbishop, based largely on certain stray facts I've picked up from the media, such as his authorship of a book defending clerical celibacy. However, now that he has begun his reign here, we can start judging him on his record. So far, I'm seeing positive and negative.

On the positive side, he has made a surprisingly strong statement of what on the surface seems like actual Catholic faith. According to the April 23rd issue of Catholic New York, he "...promised a ministry centered on renewal of Catholic practice in the Church, saying: 'On my first day as your archbishop I dream that we can reclaim Sunday as the Lord's day, anchored in our faithfulness to Sunday Mass, our weekly family meal with the risen Jesus.' 'For us Catholics,' he said, 'Christ and his Church are one."

I welcome such a sentiment. Besides the usual trials of existence in a sinful world, one of the Church's main problems in this age is the erosion of Catholic allegiance and identity, due mainly to the inculcation of an such an attitude from the clergy. When was the last time you heard a priest preach about the Church's divine authority or even speak the words "One, True Church"? In contrast to previous generations, most Catholics I know identify as such without knowing one good reason they should. This ignorance makes them ready prey for the ravenous wolves of the sects. Dolan's triumphal sentiment is a far cry from that of the outgoing Cardinal Egan, who seemed primarily concerned with the archdiocese's financial situation, and it is the complete opposite of Egan's predecessor Cardinal O'Connor, who preached open heresy and whose guiding spirit was a genial kind of multicultural universalism. Nevertheless, Dolan's words are just words. We shall see whether they will be translated into action.

On the negative side, I see that he's already done homage to the zeitgeist and participated in a seder sponsored by the ADL. He was even presented with a mezuzah, which he is expected to hang on his doorway (why didn't he reciprocate with a gift of a crucifix?). I've expressed my thoughts on these ecumenical stunts in a previous post. Needless to say, I'm not encouraged by this decision. It was not the action of a man who really believes that "Christ and His Church are one".

Easter circus

2009-04-16T10:09:00.015-04:00

The following account of my Easter Sunday experience did not take place at a Staten Island church, but I think it's relevant to our topic because so many Catholics across the country probably went through the same ordeal.

Visiting my family in the hinterlands, we went to Mass at a small church in the hills. As many churches do, all the Sunday Masses were combined into one for Easter. However, this was a physically small church, so the overflow crowd was forced to sit on folding chairs in an adjacent room where they hold bingo games and church dinners. We were able to see the altar and the rest of the congregation through a glass wall, but all feeling of sanctity was destroyed by our oppressively mundane surroundings and our physical separation.

Naturally, the people around me acted as if they were in a dining room. The women gossiped, the men chatted about sports, and the kids acted up. Yes, they quieted down a bit when Mass began, but the awkwardness was palpable. No one kneeled, no one prayed, no one bothered to sing a hymn because- well, how strange would it have been to start doing those things in that glass-enclosed meeting space?! After all, it wasn't like we were in church!

To top it off, the sound system wasn't working, so we couldn't even hear what the priest was saying. I don't know what it is, but it is a common factor in almost every Catholic church that I've ever been to that the sound system is absolutely atrocious. And in the few churches I've seen with relatively decent acoustic technology, half the priests mumble their words or haven't yet figured out how to even speak into a microphone. Not that we're missing much with today's preachers, but I'd still prefer to hear their vapid musings than watch a pantomime show. Contrast this situation with that of the sects, where even the smallest storefront church is wired with enough sophisticated equipment to host Metallica. Why don't Catholics "get" the concept of electronic amplification?

Eventually, an usher applied enough elbow grease to one of the speakers to get it to begin transmitting sound. I was sorry he did. The priest sounded like he just stepped out of La Cage aux Folles and, on a day when he had a rare opportunity to preach to a church full of once-a-year Catholics, he chose to lisp through a 1 minute sermon of breathtaking, record-breaking banality, in which he explained that the purpose of Easter was to make us "happy people". He proceeded to finish up with some cautionary jokes to the children about eating too much chocolate and getting a tummy ache.

He then announced with a big self-deprecating smile that he was going to bless us now, as if that were the funniest thing in the world (and maybe it was, coming from him). However, he couldn't find his aspergillum, so he ran around the altar laughing about this and kept repeating, "I can't find my broom, I can't find my broom", an undignified term for a liturgical implement used to impart a sacramental. When he finally found it, he went up and down the aisles playfully splashing people with the mischievous grin of a 12 year old boy brandishing a Super Soaker. It was obviously all just a big joke to him. Coupled with his effeminacy, his irreverence diminished the authority of his office, the sacredness of the sacramental action he was performing and whatever personal authority or dignity he ever had.

This vignette encompasses a host of issues that seem to generally plague the American Church today, including horrid preaching, lack of gravitas, frivolousness, clerical effeminacy, general incompetence, et al. I don't intend to discuss them all now. To sum it all up, the atmosphere became so unbearable that I was forced walked out of Easter Mass in disgust.

Passover at St. Teresa's

2009-03-26T10:09:00.011-04:00

An "Interfaith Seder" took place at St. Teresa's Roman Catholic church Saturday night, with Catholics, Protestants, Moslems, Buddhists and Hindus participating in the Jewish Passover ritual in the church hall. The pastor of this parish must be a dedicated Judaizer since his church seems to host this event every year.

It's fine to understand other faiths and even to observe their worship for educational purposes, but the problem with these ecumenical stunts is that their guiding spirit, or at least the impression they impart, is indifferentism, i.e. the heresy that all religions are equally true or at least equally pleasing to God. How do these priests participate in these things with a clear conscience?

I realize that a genial latitudinarianism has prevailed in American public life, at least since WWII and especially in pluralistic New York City, but Roman Catholic priests- of all people- should realize the serious, serious implications of Christ's statement that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. (JN 14:6) These kinds of actions make a mockery of our Faith. If you take Christ literally- if you take Christ seriously- the logical conclusion is that Judaism (or any other non-Christian religion) is a false religion and I wonder then by what logical gymnastics a Catholic priest can justify participating in their rituals and praying to their God.

Yes, I know that the "nice" people out there will say that the god of the Jews is our God as well. To a point, we can say that we all have the same deity, since there is in fact only one God who created the universe. But to take the concept too far is to have it degenerate into the kind of mush-brained universalism that politicians are forced to spout in a multicultural society. We should expect better of our priests. When different people attribute completely different characteristics, actions and desires to their version of "God", then they are in fact worshipping different gods. Moslems also claim to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as venerating our Bible, Jesus and Mary. Yet somehow I doubt that even the liberal Christians at this seder would claim that Allah is the same being as our Triune God of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, just because they happen to share some of the same characteristics.

By the same token, the Jewish god is not our own. Their God still honors the Old Covenant and regards the Jews as His Chosen People, contrary to so much of New Testament Scripture. His ethical law is an eye for an eye, not turn the other cheek. He never incarnated Himself on earth and sacrificed Himself on a cross to save mankind from sin. In fact, in the holy books of the Orthodox, the Talmud, Jesus was, among other things, a sorcerer who was condemned by God to be boiled in excrement for eternity. The Talmud also states the Mary was a hairdresser who got knocked up by a Roman soldier, Jesus' actual father. How could we pretend that we worship the same God? And why is it alway such a one-sided affair? When will the Jews be coming to Easter Sunday Mass?

I just happened to have a copy of the Haggadah (the Passover liturgy) lying around. From a quick scan, I don't see anything in it that would explicitly compromise a Catholic priest (such as praying for the coming of the Messiah). Nevertheless, there is no reason for these priests to be doing this. Is it strengthening the Faith of their flocks somehow? Is it bringing non-believers to Christ? I don't see how. On the contrary, it's imparting the message that religion is a matter of personal preference or ethnic tradition, which we should respect but not take so seriously as to let it "divide" us. Just as we would politely eat the exotic dish we might be served at a foreign friend's home, this Interfaith seder teaches us that we should be just as cosmopolitan when it comes to God. Whether we're praying to Allah, Jesus, Yahweh or the Great Pumpkin, we're all rapping with the same God, which is the only important thing. Apparently, relativism is the only objective belief we're allowed to have anymore.

Our late Cardinal O'Connor embodied this spirit during his reign here. He frequently preached that Judaism was as valid a path to salvation as Christ and publicly congratulated people who converted from Catholicism to Judaism. I don't want to be part of a faith like that. I want to be a part of the traditional Catholic Faith that recognized the centrality of Christ in human history and His absolute necessity in human lives. I just wish our priests felt the same way.

Be a Franciscan

2009-03-06T11:47:00.001-05:00

The New York Post recently had an article about a Franciscan ad campaign on the subways. I'm glad to see that the "novel" idea of actively recruiting for vocations seems to be catching on in the Church, at least in NY. The advertising campaign seems to have been a success, as the article states that the Franciscans have had an unusually high number of recruits this year. The economic crisis may have encouraged introspection, but contrary to what the NY Archdiocese's bumbling director of vocations publicly stated (that the Church needs an economic crisis to recruit priests), only 2 of the 45 men who expressed interest were unemployed. The ads ask "Day Shift? Night Shift? How about a Life Shift", which is an excellent slogan. The website is worth viewing.

St. Charles Seminary/Mission Center

2009-03-06T10:12:00.015-05:00

In our continuing series on Catholic institutions on Staten Island, we will now take a look at the former St. Charles seminary, now called the St. Charles Mission Center (whatever that means). Located in ritzy Todt Hill, the seminary is located on the palatial estate of famed architect Ernest Flagg. It was run by the Scalabrians, an order founded in 1887 to "maintain Catholic faith and practice among Italian emigrants in the New World". According to wikipedia, the seminary was operated from 1948 to 1966. The estate is also home to the Center for Migration Studies, a world-famous organization devoted to the study of international migration and immigration policy. Apart from that, I don't really have any more solid information, except that they host a modest Christmas sale every year and the buildings are spectacular. If anyone has more information, please leave a comment. Enjoy the pictures:

The entrance and guard house:

The main house and veranda:

The front view:

Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine:

Shrine to Jesus:

Lady of Lourdes statues in an old tower of sorts:

St. Jude statue. (Sorry, but the phrase "Beam me up, Jesus" keeps popping into my head):

Center for Migration Studies:

I'm not sure if the following buildings were part of the Flagg estate or the seminary but appearance and anecdotal evidence suggests that they were. This "chateau" is located directly across from the seminary:

An older person I know told me that in the 60s or 70s there was a swimming pool in the sunken area in front of the chateau. The local kids would sneak in there at night and sometimes get chased away by the seminarians.

This is my favorite structure and one which I'd love to explore. A medieval
tower on Staten Island:

Priorities

2009-03-02T14:56:00.004-05:00

In my search for Ash Wednesday schedules on Staten Island, I recently came across a couple of news items that I feel reflect badly on our Island churches' sense of priorities. The first one is this story about how some island churches are celebrating Lent. It tells how the Methodist and Presbyterian churches are sponsoring a program called "Living Lent" which sounds like something that correctly focuses on the individual's spirituality in this season of relflection and repentance. In contrast, the Catholic church mentioned in the article, St. Rita's (no link- dead website), is sponsoring a "cultural series" every Friday night during Lent. The first lecture deals with the building of the cathedral in Milan. Future weeks will focus on "St. Paul, St. Terese de Lisieux and St. Thomas' missionary journey in India." Well, it's nice that they decided to throw in some religious subjects after the architectural lecture, but judging from the term "cultural series", I'm sure that all the attendees will receive will be a nice, interesting history lesson about those people. I remember when Catholic churches used to have Stations of the Cross every Friday night during Lent. I recall them as some of my most spiritually moving experiences.

The other story was from 2008. It reported that Our Lady Star of the Se a was celebrating its last Ash Wednesday in their current church, which was built in the 60s I believe. Because the parish has a lot of families, they planned to demolish the "old" 500 seat church and build a modern barn-church with a capacity to hold 1000 people. The cost will be 8 million dollars.

Now, I know that pastor there had a mania for new construction when he led a small parish on the North Shore, where Mass was held in the school gym and he was always agitating to build a "real" church. But I really didn't question his reasoning in this article until I read the user comments below it. Someone asked the obvious question why the priests simply couldn't say more Masses on Sunday if overcrowding was such an issue. Talk about cutting the Gordian knot! According to their website, 4200 people attend Mass every weekend. There are currently 8 Saturday and Sunday Masses. That comes out to 525 people per Mass. This means that one extra Mass on Sunday would solve the problem. Throw in another for safety. There are 5 priests on staff. Surely it's more cost effective for some of the priests to work an extra 2 hours a week than to spend 8 million dollars on a new church when you already have a perfectly good one. I won't even begin to get into what else the money could have and should have been spent on.

The extravagance might have been worth it if they were building a new Saint Chappelle or some other architectural masterpiece, but the new design is brutishly modernistic and resembles nothing so much as the waiting area of a bus station. In the minds of these "geniuses", the Port Authority is an appropriate design to emulate when designing a space where 2,000 year old rituals and religious mysteries are celebrated. I've been to more than a few other churches in Staten Island and New Jersey that have the exact same design, and the feeling of coldness and lifelessness in those places was palpable to me. Even a layman like me knows that form should follow function. In my experience however, function follows form as well. Physical surroundings often instill a certain spirit into the people who inhabit them. For example, housing projects that resemble prisons tend to breed criminality. Institutional architecture encourages institutional behavior. And churches that look like theatres, homeless shelters or warehouses often end up used for just those purposes.

or...

"Christian Unity" at the Basilica

2009-02-27T14:51:00.004-05:00

I signed up for email updates from the Basilica and received an announcement about an interesting event there on January 21st. The Church was hosting an ecumenical prayer service to celebrate the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I had no idea what that entailed, but from my experience with this church, I knew it was going to be an extravaganza. I had to check it out.

When I arrived for the Wednesday evening service, the parking lots were closed and traffic was being directed by the NYPD. Upon entering the church, I was greeted by a Boy Scout and took a seat in the already crowded church. A group of middle aged men from a Catholic charismatic prayer group were playing guitars at the front of the church and singing typical "Christian contemporary" songs. The men were very talented, and the theme of their music was of course religious, but the incongruity of their surroundings (the crucifix, the altar, the holy statues and pictures) with their syrupy, happy-clappy torch songs just filled me with a vague feeling of disgust. I know a lot of people, including Catholics, really love the type of music that has been aptly dubbed "Christian schlock", but I just don't get it. Well, maybe it made the Protestants feel comfortable.

It was obvious they were well represented. I saw women in clerical robes, more African Americans than is usual for this mostly White parish, and rows of people sitting together who all had the same self-conscious, uncomfortable look on their faces. One lady however was standing with hands upraised and swaying to the music.

I opened the program and a small piece of paper fell out. It was a "Call to Prayer for the Churches of Staten Island" and explained that everyone there that night had received the same paper but with the name of different churches printed on them. The Church at the Gateway, a local Pentecostal megachurch, was the one I received. The paper asked that I pray for this church, its congregation and leaders. It recommended that I call this church to ask about prayer concerns, and actually attend a service at this church. This was rich! The Catholic Church was actually telling its flock to attend non-Catholic worship, where they will be exposed to heretical doctrines and proselytization. It might have even been acceptable if the paper had warned the Catholics that a non-Catholic service was not a substitute for our Sunday Mass obligation, but that would have obviously insulted the Protestants. Our Church preferred to lead its people into sin than do that. It was obvious that accomodation was the order of the night for the Catholic Church on Staten Island.

The song sheets contained exclusively Protestant hymns. Since most Catholic music these days is Protestant in origin, melody and spirit anyway, that was no culture shock for me. It was funny though- I suspect that the Catholics had a big hand in choosing the songs, because there were a lot of old Anglican or Methodist hymns on there, like "How Great Thou Art" and "Amazing Grace". It seems like Catholics are under the impression that Protestants still regularly sing classics like that, when they have actually moved on to more modern (and inferior) music. I felt embarrassed singing African American spirituals like "We Shall Overcome". It felt so condescending, like when the out-of-touch White guy on TV tries to connect with his normal Black friend by talking "jive". I can only imagine what the visitors thought.

The service began with hymns and prayers from the various Protestant ministers. The pastor of the Basilica and the elderly co-Vicar of Staten Island got up and welcomed the crowd. I believe they each opened with a lame joke. Why do so many Catholic priests seem like they missed their calling as ham comics? Jokes are fine occasionally, so long as they have a deeper point to make, and the priest moves on to serious ideas. Yet so many priests make the humor the centerpiece of their sermon and then perhaps throw in some vague filler about Jesus. The mysteries of the Faith are hardly fodder for comedy though. Serious occasions call for serious speech, but these guys felt like they only had to play the part of MCs.

Then came the time for the homilies. One Catholic and one Protestant would give a sermon. I figured that both sides were going to call out the big guns, wanting to put their best foot forward and make a good impression in front of the other side. The Catholic priest went first. He began by saying how much he hated the prophet Ezekiel,who was the author of one of the readings. Again with the jokes. He "explained" that he hated him because he was so great, such a hard act to follow, blah, blah, blah. He blathered on for a while in a timid little voice, saying nothing substantial, and finally sat down. I wanted to sink into the floor. Then an African American female minister got up. She too started out badly, stumbling over her words and sounding confused. But she soon found her groove. The sermon was none too deep, and I think she masked the shallowness of the message with the volume of her speech, but the passion with which she boomed out her simple message of trust in Jesus was more powerful than anything the priest muttered that night or probably ever. I imagine having someone burst your ear drums every Sunday probably grows tiresome after a while, but for the unchurched and for people who don't get spiritual inspiration on a regular basis- like Catholics- it was energizing. The priest even realized how he'd been upstaged, because when she sat down next to him after concluding, he turned to her with a sheepish smile and seemed to offer some self-deprecating congratulations.

Interestingly enough, the female minister was the only one to acknowledge that there are real, theological obstacles to Christian unity, when she admitted that she was "challenged" by "this place", meaning a Catholic church. The Catholics, by contrast, acted like all that was needed was social interaction, smiling and singing Kumbaya. In practice however, the Catholics recognize that concessions are needed, and seem willing to do all the conceding. In fact, the Protestants have everything to gain and nothing to lose by these sentimental events. We undermine our distinctive, so to speak, our claim to authority, by granting a type of equality to Protestant "churches". They, on the other hand, do not betray their principles by worshipping with Catholics or including us as fellow "Christians", because their ecclesiological theology rests on the relativistic concept of a "spiritual" Church made up of all different denominations and belief systems, rather than a visible Church in possession of objective truth and endowed with the charism of authority. When we engage in these kinds of ecumenical stunts, we lower the status of the Catholic Church and raise the status of Protestantism. It may make everyone feel warm and fuzzy, but it does no service to the Gospel. If we believe that the Catholic Church was established by Jesus Christ and is protected from doctrinal error by the Holy Spirit, then we are betraying the truth and countless souls by according equality between revelation and the theological anarchy of human opinion. We should not be praying for the success of these churches. We should be praying for their conversion and working to that end.

I later did a little googling and discovered that this "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity" had its origins with a group of Episcopalian Franciscans in New York who converted en masse to Catholicism in 1909. Naturally, one of their main concerns was Christian unity which to them meant unification in the Catholic Church, the One, True Church. They established this week of prayer, meaning that Catholics would devote this week to praying for Christian unity. The idea was later co-opted by liberal subversives in the church, who turned it into the compromised sideshow we have today.

This subversion of Catholicism was evidenced after the main sermons, when a husband and wife set of pastors snuck in a mini-sermon during their prayer period and preached open rebellion against the Catholic Church from a Catholic pulpit. The lady pastor, a angry looking woman, led the assembly in prayer for all the individual churches that we had been assigned in our bulletins. We promised to pray for the churches every day because, she hectored us, "...we're all one church, riiiight???". We then prayed the Protestant version of the Lord' Prayer, with its extrabiblical doxology, sang some songs, engaged in smug self-congratulation, said some more prayers and fled. My taste for the Basilica is growing bitter.

Alba House

2009-02-06T11:08:00.021-05:00

And now for something completely different....

Although we have many beautiful, or at least interesting churches on Staten Island, one thing about the Catholic landscape here that has always fascinated me has been the large number of independent Catholic institutions sprinkled throughout the island. By "independent", I mean to say that they are not churches, their raison d'etre is something other than housing public worship, and they are not connected to any one parish, as are the Catholic schools. I refer to seminaries, convents, religious orders, shrines, retreat houses, charities, etc. Often housed in architecturally fascinating buildings, they've always had an air of mystery about them, existing as they do, away from the public gaze. I am going to pictorially document some of these institutions here, as they might be of interest to both locals and out-of-towners as a historical testament to Staten Island's once pervasive Catholic culture. Also, at the rate we're going, it might not be long before some of them are knocked down by condo developers, converted into group homes for the city or otherwise sold off by the diocese, so we'd better record their existence while we still can.

The first place we're going to visit is Alba House at 2187 Victory Blvd. It is a major Catholic publishing house run by the Society of St. Paul. The members of this order are known as the Paulines (not to be confused with the Paulists) and, as per the example of their order's namesake, their mission is worldwide evangelization utilizing all the communication tools available to modern man. As such, they are a major, multingual publishing and multimedia ministry. Chances are some of your Catholic books were published by them here on Staten Island. Their main building is this renowned structure, redolent of an alien mother ship, which was built in 1968, whether for the Paulines or some other purpose (Lex Luther's headquarters?), I do not know:

Another view:

This building houses an excellent book store on the first floor, where you can see the priests and lay workers preparing shipments in an adjacent room. I assume the other floor are devoted to storage and office space, but I can't say for sure. I went to a Lenten retreat here once, and can tell you that there is a well-appointed room on one of the upper floors for Mass or other gatherings. Other than that, I don't know. However, it does look like a really cool place to explore, especially the rooftop.

I don't know when the Paulines came to SI, but I assume it was some time before this modernist structure was built, since there is an older building in the rear which seems to be the priests' residence:

The residence is connected to the space ship by an elevated covered bridge:

Until recently, this imposing statue of St. Paul stood outside the convent/bookstore of the Daughters of St. Paul (a sister order) in the neighborhood of St. George. The lovely sisters had to move away because of dwindling numbers, so now their property is going to be used to house mentally handicapped people for the city, I believe.

There is another building on the grounds which looks like it was once used as a schoolhouse.

I don't know what it is mainly used for these days, but one section of the building contains a small chapel where Perpetual Adoration is held. You'll have to visit the place to see what it looks like inside, because I wasn't about to take pictures while people were praying.

There is also a beautiful little shrine here, which seems to be a very popular place for people to come pray and light a candle.

A detail of the shrine- statue of St. Peter:

A courtyard of holy statues:

Our Lord:

Our Lady of Fatima:

The Cross, surrounded by the Stations:

If anyone can contribute additional information about Alba House, please leave a comment.

Catholic Church shopping, Part II: The Basilica

2009-01-16T03:13:00.000-05:00

The next stop on my church shopping itinerary was a church on the South Shore. I chose it because of a vague and distant family connection, but I had never been there and had no idea what to expect. Well, with apologies to Pliny the Elder, I must say "Ex Great Kills semper aliquid novi." What an abundance of surprises I encountered at what I will call "the Basilica."

Arriving about a half an hour early, because of my uncertainty as to the time required to get there, I was shocked to see massive crowds of people already streaming into the church and tons of cars jockeying for spaces in the multiple overflowing parking lots. Was this a basketball game or a Catholic Mass? People actually going to church? What marvel would I see next?

As I entered the church I was awestruck by the massive number of people attending. In a rather novel scene (for Catholic churches), the several priests and deacons were actually standing at the entrance greeting the throngs. I found such a practice commendable. As there was a bottleneck there, I had time to examine the foyer, where I found many useful pamphlets on issues people face, such as dealing with rejection, coping with loss, etc. There were also various posters and announcements detailing the many activities in the parish. I picked up a bulletin and was amazed at how much life there was here.

According to this bulletin, the church has over "7000 faithful families", "400 Lay Ministers in the Liturgical, Religious, Education and Family Life Ministries", 6 Masses on Sundays, regularly scheduled novenas, RCIA, Eucharistic Adoration, evangelization groups, senior groups, and tons of charitable endeavors. They have a "faith formation center and group", day care, religious youth groups, etc. The bulletin also contained more than just announcements. It had a mini sermon and a spiritually introspective "Question of the Week". I had already gotten more spiritual nourishment reading this bulletin than I had gotten from many years of Mass attendance at poorly led parishes. My subsequent glance at their website revealed even more religious and communal activities going on at this parish. I was simply gobsmacked.

When I finally found a place in the quickly filling pews, I beheld a massive structure. The building could be described as one big dome with 4 stubby extensions so as to form the shape of the cross. Its size leads me to call it the Basilica. It had a light and airy feel, with plenty of windows and a white and pastel blue color sheme. My guess is that it holds close to a thousand people. It was completely filled.

When Mass began, the priests and deacons led a ceremony at the back of the church. Apparently, a large group of RCIA graduates- both young and middle aged- were ready to come into the Catholic Church. (Real life converts!! Another novelty in a modern Catholic church!) Their names were announced by the priest and then each individual had to state their intention to join the Church. When that was concluded, everyone proceeded to the front of the church where the catechumens were seated in the first row and Mass began.

The music was performed by a large choir and pianist hidden in a section off the altar. Their repetoire seemed a bit too feminine and "un-churchy" to me, like in every other Catholic church, but at least they were technically very proficient. I even noticed people around me singing. (Another wonder!)

The sermon was unremarkably simple, but the priest delivered it with such an air of masculine authority, that it actually had an impact. This was one of those cases where it wasn't so much what was said, but how it was said. The priest acted like a man and spoke like a man. He exuded leadership with every word and gesture. Such qualities may explain why his parish seems to be thriving.

On the way out of Mass, there were young children handing out little cards to people and asking them to pray for the Confirmation class. I took one of the cards and on it was the name of one of the children who is preparing to make his Confirmation. It asked me to pray that he receive wisdom, right judgment, courage, et al. and that he will always realize the presence of God, etc. I thought that was a wonderful idea, and I've been praying for this boy daily.

I was so impressed with this church that I went back for Midnight Mass. This time it was standing room only. It was so crowded that I was actually overheating in my pew and having a hard time breathing. A few things that stood out for me: first, the choir was even more "artistic" this time. They put together some very professional numbers, some of them very modern. They even sang "Mary did you know?", which is a "Christian contemporary" hit. A precocious child sang a solo and three women did a very rarified sort of counterpoint chant of the intro to the nativity story (i.e. "a decree went out from Ceasar Augustus", etc). It was very interesting to listen to, but I was still a bit uneasy. I won't go so far as to say it was wrong, but it felt too much like a"performance". I want good music, but I don't think it's right when the music is so predominant that it overshadows the Mass and becomes the central focus of the entire act of worship. Too many Protestant churches, especially of the non-denominational variety, have fallen into that trap and had their services degenerate into little more than concerts. With our awful music, that danger was one thing we American Catholics haven't had to worry about for a long time! However, with this Midnight Mass, it just felt like the choir- I don't know- demanded a bit too much of my attention.

Again, the sermon was very simple and not what I would describe as great, but the priest spoke so well and with such authority that it was almost like he had a direct line to my heart.

Another thing I noticed were people actually being publicly reverent. In an alcove of the church I saw young women crossing themselves and bowing in front of what I believe was a statue of the church's patron saint or perhaps of Jesus. Lest anyone think that is a Pharisiacal act, done for personal glorification, I can attest that in the Catholic churches I have known, being outwardly moral or showing reverence for holy things- i.e. being a traditional Catholic- is looked at with curiosity or scorn, especially among the young. So I took the young ladies' outward reverence to be a very admirable thing and a very good sign about this church.

The church also offered refreshments afterwards, which I thought was a very hospitable gesture, even though I didn't attend. I think most churches do so after Midnight Mass, but I'm pretty sure it is a weekly practice at this church. I think such gatherings are good for fellowship among members but are also helpful in making newcomers feel welcome. In a lot of Catholic churches, a newcomer could be forgiven for thinking that he'd somehow donned a cloak of invisibility when he walked through the door.

So, in short, even though there were some things about this parish I didn't care for, on the whole I found it to be a thriving, well-led and fervent community of faith. I think every priest in Staten Island, not to mention New York City, should spend some time at this parish and copy exactly what its pastor is doing. I will continue my church shopping, but this parish is definitely in the lead at this point. I never expected I'd find a place like it, I'm very excited about it and could see myself joining if it turns out to be the winner.

Where have all the priests gone?

2009-01-06T17:35:00.006-05:00

The Advance recently ran a front page article on the shortage of priests in Staten Island Catholic churches. Entitled "As Priests Vanish, Parishes Struggle", the article mentioned that in the diocese at large, which includes Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx and 7 upstate counties, we have a total of 1,710 priests serving 2,500,000 Catholics in 400 parishes. The median age of these priests is 61. The article then goes on to interview several Staten Island priests and relate how they cope with their duties and their loneliness. My thoughts:

1. The priests who provided quotes for this hit piece should have told the reporter to stuff it. They should have said they had no comment to make on this internal Catholic matter. What did they think would be the result of these embarrassing public revelations? The only possible outcome of such an article would be to make these priests, and by extension the Church, look pathetic, weak and contemptible. And that's exactly what happened. The priests came off like sad old shut-ins without friends, and the Church was made to seem like something so decrepit and worthless that one would have to be crazy to even be a member, let alone devote one's life to it in the priesthood. Way to go, Fathers. Lesson: you guys have got to get it through your heads that you have to use the media, not let the media use you. The media is not your friend.

2. The fact is that things are bad, yet our priests seem to be reacting to it with strange, bovine apathy. The article details a number of manifestations of the decline. The diocese is "...having to look really seriously at the viability of a church community...". We have 6 parishes staffed by only one priest. St. Paul's school is now looking for a tenant. Assumption school is being rented out to the Staten Island Mental Health Society. In one parish, the priest and the deacon "...rotate the baptismal schedule and first Friday communion calls" and the deacon "does all the wakes and all the cemetery services."! At Assumption, the priest admits nonchalantly that the church doesn't "...have a lot of weddings or funerals or baptisms...". The article even includes a dramatic photo of a priest walking down the aisle of a mostly deserted church at the conclusion of Mass. These symptoms describe a corpse in its death throes. We know what the problem is. What is this diocese doing to solve it?

3. The answer is absolutely nothing except hoping that we can import more African, Indian and Fillipino priests into this country. Now, the foreign priests are a Godsend, but they are not a long term solution in any way. I am thankful to them for saying Mass and ministering the Sacraments, but their "foreigness" and linguistic limitations are often huge obstacles to forming a healthy pastoral relationship with their flocks, as well as with evangelizing non-practicing Catholics or non-Catholic Americans. Their increasing numbers will only increase the gap between clergy and laity and harm the church in the long run. When we first evangelized them, one of the first steps of the mission churches was recruiting natives into the leadership roles of the clergy. That's a prerequisite for a stable, healthy, growing church. A foreign dominated clergy is a stopgap, not a solution.

So, what are our diocese's other plans? Well, according to the head of Priest Personnel, Father Thomas Devery, we should be praying for economic ruin. He explains that "...the downturn in the economy might have a positive side if it increases the number of vocations, as fiscal calamities have in the past." He goes on to say, "[w]e don't do well in times of prosperity.'" Now, I've heard priests say some really stupid things in my life, but this one really takes the cake. In its sheer, unparalleled brainlessness, this is one for the ages. Not only is it historically incorrect, but it is blasphemous in my opinion. What he is really telling the thousands of people who read his words is that the Catholic priesthood is such an undesirable profession that we need a national economic disaster so severe that it would make an $18,000 per year job that requires celibacy seem positively attractive to desperate men. I hate being rude about individual priests, but someone in the Cardinal's office should ensure that Father Devery is never again in a position to speak in public and embarrass our Church.

So basically what this article says is that our local priests are doing nothing to try and increase vocations, which tells us that they don't really care. It gives us a portrait of well meaning but complacent bureaucrats who are doing their best to persevere through a bad situation, but who lack the will/brains/courage to do anything about it except consolidate, cut and close. Well, here's my unsolicited advice.

First- ASK. It seems simple but it's the most effective way of getting things you want in this world, as any salesman, negotiator or small child will tell you. People instinctively want to help other people, but will usually not do so unless directly asked. All through the time of Bush's war, we've had a military recruitment crisis, yet never once did the President go on TV and ask for volunteers. I guarantee that with the moral authority of his office, patriotic men would have responded to his request in our country's hour of need. In a similar way, the Catholic Church doesn't ask its men to accept the burden and honor of the priesthood, even though it always laments the shortage. I guarantee that I could go to all the churches of the priests quoted in the article and never hear one of them preach a sermon about vocations, never appeal to the unmarried men of the parish to give their lives to God, never tell them that the Church wants them and needs them in the priesthood. Do they ever directly invite boys and men into the rectory to talk about discernment and vocation? Do they even inform their congregations about the steps to ordination? I have a friend who recently embarked on the road to the priesthood. That was something that he didn't really consider until he saw an ad for a discernment weekend in the local church bulletin and attended. The monastery that sponsored that weekend went to the public at large and asked for men. You don't get something in this world by doing nothing. Ask.

One diocesan program that seems noteworthy is nypriest.com. When I went to see a movie a while back, I saw their very cool promo during the previews. The tag line was "The World Needs Heroes" and featured some very evocative and inspirational images of priests saying Mass, suffering martyrdom, leading a procession, hearing a prisoner's Confession, etc. The effect was great: it made the priesthood seem heroic, adventurous and challenging: i.e. something a man would want to do. You can see the video here. It's a great branding tool for the masses, but our priests also have to be doing the recruiting on a local, personal level as well.

Be visible and be involved. As unbelievable as it sounds, I've shaken hands with the parish priest of my small church almost every Sunday for the past 10 years, yet he doesn't even know my name and doesn't even care. I've noticed too many parishes like that. The priest may get to know the prominent members on the parish council or choir, but he's satisfied to smile and nod at the rest of the church for a few minutes after Mass each Sunday. It might not be possible to personally know every member of a really huge parish but a priest can at least try. And even if he doesn't become personal friends with me, it shows me he cares when he does extracurricular things for his people like the Bible studies, prayer groups, etc. that I've spoken of before. Boys and men will want to emulate a loving Father like that, who matters in the lives of his spiritual children. They will not want anything to do with a profession that is represented in their lives by a distant and anonymous placeholder who only does the bare minimum.

Be an example. I've spoken before about how our priests discourage us with their horrible sermons, AWOL leadership and generally apathetic and pusillanimous attitudes. No young man is going to want to go into the priesthood if he all he sees there are men who are soft and silly gladhanders, effeminate social workers, ecclesiastical bureaucrats and crypto-Protestants. In other words, believing, faithful men breed spiritual children. The last priest I really had a relationship with was Father D__ back when I was an altar boy in grade school. He could be a jokester, as Irish priests are wont to be, but when it came to the Faith, he was all business. I saw that when we were preparing for Mass, we were preparing for something very serious, and when we were at the altar he acted like we were involved in something divine. He was an ordinary man in a lot of ways, but he was also a priest who made his path seem eminently worthy of imitation because he showed that he walked with Christ in his life and knew his job was fantastic.

Get rid of the altar girls. The prevalence of altar girls is one of the main indications of how frivolous the modern American church is. Being an altar boy, i.e. an acolyte, is practically an internship in the priesthood. A boy sees what a priest does, he wears vestments and takes an active role in the Mass, second only to the priest's. The priesthood becomes familiar to him. I was an altar boy from 6th grade until my teens. And although we certainly didn't always behave like perfect little angels up there, I still felt I was doing something important, glorious and magical. If my path in life hasn't taken me to the priesthood, it's not because it wasn't made attractive to me or I didn't consider it as an option. But what about today's boys? The sanctuary is no longer a male preserve. The altar girl craze began in the 1980s, as feminists and radicals came up with a novel way of assaulting the all-male priesthood. Why else would you admit girls into the anteroom of the priesthood, if not to use them as a battering ram through the parlor door? And what has been the result? I hardly see altar boys anymore. When I do, they're always in conjunction with a female partner. The forced integration must leave the ones who are left with a view of the altar service as something sissified and effeminate. And that view must surely extend to the priesthood itself and the Church.

When our own priests take a defeatist attitude, as they do in this article, they call into question the very legitimacy of Catholicism and even of Christ. Is His Church so shabby that no one wants to be in it? Is our God so weak that He is letting His Church come to such a pass? But we know the fault is not with Him but with us. I was just reading about the great St. John Neumann. He only came to America because European seminaries were so full of priests that he couldn't be ordained! It was like that once and it can be that way again if we just go out and be fishers of men like Jesus told us to be.

Weekend Recollection or Collection?

2009-01-03T15:37:00.000-05:00

Today's (1/2/09) announcement area of the Advance's religious section was something of an improvement over last week's. There was a grand total of one Catholic announcement, which I guess would be a 100% increase.
The item announced that the Rev. Clement Machado, who is apparently some sort of Catholic celebrity on EWTN (I don't watch too much TV), is leading a "Weekend Recollection" (never heard that term before) at the former St. Charles Seminary in Dongan Hills (now called the St. Charles Mission Center). The theme of the retreat will be "The Conversion of St. Paul" and will cost $75 per person for breakfast and- I assume- lodging over 2 and a half days.

Now, all things being equal, $75 for weekend lodging, breakfast and a speaker is not a totally unreasonable price in a secular context, but we're dealing with the Word of God here. I realize that a "workman is entitled to his wages" (MT 10:10) and that "they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel." (1 Cor 9:14). However, for someone to be forced to pay such a prohibitive price to hear a priest talk at a church-owned institution is more than little distasteful. Are not the poor entitled to hear Rev. Machado's edifying wisdom as well? The announcement said nothing about $75 being a suggested donation or that those who couldn't afford were still welcome to attend, although that may very well be the case. If Rev. Machado's travel expenses and honorarium really cost that much, then perhaps our local priests should stop importing out of town celebrities and put on some retreats of their own.

By the way, this isn't only a Catholic issue. The Advance recently had an article about evangelical celebrity Greg Laurie, who came to New York City and charged people to hear him preach. I don't think he even gave them breakfast.

But I sent you a rowboat!

2009-01-03T13:26:00.003-05:00

We've all heard the musty old parable about the man who was stuck on his rooftop in a flood and kept praying to God for rescue. In succession he rejected help from people in a helicopter, a speedboat and a rowboat, explaining that God was going to rescue him. When he finally drowned and went to heaven, he reproached God for not doing anything to save him, but God replied that He had sent him a helicopter, a speedboat and a rowboat.

The modern Catholic Church seems to be like the man on the roof. We constantly bemoan our empty churches and whine about our fallen world, but we don't do anything with the instruments God gave us, apparently expecting Him to swoop down from the clouds and corral all the errant Catholics back into church and back on the right path. We have our minds, our mouths, our creativity, incredible tools of communication with newspapers, television, radio, the internet, etc., yet we do practically nothing. This came to mind after reading the religion section of the Staten Island Advance for the last 2 weeks.

Our local paper features 2 pages of religious news in its Saturday edition. It includes articles of interest as well as local announcements of individual church events. What a great tool our local churches have to publicize their activities and evangelize. However, in the 12/27 edition, not one single Catholic church on Staten Island had the initiative to submit a single announcement. Even if there weren't any spectacular events going on in our plethora of local Catholic churches, it shouldn't matter- the Protestant churches which monopolized the section had no compunctions about trumpeting such prosaic news as the topic of the next day's sermon. If I were an ordinary secular guy who was feeling an emptiness in my soul around Christmas, and I scanned that page, what would I think? First, my interest might be piqued by one of the sermon topics or events at these churches, thus leading me to attend. But secondly, I would come away with the impression that these churches want me and would welcome me. If I thought about the AWOL Catholic Church at all, I would come away with the impression that they do not want me and would not welcome me.

The next page was more of the same. It contained small ads for churches with pertinent information such as addresses and service times. Only one Catholic church saw fit to advertise there. All the rest were various Protestant churches (even the Episcopalians!). You'd think we lived in Alabama.

Why are we hiding our light under a bushel basket? Why are we so dense? Have we never heard of advertising? Have we never studied human psychology? Do we not want to tell people about our Faith? Do we want to die?

Catholic Church shopping, Part 1: Brick house

2009-01-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

So after years of suffering in my ancestral parish, with a few equally unsatisfactory substitutes for when I sleep late on Sundays or travel, I've finally now begun my Catholic version of church shopping. Unlike the Protestant version however, I'm looking for more than emotional gratification, musical appreciation and social networking opportunities. (And if any Protestant observers here think that statement is uncharitable, I would advise them to talk to any one of the many evangelical/Pentecostal pastors in my neighborhood whose once-flourishing churches folded after their flocks defected to newer and hotter Christian-themed clubs.) Although social benefits and musical excellence would be nice, I'm primarily looking to be a part of a church 1. whose congregation takes their Faith seriously and who show it in their lives and worship, and 2. whose priest is orthodox in his Faith, intelligent enough to preach a halfway decent sermon and fervent enough to nurture the souls of his flock. How difficult that quest will be is a question we will explore together.

My first stop was a large brick church on the North Shore. Plainly constructed and comparatively unadorned, it is my guess that it was built by no-nonsense Irish immigrants in the early 20th century, although the almost Calvinist austerity of the place may point to a more modern architecture. The small foyer had a cozy side alcove with statues and candles. Rather bizarrely, there was also a glass doored confessional there right next to the entrance. If they want to discourage people from going to Confession, that would seem like a good way to do it. Even I would be embarrassed about confessing my sins in full view of and in earshot of every person that walks through the door. But that was merely incidental. I was there to see about the spirituality of the place.

I picked up some literature in the back of the church, and saw that there was apparently some life here. In addition to the standard volunteer opportunities you would find in any parish, such as altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, the announcement I read listed other groups that were active in the parish, like the Holy Name Society, St. Vincent DePaul Society, Legion of Mary, Senior Group, St. Joseph's Guild, CCD program, Senior Spirituality, Jr. Teen Center and Titan League Sports program. Interesting so far.

I was attending an afternoon Mass, which was the last of 4 Masses on Sunday. Surprisingly for such a later Mass, there were probably over 100 people there, which was another good sign. Unfortunately, most of the people I saw did the old "one quarter genuflection" and "sign of the blob". That is to say, when they reach their aisle, they place their right leg forward, bow a little and bless themselves by shaking their right hand sloppily in front of their faces, like Eli Wallach in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". I know it's a minor thing in context, but when healthy looking people can't be bothered to properly genuflect to their Lord and don't appreciate the holiness in the symbol of His sacrifice, it doesn't reflect well on their Faith.

The hymns were sickly sweet and unsingable, as usual, but that seems to be par for the course in American Catholicism these days. However, I did my best to belt them out, and got the "crazy man" stare from a couple of tweens in front of me. I once attended a church where the priest would stalk the middle aisle during hymns, singing artificially loudly and staring at people until they started singing. I understand his frustration but I disagree with his solution. My grade school nuns taught us that "singing is praying twice", but it's a sad fact that Catholics just don't sing. (again, I can't recommend Thomas Day's "Why Catholics Can't Sing" enough). It might have something to do with our history and ethnic cultures, but the torch songs and bland pop standards we're given to work with are surely at the center of the problem. I notice that most everyone joins in when we sing Christmas carols. But I digress.

As it was the first Sunday of Advent, that was the subject the Fillipino priest chose to talk about. I was a little on edge as he began by discussing the advent candles and the colors and such. Symbolism and church ritual are fascinating subjects to me, but I've heard some priests in the past give such things a disproportionate attention in their sermons. In a time of unprecedented spiritual deterioration in the Church, a focus on the peripheries of the Faith amount to navel gazing and dereliction of duty. That's like George C. Scott getting up in front of that big flag in "Patton" and lecturing his troops on the numerical symbolism of the stars and stripes. Happily though, the priest did move on to the subject of preparation for the coming of Christ, with Christmas being a shadow of His Second Coming, with a need for repentance and prayer, etc. The specifics escape me now a few weeks later, but it was a good sermon. It was very simplistic, as if intended for 8th graders, but it had substance and made sense, which was quite a new church experience for me.

So, my verdict for this one was that although I wasn't especially impressed, it seemed to have a lot of good points and may deserve a second look.

How to Give a Bad Homily

2008-11-30T21:32:00.003-05:00

It helps to laugh at your problems sometimes. I don't know who wrote this hilarious satire or when it first appeared, but it hits the mark pretty well as to the poor level of preaching from our Catholic pulpits. Enjoy:

How to Give a Bad Homily

I'm not sure when Catholics became such terrible preachers.

You may object that this is a mere stereotype, but like many stereotypes about Catholics - we worship statues, we don't read the Bible, we run the world - this one is true. Yesterday, all over America, there were millions of Catholics who, if they were lucky, were merely bored by their priest's homily: there were many others who were alternately scandalized, horrified, grievously misinformed, or simply insulted.

It wasn't always this way. St. Francis of Assisi might have preached to the birds, but when he preached to people he helped establish himself as one of the pre-eminent Europeans of the Middle Ages. St. Bernard basically spent his life traveling around France, using his eloquent oratory to peacefully win back straying Christians who would occasionally convince themselves that Hey, maybe smelly Pierre from the hut next door is actually God. St. John Chrysostom was so good at preaching that we collectively decided his surname should be "Goldenmouth."

The days of John Goldenmouth are long behind us, though. Currently, Catholic preaching in general is about as robust as the St. John's University basketball program, although we don't have the luxury of blaming Mike Jarvis for the bad homilies.

Many Catholics have lamented this state of affairs, but I adopt a wait-and-see approach. As Karl Rahner wrote in Foundations of Christian Faith, the relationship of ordinary believers to the clergy is like that of the rest of the A-Team to Hannibal: we trust the plan will come together, even when that crazy fool Murdock does something that lands us in hot water.

In other words, there must be a method to the madness. Perhaps it's some kind of church-wide rope-a-dope strategy in which - just like Muhammad Ali - we'll lull our opponent into a false sense of security and then explode from the ropes in the 10th round with a flurry of devastating rhetorical right hands*.

With that hope fondly lodged in my heart, I therefore present this helpful guide for priests, deacons, and assorted talkers who are hoping to make their homilies just a little bit more awful.

Be Nervous and Easily Distracted
In any kind of public speaking, bearing is important, and to give a truly bad homily, your posture, mannerisms, and countenance should reflect this. Ideally, you should adopt the bearing of a nervous homeschooler sweating beneath the lights of a major spelling bee after getting stuck on the word "cthonic." Fidget. Hide behind the lectern. Speak directly into the Bible. Never, under any circumstances, look at the congregation.

A major boon to any bad homilist is distractions from the pews. Remember: a crying baby is a key ally in your effort to seem hopelessly outside your depth. At the first sound of a wailing youngster, you should freeze in place, as if the bishop has just entered the sanctuary tailed by the police, pointing at you and shouting, "Fraud!" Once this is done, it's important to lose your train of thought and mumble disconsolately for several moments, as if you have never seen an infant before, and the sight has left you terribly unsettled.

I was actually once at a Mass where the priest - who was nearing retirement, in fairness - responded to a crying baby by snarling, "Shut that kid up!" I doubt Chrysostom would have handled it that way, but in delivering a bad homily, that's kind of the point.

Inflection is a Tool of the Devil
When delivering a bad homily you will, like Phil Spector, want to go "back to mono" - monotone, that is. Your voice should be as calm and affectless as the Sargasso Sea; if at all possible, you should read the words of your homily the way 3rd graders read book reports when standing in front of the class. Never give any indication that one word or other should be emphasized in the endless gray slurry of diction you pour forth. Raymond Chandler once wrote that the American accent is "flat, toneless, and tiresome," and you should do your part to prove him right.

From God's Lips to Your Parish Bulletin
A homily is technically supposed to relate the message of Christ's salvation to a particular community, so why not spend the first 10 minutes announcing minutiae from that week's parish newsletter? Hey, salvation is important and all, but so is the fact that the Tuesday Teen Coffee Hour has been moved to 7:30 p.m. This approach has the double effect of making the homily unutterably dull and rendering the bulletin redundant, and is thus highly commended to bad homilists.

I once attended Mass at a parish in which the priest delivered a five-minute homily, four minutes of which were devoted to gripes about the difficulties of getting a zoning permit to install a new elevator. Then he ended with a variation of "God is good." Well said, Father!

Reach The Young People
Do popular songs on the radio remind you of Biblical passages? Is there some way a blockbuster summer movie can be said to show God's forgiveness? Is Jesus maybe a little bit like Spider-Man?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you're well on your way to developing one of the most popular techniques for delivering a bad homily: tailoring it to young worshipers by dumbing it down with a plethora of poorly thought out pop culture references.

When doing so, though, you'll want to remember to keep those references vaguely out of date, so that anyone in the pews who might possibly be reached by such a tactic will instead focus on their mirth at your use of "X-Files" terminology.

You'll also want to keep the metaphors as tortured as possible. Popular culture, like all Western culture, is indeed filled with allusions and references - sometimes self-aware, sometimes not - to Christianity. Instead of going for the obvious ones, though, you'll want to instead explain how Jesus is like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the vampires are sins and they're not really being slain so much as forgiven, and of course Jesus is not a woman.

It's All About You
Many people think that worshipers come to church on Sunday to receive the sacraments, to be in the presence of God, or to learn about how Christ's salvific death changes their lives utterly. You, as the bad homilist, know the truth: People come to church to hear your funny anecdotes about bad drivers.

Ham it up! Play to the crowd. Test the material at the 7:00 a.m. Mass so you'll have a dynamite routine for the bigger 11:00 a.m. crowd. Why not? All the world's a stage, and everyone's paying attention to you. It must be because of your funny stories about waiting in line at the supermarket. Hey, that teaches us a Biblical lesson - wasn't Job supposed to be patient or something?

Don't Get Bogged Down in Scripture
Sure, the Church describes the homily as "an explanation either of some aspect of the readings from scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or Proper of the Mass of the day," but have they ever tried to read some of that stuff? I mean, all the talk about vineyards and mustard seeds and fruit - you'd think this was 4-H Club, not the Catholic Church!

To give a bad homily, you'll want to seize on a single phrase in the Gospel reading to justify whatever subject on which you most feel like holding forth. For example: If Jesus warns against building a house on a foundation of sand, you can say, "And a foundation of sand is exactly what the makers of 'The Da Vinci Code' have erected," before launching into a tangent that quickly loses sight of any scripture, whether today's or otherwise.

But to give a genuinely awful homily, you'll want to ignore the Bible altogether, and just "shoot from the hip." Hey, maybe you'll want to quote from some other text: a half-remembered poem, perhaps, or a book by a conservative newspaper columnist. If you're really trying hard, you'll find a way to work in something from a Beatles song.

The goal is to make your homily "relevant." If you occasionally get worried about what may or may not be "relevant," try using this helpful rule of thumb: "Relevant" is just another way of saying "unrelated to the contents of the Bible."

It's Casual Sunday Around Here
Any homily that has a tone of solemnity is all wrong for what you want. You don't want people to see you as a priest ordained through God's grace to perform the Eucharistic miracle in which the faithful partake of the body and blood of Christ, you want them to see you as an easygoing dude around the office water cooler. Hey, just because none of St. Augustine's extant sermons include the phrase, "Boy, it's a real scorcher today, ain't it, folks?," doesn't mean you can't blaze new trails.

Dazzle Them With Jargon
Casual Sundays are great and all, but sometimes you have to remind the laity that you didn't go to priest school for eight years just to be called "Father Bob." In these instances, it's a good idea to reach for the theologian's favorite device: jargon. If you're feeling a little anxious about your role in the lives of the faithful, why not remind them why they need you by speaking Latin? A bad homily that relies on jargon will have all the qualities of a peer-reviewed article in an electrical engineering journal, and is designed to sail over the heads of anyone who thought the church might have something to tell them about bereavement, loneliness, anxiety, joy, or everyday life. But don't worry: somebody will appreciate your jargon, most likely the two or three intense young men scattered around the back occasionally wincing from the cilices around their thighs.

"WWJD" Means "What Would Jesus Disapprove Of?"
There's a popular impression that the Catholic Church's theology consists of little more than an endless series of arbitrary rules invented and enforced by isolated old men with precious little experience of everyday life. As a bad homilist, it's your job to confirm that suspicion.

One way you might go about this is by presenting every aspect of Catholic teaching as self-evidently revealed fact. Sure, the Church might have produced some of the finest thinkers in history, people who went to great lengths to demonstrate the truths of revelation using science, logic, and philosophy, but those methods have no place in a bad homily. Your answer to the question "Why?" should always be, "Because God - and, by extension, I - said so."

It also helps if, when presenting conclusions without explaining the reasoning behind them, you just focus on the things people aren't supposed to do. Premarital sex, abortion, contraception, women's ordination, voting for bishops, eating meat on Fridays in Lent - sure, there might be reasons behind the Church's stances on all these things. But why should your congregants know that? Let them go to seminary if they're so curious! Remember: If people come away from your homily with a picture of God as a distant, disapproving, headmaster-like figure always saying "No," you're doing your job.

Here You Stand, You Can Do No Other
Have you ever read the Catechism? It's so full of stuff: do this, don't do that, believe this, salvation that. There's way too much there for anyone to fully digest, so you can be excused for not knowing or not believing everything the church teaches. After all, you're just one person, right?

So when composing your homilies, don't worry if something you're going to say is "unclear" or "inaccurate" or "openly heretical." Who's keeping track, anyway? If you feel like maybe people who commit suicide are beyond God's ability to forgive, go ahead and say so. Alternately, if you think it's silly that Catholics can't receive Communion at Protestant churches, don't be shy about letting the congregation know. The catechism may disagree with you on both points, but this is a democracy, right?

As a follow-up, be wary of "dogma nuts" who will approach you after Mass with minor, nitpicking complaints like "I thought we offered veneration rather than worship to the saints" or "There aren't four Persons in the Trinity." These "laity lawyers" may, technically, be correct, but stick to your guns: remind them you're the one infused with ordination, that your fingers were anointed, and maybe say something about papal infallibility. That applies to priests, too, right? If you're a deacon, you'll have to take a different approach: quickly change the subject by reminding these complainers they haven't yet volunteered for a shift at the Interfaith Cot Shelter.

Always End With a Flourish
A lot of priests end their homilies with a simple, "May God bless you." The bad homilist has a word for these priests: "Boring." Here are a few sample lines you'll want to end with if you're interested in truly nailing the bad homily:

"Don't forget to pick up your raffle tickets after Mass."

"Okay, now let's do that Creed thing."

"Remember, as Jesus said: Keep on keepin' on."

"See you next week, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel."

"The person who owns a green Buick LeSabre, license plate 489-HFC: your lights are on."

"Let's go Jesus, let's go! (clap)"

"And may God forgive the local zoning board for their obstructionist ways."

"Shut that kid up!"

*Admittedly, this metaphor is not perfect. For example, who are we supposed to be boxing? One possibility: Satan.

Also: a tip of the cap to Kurt Tucholsky, author of the fine, sadly out of print essay, "How to Give a Bad Speech."

Ethnic Catholicism and the Cultural Church

2008-11-29T09:10:00.011-05:00

Interesting article here about a Staten Island Polish church which is celebrating both its 85th anniversary and the 10th anniversary of its pastor's appointment there. The article says a lot about the inherent problems of ethnic parishes and the mixed-up priorities of modern Roman Catholics.

A little background: St. Stanislaus Kostka church was founded by Polish immigrants in 1923 and flourished for many years until dwindling numbers forced the church to be put under the supervision of a neighboring parish and almost led to its closure. And why did its numbers dwindle? The original immigrant generation died away, the succeeding generations assimilated into American life and felt little need to cling to an ethnic parish, and the local Polish families who were the foundation of the church moved away as the racial makeup of the neighborhood changed. And since the modern American Catholic Church does not evangelize in the least, the parish was only saved by a massive influx of Polish immigrants following the collapse of Communism. And when these new parishioners had the opportunity to represent their parish and their Faith in an interview with the local newspaper, what did they choose to tell the community at large about their church and themselves?

Did they witness to their belief in Christ and tell how their celebrated pastor has ministered to their souls and facilitated their relationship with God? Did they talk about how the parish is primarily a spiritual community where Catholic believers of Polish descent can worship in their own language, and can preserve and deepen their faith in a strange and spiritually hostile land? No, there was hardly any of that boring religious stuff. Apart from an off-hand reference to Saturday morning catechism classes for children (most likely limited to First Communion preparation), this article made it seem like the raison d'etre of St. Stanislaus church is to be a social club and Polish cultural society.

What were these parishioners excited about? What did they tell us about their pastor's main priorities and projects? Well, we are informed that he renovated the classroom where children learn Polish and he gussied up the parish hall where dances and other events are held. The church also offers art classes and martial arts classes and has a general focus on preserving Polish culture, language and traditions.

I ask where are the Bible studies, the rosary societies, the prayer groups, the adult catechism classes, the charitable endeavors, etc, et al. How could you talk about your church's 85th anniversary and only think to mention the cultural/material services it provides? Yes, a church also ministers to our corporal needs, but when that aspect predominates among either clergy or laity, then something is seriously out of whack. I admit that the media can be selective in its reporting and the reporter did only quote a few people. But is there anyone out there so charitable that they don't think those quotes are representative rather than anomalous?

Meet me at the Mission

2008-11-07T11:09:00.008-05:00

For the past few weeks, enigmatic little signs have been popping up on lawns all over Staten Island, outnumbering even the ubiquitous Obama/Biden signs. They simply read "Meet me at the Mission" and listed a web site, http://www.siparishmission.org/index.html. At first, I didn't know what to make of it, but I certainly didn't think it had anything to do with the Catholic Church. After all, "mission" is a word we usually associate with foreign lands, e.g. churches send "missionaries" to Africa to start "missions". If we use the word at all in an American context, it's to refer to some sort of evangelical charity located in the dingiest parts of our cities: "You can get a bed and a hot meal at the Salvation Army Mission in the Bowery." And the main reason I didn't suspect this clever advertising campaign had anything to do with the Catholic Church was because the modern Church just doesn't seem to_do_anything. It doesn't evangelize, it doesn't seem too excited about the Faith, and it doesn't seem to organize very many "extracurricular" devotional activities outside of the regularly scheduled Sunday Masses. I was sure this had to be some sort of Pentecostal membership drive. I was wrong.

I was surprised when I started to see these signs in front of Catholic churches. Still, I suspected that it all had to do with a diocesan fund raising appeal. I never got a chance to check the website since I always saw these signs while driving and couldn't remember the web address. However, the full story began to come out with a series of ads in our local paper, the Advance. A revival was coming to Staten Island!

According to these ads, the Redemptorist order was sponsoring a week-long mission to Staten Island in order to bring fallen-away Catholics back to the Church and to re-energize "our Catholic Faith". I was a little bothered that the phrase "our Catholic Faith" was put in quotation marks, as it seemed to imply that our Catholic Faith was an ironic, theoretical or even dubious concept, but I put it down to a bad copywriter. This was exciting!

This event was something of the order of being in Times Square on VJ Day or seeing the towers fall on 9/11. The Church was actually_doing_something- taking the initiative, taking action, being aggressive for the Faith. Never in my lifespan of some 30-odd years had I seen anything of the sort on Staten Island, or anywhere else for that matter. The Redemptorist Order was sending 35 of its priests (along with 1 Augustinian) to our Island parishes to conduct a week of preaching, reconciliation and revival. This seemed just what we needed. Staten Island is a place that has a large nominal Catholic majority, but the living Faith- with the exception of small pockets- seems on life support here. We've had several churches and Catholic grade-schools close because of low attendance. Sunday Mass at many parishes seem to be attended only by a sprinkling of senior citizens. The Catholic high schools seem well attended, but judging by the behavior of the students, it doesn't seem like much is being done there to impart the Faith in any meaningful way. The priests provide no leadership, the sermons we hear are universally abysmal, and outright public heresy is never corrected. With the way things are going, I can't see the Faith surviving for another generation. So I was extremely excited to hear that the Redemptorists were coming to town.

In an unprecedented move for a purely religious news story, the Advance even gave the Mission front page, above-the-fold coverage. You can read the story here. I was a little disturbed at some of the things the priest heading the Mission chose to talk about though. With his great opportunity to reach a hundred thousand people or so, for some reason he chose to criticize the Church for not emphasizing God's forgiveness towards women who've aborted their babies. He spoke at length about those divorced and remarried Catholics who might still be able to receive Communion because their first marriage was before a justice of the peace. Bizarrely, he mentioned how he doesn't think that many people are angry at the priest pedophile scandals. Another Redemptorist interviewed compared the mission to a "pyramid scheme." OK, obviously our priests are clueless about public relations, but someone must have known what they were doing to get free publicity like this, and I was sure the Redemptorists would excel at the actual mission.

I wasn't at all familiar with their order, but after a little Googling, my admiration for them swelled. In the first place, they were founded by one of my favorite saints, St. Alphonsus Liguori, who wrote one of the most spiritually edifying books I've ever read, "How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God" and who was an all-around giant of the Faith. Appropriately enough, his Redemptorists specialize in missionary activities, preaching and soul-winning. These guys are God's special forces. Of course it was up to God to decide whether their efforts would have any effect, but I was certain that I would at least get to hear some great preaching, for once.

I think I can tally on one hand the number of good sermons I've heard from Catholic priests throughout my entire life. I don't know the reason why our priests are such horrible- and I mean horrible- preachers. They have years of advanced education, so they have no lack of knowledge. They've dedicated their lives to Christ by becoming priests, so there shouldn't be a lack of motivation in their hearts. They have a friendly audience and ample opportunity, yet their preaching is, almost without exception, uninspiring, boring, senseless and really just plain stupid. They couldn't do a worse job if they were deliberately trying to destroy our faith and, unfortunately, I think that's the result of such universally abominable preaching. I think bad Catholic preaching is one of, if not the biggest problem in the Church today. Remember, "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Rom 10:17). It's sad to say, but you will hear better preaching from any random fundamentalist you find flipping through the radio dial or on TV, not to mention the ones you can hear in your own neighborhood. I believe that's one of the main reasons why their pews (or at least rows of metal folding chairs) are filled with so many ex-Catholics. However, I was fairly certain that the Redemptorists would not let me down. After all, soul-stirring preaching is their stock in trade

I couldn't make the Monday night mission, so I attended on Tuesday night. I will leave the name of the church anonymous, so as not to implicate any specific people. The crowd was disappointingly sparse, and even more disappointingly elderly. This was obviously the regular Sunday bunch. Even though there were so few of us in the large church, we had arranged ourselves in the traditional Catholic seating pattern: as far away from all other people as possible. A 64 page booklet was passed out beforehand which included Scripture readings, Catholic prayers, a guide to examining one's conscience, etc. Good so far. Then it began.

The Redemptorist priest came out from the sanctuary with the parish priest and an altar girl. A large bowl of water was placed on a table in front of the altar. We started off with a hymn- a weird, feminine, operatic type of hymn that no normal congregation could ever possibly sing, so we all basically sat silently as the organist carried the load. ("Why Catholics Don't Sing" is an excellent critique of dreadful modern church music, by the way). That was par for the course at this parish, so I didn't think much of it. We then recited some unfamiliar prayers from the booklet we had received. The priest then prepared to read the Gospel text from which he'd preach, by swinging the censer around the pulpit. It was at this point when my antennae went up and the mission went downhill, because before he began to read he told us that we could all sit down if we wanted to. We were already standing, and as Catholics we are used to standing during the Gospel reading. It's our tradition and it shows our reverence for the words of Christ. It was obvious that the people were all very confused and disturbed by his unorthodox permissiveness. Why on earth would he tell us something like that? So he could pose as our liberator from oppressive church rules? So he could play the "cool" authority figure, like the substitute teacher who lets the students sit in a circle rather than in rows? That had to be one of the most asinine things I'd ever heard in church. We all remained standing for about 10 seconds, unsure of what the crowd would do, but as a few people began to sit down, the rest of us lemmings followed. I thought I would remain standing as a sort of protest against such disrespect for the Word of God, but I eventually lost my nerve and sat down too. I noticed one middle aged woman who remained defiantly standing though. I salute that brave woman and wish I had her courage. She showed that she had a steel backbone and the spirit of a Joan of Arc. Even though I believe in traditional gender roles and oppose women priests, that doesn't mean that I don't think women can lead. That woman preached a better sermon by her example than any speaker could have done, and I'll never forget it. It was certainly better than anything I heard that night.

The Gospel reading was the parable of the Prodigal Son, which was appropriate for that night's theme of reconciliation. Unfortunately, the sermon was the same twaddle I hear every Sunday, only longer. At least the priest's delivery was slightly animated, which is in contrast to the whispering monotone in which sermons are usually delivered in my parish. However, the content was the same utter dreck. I certainly understood all the words that were spoken, but they just did not meld together into any one cogent idea. It was disorganized, fatuous and just plain incoherent. I'll save my in-depth analysis on the subject of preaching for another time, but suffice it say that this experience was extremely disappointing and dispiriting. I found myself giving thanks that it didn't seem like there were many fallen-away Catholics or non Catholics present because they would certainly never come back after hearing that.

After the pulpit punishment, we sang some hymns, one of which was, incredibly, even singable. Then the priest made us all go to the center aisle where we had to shake hands or wink at the people from the other side of the church and then change sides with them if we chose. The point of this ridiculous exercise escaped me, but I think he tied it in to Republicans and Democrats "crossing the aisle". As I was sitting down, an old woman told me how nice it was to see a young man in church, since she doesn't see many these days. I thought to myself that it was no wonder young men don't go to church if this is what the church offers: effeminate, unsingable music, sermons that are nothing more than gibberish, spiritual slackness ("you can sit if you want to") and queer, touchy-feely, New Age rituals that focus on man rather than God. Many books have been written about the feminization of Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant), and this was a great example tonight. What healthy-spirited man could tolerate these treacly ceremonies, this overload of estrogen, this dearth of reverence and spiritual awe? What draws a man to religion is black and white ideas (good and evil), a clear, challenging call to action of some sort (e.g. this is how you please God, this is how you get saved), an adherence to tradition and immutable truths, a gravity and seriousness appropriate to the circumstances, a focus on something that is greater than ourselves (honor, principles, the Church, salvation, God), and a religious leader who has the masculine qualities of leadership. Instead, the atmosphere at Mass and Catholic events like this mission all too often feels like an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show. Am I being rude and abrasive by saying these things? Yes, but ask yourself why so many of our churches are made up mostly of old women and die hard loyalists like myself who nevertheless can barely get through Mass, even with a lot of teeth gritting and desperate prayer. Men, and younger Catholics in general, are rejecting the feel-good, happy-clappy church of the 60s generation and want something more substantial, more strenuous. We want our old Faith back.

The less said about the rest of this mission, the better. At one point, the priest held up a huge bowl of water like he was raising the Host and told us we were going to engage in a new ritual of sorts. All I could think of at that point was "Don't drop it!" because that would just make the priest and, by extension, the Faith into a laughingstock. He managed to place the bowl back on the table and explained that we were to come up and- I believe- bless ourselves with the water while publicly proclaiming some resolution, like "I will love you better, Jesus." This new fangled ritual seemed silly and unnecessary to me. We Catholics have such a rich devotional heritage. Why do the Redemptorists feel the need to reinvent the wheel? In keeping with the disorganized and fumbling way in which the mission was conducted, the priest interrupted the beginning of the water ceremony and mentioned that we'd also be having confession, which was good. However, in yet another unnecessary concession to unsought novelty, he explained that we didn't have to use the old-fashioned Act of Contrition we learned growing up but could use the updated version as found on page 22 in our booklets. As the people grudgingly began lining up to anoint themselves, I made my escape.

Needless to say, I didn't attend any other missions. I was curious but just too discouraged to go through that again. As I said, there were 35 priests on the Island, so I can't judge what happened at their individual missions. They all might have been wonderful. I'm simply relating what I witnessed, which was a disaster in my opinion. I can't imagine anyone getting anything out of what I saw that night. I don't report this with the intention of harming the Church, but helping it. I have a feeling that the priests running this mission (and priests in general) receive nothing but praise from the old ladies and therefore think that they're doing a grand job. Things really need to improve if the Church in America is even to survive, and that's not going to happen without some harsh feedback, self-examination, hard work and reform.