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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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?