St. Francis Friary, 1928-2014

After a year and a half on the market, the beautiful St. Francis Friary (known as a Center for Spirituality in its modern incarnation) has been sold to the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of New York and New England to be used as their headquarters. (And they're currently seeking donations to pay for it.) I'm glad the property will not be covered with 8,000 townhouses and I'm glad it was at least Christians who bought it, but this is still a disgrace and an embarrassment. How is it possible for the Coptic church to buy and maintain this property when the Catholic Church cannot? There are only 450,000 Copts in the entire United States. In the Coptic Diocese of New York and New England, which covers Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont, there are only 25 parishes and only 42 clergy; I don't know how many parishioners are in the diocese. Compare this to the New York archdiocese, which has 296 parishes and contains 2.6 million Catholics. Yet with all our resources, we could not retain the Franciscan Friary? The Franciscans made a hash of it, but with the demise of Mt. Manresa, couldn't the Archdiocese have made good use of it? 

Another humiliation. Another defeat

Late in the afternoon last Friday it was reported that the St. Francis Center for Spirituality was on the verge of being sold to a "religious organization". In addition to the secrecy surrounding this sale, as well as the euphemistic term being used for this shadowy buyer, it is speculated that an Islamic organization- perhaps the MAS (Muslim American Society) which was thwarted in its designs on the St. Margaret Mary convent- will soon be sounding the call to prayer from minarets where bells once rang to announce the Eucharistic Sacrifice. As one of the commentators on silive said, "The Catholic Church is giving up on Catholics".

Whether the mystery buyer does turn out to be a Moslem organization or a Hindu temple, a Protestant worship center or a Jewish shul, the fact remains that a sacred space of God's One True Faith- where once God's priests were trained up for His service and where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was once offered-  will now be turned over for profanation and blasphemy, with crosses torn down, statues smashed, icons trashed, and the images of God and his saints defaced and whitewashed; perhaps the fate that befell Mount Manresa would be preferable to that which is going to happen to the St. Francis Friary. And our Catholic leaders do....what?

Death watch

So, the St. Francis Center for Spirituality is closing down and- just like the Mount Manresa affair- all anyone can talk about is the threat of overdevelopment on the site. As a native Staten Islander, I can well understand that, but there has been no Catholic response as such, as if it is just to be expected by our clergy that we are to suffer, in the natural course of things, one humiliating defeat after another and just eventually die out. Are any of our clergy wondering why it is that a seminary has no seminarians and what we can do about this non-stop decline?

Fun fact: only 40,000 Staten Islanders attend Mass every Sunday, according to spokesman Joseph Zwilling. Approximately 54% of Staten Islanders are counted as being Catholic (although the actual percentage of baptized is probably much, much higher). Even going by the lower number, that is only 8% of Staten Island Catholics who go to Mass on Sunday.

8%

And how many of those church-goers have the slightest clue about the Faith, considering polls show that the vast majority of even church-going Catholics dissent from or are ignorant of basic Church teaching on the Eucharist, sexual morality, the authority of the Pope and the Bible, the divinity of Christ, et al. The situation over the past 40 years, but especially today, should prompt any faithful priest to run frantically through the streets, trying to salvage whatever souls they can from this wreckage. However, all our priests and bishops seem focused on is gaining amnesty for illegal invaders, pandering to homosexuals, destroying the orthodox Catholics who point out the truth and turning the One True Faith into a hand-holding Episcopalian community center.  We are on a death watch here, and our spiritual fathers just don't do or say anything about it.

Lenten news

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.

Incestuous, "elder abuse" by Staten Island priest

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.

St. Francis Seminary

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: