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Showing posts with label Archdiocese of New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Archdiocese of New York. Show all posts
Sunday, February 8, 2026
Spiritual Quote of the Day (Archbishop Ronald Hicks, on Being a ‘Missionary Church’)
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Quote of the Day (Archbishop Timothy Dolan, on His Responsibility—and Ours)
"My mission is to remind New Yorkers that they must welcome God to this ‘capital of the world’ as warmly as they have welcomed so many others."—Archbishop Timothy Dolan, “It's a blessing to be here: Why I'm proud to lead the wonderful Archdiocese of New York,” The New York Daily News, April 15, 2009
Welcome to the Big Apple, Archbishop Dolan. One word of advice: No matter what you might have experienced in Milwaukee and elsewhere, it will be like nothing you’ll experience here. I hope you’ve got a flak jacket under your clerical robes—you’ll need it.
In the meantime, while many will disagree on some or most of your stands, I hope you’ll stick to the more detailed part of your mission that you outlined in your Daily News op-ed:
“Loving the Church here means supporting her indispensable work caring for the poor, the immigrants, the sick and elderly, the lonely, the unborn and the abandoned. It means working hard for her Catholic schools, in many ways the pride of the archdiocese….It means speaking from America's most famous pulpit for justice and peace, for religious liberty and the sanctity of all human life.”
Welcome to the Big Apple, Archbishop Dolan. One word of advice: No matter what you might have experienced in Milwaukee and elsewhere, it will be like nothing you’ll experience here. I hope you’ve got a flak jacket under your clerical robes—you’ll need it.
In the meantime, while many will disagree on some or most of your stands, I hope you’ll stick to the more detailed part of your mission that you outlined in your Daily News op-ed:
“Loving the Church here means supporting her indispensable work caring for the poor, the immigrants, the sick and elderly, the lonely, the unborn and the abandoned. It means working hard for her Catholic schools, in many ways the pride of the archdiocese….It means speaking from America's most famous pulpit for justice and peace, for religious liberty and the sanctity of all human life.”
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Quote of the Day (Michael Daly, on Edward Cardinal Egan)
“Archbishop Timothy Dolan sounds pretty good after nine years of Edward Cardinal Egan….Egan seems to have been pretty good at watching the diocesan pocketbook, but he was not much good at uplifting the heart.”—Michael Daly, “Change Welcome in Uncertain Time,” The New York Daily News, Feb. 24, 2009
I would go further than Daly in his gently critical summary of the tenure of Cardinal Egan in New York: He was just the kind of pompous, imperious cleric that makes his priests bridle and congregants leave in droves.
Stemming the tide of red ink is the achievement that Egan’s defenders and even his critics acknowledge, but I think this is letting him off too easily. Throughout his ministry, Christ was not an accountant and neither, primarily, should be those who would follow his way.
Closing parishes and schools has been the easy way out for what Daly calls “an ecclesiastical CEO” like Egan and his counterparts in the American Church hierarchy. But the Roman Catholic Church is not a retail chain. It was instituted to uplift and save the fallen of this world.
If you want an idea of the path Egan could have chosen, look at the career of his 19th-century predecessor, Archbishop John Hughes. As much church chieftain as priest, Hughes was a man not easily crossed. Even his crucifix gave rise to a nickname for him: "Dagger John." But he left an imprint that still endures.
After seeing not only his criticisms of Protestant religious practices in supposedly nonsectarian public schools go unheeded, but also his request for tax dollars for the Church’s own schools, Hughes pushed for the creation of parochial schools outside the established educational system. From 1840 to 1870, the number of children in New York’s Catholic schools rose from 5,000 to 22,000.
Make no mistake: Hughes, like Egan, could brook no interference with his ecclesiastical priorities. But the difficulties he faced were far more daunting than Egan’s—not just financial problems, but also active threats to his flock in the form of virulent prejudice. Hughes thought outside the box and made a difference to the lives of millions for more than a century afterward through the parochial school system.
Was Egan ever so creative? Not really.
Oh, wait. I take that back. Yes, he was. Once. It occurred during his time as bishop of Bridgeport, when, during litigation springing from the sexual-abuse crisis, he came up with the novel theory that the Church had no legal liability because its priests were “independent contractors.”
I bet the priests he supervised in Bridgeport—and especially the ones he managed in the far larger jurisdiction of New York—had a real good laugh over that one. It might have been the last time in his career that he ever said anything funny, even if it was completely unintentional.
I would go further than Daly in his gently critical summary of the tenure of Cardinal Egan in New York: He was just the kind of pompous, imperious cleric that makes his priests bridle and congregants leave in droves.
Stemming the tide of red ink is the achievement that Egan’s defenders and even his critics acknowledge, but I think this is letting him off too easily. Throughout his ministry, Christ was not an accountant and neither, primarily, should be those who would follow his way.
Closing parishes and schools has been the easy way out for what Daly calls “an ecclesiastical CEO” like Egan and his counterparts in the American Church hierarchy. But the Roman Catholic Church is not a retail chain. It was instituted to uplift and save the fallen of this world.
If you want an idea of the path Egan could have chosen, look at the career of his 19th-century predecessor, Archbishop John Hughes. As much church chieftain as priest, Hughes was a man not easily crossed. Even his crucifix gave rise to a nickname for him: "Dagger John." But he left an imprint that still endures.
After seeing not only his criticisms of Protestant religious practices in supposedly nonsectarian public schools go unheeded, but also his request for tax dollars for the Church’s own schools, Hughes pushed for the creation of parochial schools outside the established educational system. From 1840 to 1870, the number of children in New York’s Catholic schools rose from 5,000 to 22,000.
Make no mistake: Hughes, like Egan, could brook no interference with his ecclesiastical priorities. But the difficulties he faced were far more daunting than Egan’s—not just financial problems, but also active threats to his flock in the form of virulent prejudice. Hughes thought outside the box and made a difference to the lives of millions for more than a century afterward through the parochial school system.
Was Egan ever so creative? Not really.
Oh, wait. I take that back. Yes, he was. Once. It occurred during his time as bishop of Bridgeport, when, during litigation springing from the sexual-abuse crisis, he came up with the novel theory that the Church had no legal liability because its priests were “independent contractors.”
I bet the priests he supervised in Bridgeport—and especially the ones he managed in the far larger jurisdiction of New York—had a real good laugh over that one. It might have been the last time in his career that he ever said anything funny, even if it was completely unintentional.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Exhibit Review: “Catholics in New York 1808-1946”
In early December, I decided to take a “staycation” in the New York metro area, catching up on necessary tasks and, for a couple of days, seeing cultural sites. One of the latter was the Museum of the City of New York.
Despite my longtime interest in history, I had stayed away from this institution because of the way it spun the controversy surrounding its mid-1990s “Gaelic Gotham” retrospective of Irish-Americans in the city into a dispute over political correctness rather than what in fact it was—an argument about scholarship and museum governance. My annoyance over this issue was so pronounced that I refused to support the institution for a long time thereafter.
Several years ago, however, the leadership of the museum underwent a transition, leaving me more disposed to see a topic there of compelling interest. Catholics in New York 1808-1946 fit the bill perfectly, dealing not just with religious, urban, and political history but also, for me, with personal history, since my mother’s side of the family were part of the New York Archdiocese for most of the first half of the 20th century.
Catholics, of course, were in New York before 1808. But that year marked the official designation of the Archdiocese of New York by the Vatican, so it serves as a useful measuring point to measure progress over the years in numbers and influence.
The luck of the Irish was with me the day I visited the museum. As I approached, camera crews from “Gossip Girl” were all around the place. Praise be to God--admission was free! I put the nine dollars I saved toward purchasing the companion book for the exhibit—and, faithful reader, I took back (at least for 24 hours) all the negative thoughts I’d ever had about why teenagers were wasting their time with this show.
The exhibit, which opened in mid-May, ended on New Year’s Eve, and I was only sorry I didn’t see it sooner. Excerpts from interviews with several notable New York Catholics (still-practicing and lapsed) played on a small TV monitor, including with veteran journalist Pete Hamill (who noted that his own writing was influenced by Mass, “which is essentially a three-act play”) and educator Frank Macchiarola.
An unexpected source of humor came from one of the interviewees, Sister Nancy Callahan, who as a youngster startled her parents with the rather stark difference in her alternative career plans: “Well, I’m going to become a nun or an interior decorator!” (She also movingly notes that they told her that if things didn’t work out in the convent, she could always come home.)
Along the way, I learned several facts I hadn’t realized before:
* The venerable city institution St. Vincent’s Hospital was established by Archbishop John Hughes in November 1849. I guess he wanted to make sure it was run by someone he trusted, because the operation was headed by Sister Angela Hughes, the archbishop’s own sister.
* The great Olympic runner Jesse Owens came to national prominence in 1934 at races held in NewYork under the Catholic aegis.
* In 1849, the Irish “apostle of temperance,” Fr. Theobald Mathew, traveled around the city, where he administered “the pledge” of abstinence from liquor to 20,000 people.
Longtime readers of this blog know my intense fascination with the first Roman Catholic nominee of a major American party, New York Governor Al Smith, so I was glad to see material on him, including photos, clippings about his battle against bigots in his 1928 Presidential race, and even an award he won in grade school for (naturally!) elocution.
All kinds of artifacts fill the exhibition—not just the usual photographs and cartoons, but also medals, clothes, communion cards, and the like. They all serve a purpose, however: to show how the faith underlay just about every aspect of its adherents’ lives—school, the workplace, hospitals, and politics. (The imperative to look out “for the least of mine” played out in the social welfare legislation pioneered by Smith and Albany colleague Robert Wagner and later implemented on a mass scale as part of the New Deal.)
I especially enjoyed the interactive map of archdiocesan parochial schools in 1945. I had fun typing into the screen the names of parochial schools that my mother and her siblings had attended (e.g., St. Charles Borromeo in Manhattan), seeing how many students had been enrolled at the end of the war. Several older exhibit visitors enjoyed this even more, as they had attended these very schools. I can only imagine the stories that my mother and her deceased and surviving siblings might have shared had they seen this.
You cannot absorb history without noticing how much certain aspects of the past play out, in different contexts, in the present. Only a couple of days after I visited this exhibit—which noted how Catholics built up their own social institutions in the hostile New World environment—came the news that Bernard Madoff had exploited similar Jewish philanthropic activities.
Especially after viewing the “Catholic New York” exhibit, I could only read with sympathy Wall Street Journal reporter Lucette Lagnado’s piercing examination of the conundrum faced by these Jewish charities. She quotes a comparison by a Jewish-American historian, Jonathan Sarda, of the affluent Orthodox Jewish community of New York to "a kind of shtetl -- a very wealthy shtetl."
Having read similar references to “the Catholic ghetto” of parallel institutions before the election of John F. Kennedy, I understand all too well not only the desire to belong that makes one want to tear down these social enclosures, but also the nostalgia for solidarity and the longing for “the kind of more humble, more individual tzedakah, or personal charity” that informs Ms. Lagnado’s piece.
The same day, I also saw at the museum an exhibit on the photography of Southern author Eudora Welty. At some point, I may write also write about this exhibit (which is still ongoing as of this writing).
In the meantime, since I have taken the museum to task in the past, I think it only fair to commend it now for this exhibit, and, in particular, take note of those most crucially involved with it. Deborah Dependahl Waters served as curator, with Sarah Henry acting as contributing curator and the historian Terry Golway (who also edited the companion volume) acting as curatorial consultant.
Despite my longtime interest in history, I had stayed away from this institution because of the way it spun the controversy surrounding its mid-1990s “Gaelic Gotham” retrospective of Irish-Americans in the city into a dispute over political correctness rather than what in fact it was—an argument about scholarship and museum governance. My annoyance over this issue was so pronounced that I refused to support the institution for a long time thereafter.
Several years ago, however, the leadership of the museum underwent a transition, leaving me more disposed to see a topic there of compelling interest. Catholics in New York 1808-1946 fit the bill perfectly, dealing not just with religious, urban, and political history but also, for me, with personal history, since my mother’s side of the family were part of the New York Archdiocese for most of the first half of the 20th century.
Catholics, of course, were in New York before 1808. But that year marked the official designation of the Archdiocese of New York by the Vatican, so it serves as a useful measuring point to measure progress over the years in numbers and influence.
The luck of the Irish was with me the day I visited the museum. As I approached, camera crews from “Gossip Girl” were all around the place. Praise be to God--admission was free! I put the nine dollars I saved toward purchasing the companion book for the exhibit—and, faithful reader, I took back (at least for 24 hours) all the negative thoughts I’d ever had about why teenagers were wasting their time with this show.
The exhibit, which opened in mid-May, ended on New Year’s Eve, and I was only sorry I didn’t see it sooner. Excerpts from interviews with several notable New York Catholics (still-practicing and lapsed) played on a small TV monitor, including with veteran journalist Pete Hamill (who noted that his own writing was influenced by Mass, “which is essentially a three-act play”) and educator Frank Macchiarola.
An unexpected source of humor came from one of the interviewees, Sister Nancy Callahan, who as a youngster startled her parents with the rather stark difference in her alternative career plans: “Well, I’m going to become a nun or an interior decorator!” (She also movingly notes that they told her that if things didn’t work out in the convent, she could always come home.)
Along the way, I learned several facts I hadn’t realized before:
* The venerable city institution St. Vincent’s Hospital was established by Archbishop John Hughes in November 1849. I guess he wanted to make sure it was run by someone he trusted, because the operation was headed by Sister Angela Hughes, the archbishop’s own sister.
* The great Olympic runner Jesse Owens came to national prominence in 1934 at races held in NewYork under the Catholic aegis.
* In 1849, the Irish “apostle of temperance,” Fr. Theobald Mathew, traveled around the city, where he administered “the pledge” of abstinence from liquor to 20,000 people.
Longtime readers of this blog know my intense fascination with the first Roman Catholic nominee of a major American party, New York Governor Al Smith, so I was glad to see material on him, including photos, clippings about his battle against bigots in his 1928 Presidential race, and even an award he won in grade school for (naturally!) elocution.
All kinds of artifacts fill the exhibition—not just the usual photographs and cartoons, but also medals, clothes, communion cards, and the like. They all serve a purpose, however: to show how the faith underlay just about every aspect of its adherents’ lives—school, the workplace, hospitals, and politics. (The imperative to look out “for the least of mine” played out in the social welfare legislation pioneered by Smith and Albany colleague Robert Wagner and later implemented on a mass scale as part of the New Deal.)
I especially enjoyed the interactive map of archdiocesan parochial schools in 1945. I had fun typing into the screen the names of parochial schools that my mother and her siblings had attended (e.g., St. Charles Borromeo in Manhattan), seeing how many students had been enrolled at the end of the war. Several older exhibit visitors enjoyed this even more, as they had attended these very schools. I can only imagine the stories that my mother and her deceased and surviving siblings might have shared had they seen this.
You cannot absorb history without noticing how much certain aspects of the past play out, in different contexts, in the present. Only a couple of days after I visited this exhibit—which noted how Catholics built up their own social institutions in the hostile New World environment—came the news that Bernard Madoff had exploited similar Jewish philanthropic activities.
Especially after viewing the “Catholic New York” exhibit, I could only read with sympathy Wall Street Journal reporter Lucette Lagnado’s piercing examination of the conundrum faced by these Jewish charities. She quotes a comparison by a Jewish-American historian, Jonathan Sarda, of the affluent Orthodox Jewish community of New York to "a kind of shtetl -- a very wealthy shtetl."
Having read similar references to “the Catholic ghetto” of parallel institutions before the election of John F. Kennedy, I understand all too well not only the desire to belong that makes one want to tear down these social enclosures, but also the nostalgia for solidarity and the longing for “the kind of more humble, more individual tzedakah, or personal charity” that informs Ms. Lagnado’s piece.
The same day, I also saw at the museum an exhibit on the photography of Southern author Eudora Welty. At some point, I may write also write about this exhibit (which is still ongoing as of this writing).
In the meantime, since I have taken the museum to task in the past, I think it only fair to commend it now for this exhibit, and, in particular, take note of those most crucially involved with it. Deborah Dependahl Waters served as curator, with Sarah Henry acting as contributing curator and the historian Terry Golway (who also edited the companion volume) acting as curatorial consultant.
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