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Naked in New York: The Unceremonious Stripping of Our Saviour

Photo by David Galalis
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in The Church of Our Saviour, 2011. Photo by David Galalis

There’s a very peculiar thing happening at The Church of Our Savior in Midtown Manhattan. Beautiful sacred art — icons commissioned in 2004 by Fr. George Rutler, the parish’s erudite and well-loved former pastor — have been disappearing from the columns surrounding the sanctuary – quite literally under the cover of night.

This clandestine desecration of the holy of holies — for surely, to denude the altar of God of such fitting accouterments is to divest it of no small portion of its sacred character — began last August, under the direction of the new pastor, Fr. Robert Robbins. At the time, the story failed to make much impact, lost as it was in the larger clamor over the impending closure of Holy Innocents, another Manhattan parish also connected to Fr. Rutler, who served as its administrator until the end of last year. Holy Innocents, nestled in New York’s garment district, is, like Our Saviour, a haven for working New Yorkers – a momentary retreat from one of the busiest metropolises on the planet into the numinous tranquility of the sacred.

Hi rez Our Saviour Sanctuary
Sanctuary of Our Saviour with all 31 icons. Photo by David Galalis

Holy Innocents was touch and go for months, but it was ultimately spared, and well it should have been. Under Fr. Rutler’s careful watch, both parishes performed well financially. Holy Innocents was already in good shape before his arrival, and this trend continued; Our Saviour, through his stewardship, climbed out of the morass of red ink that has plagued so many other Catholic churches in New York. In November of 2014, Holy Innocents was removed from the Archdiocesan list of pending parish closures with as little explanation as when it had been placed there. And if the stay of execution (along with the original sentence) was officially inexplicable, one can hardly discount in its survival the impact of a successful social media campaign, writeups in both the religious and secular media, and a petition that neared 6,000 signatures at its completion. Some sad stories do have a happy ending, and this one was particularly fairy tale-esque: after all, it’s the only parish in the entire New York Archdiocese to offer a daily Traditional Latin Mass.

But if the fight for Holy Innocents managed to restrain Damocles’ proverbial sword, Our Saviour has been quietly suffering death by a thousand cuts. The icons that began disappearing last summer without comment or response from the pastor began vanishing anew earlier this week. Once again, the power of social media is being brought to bear, and without the deafening roar of outcry over the potential closure of a beloved parish, awareness of this unfortunate occurence is building. The most recent incidence of disappearing icons has already garnered the attention of bloggers like Katrina Fernandez and Deacon Greg Kandra, various Facebook groups, and The Society of St. Hugh of ClunyMaureen Mullarkey, a New York arts scene insider and contributor to First Things (as well as this website), published her own take early this morning. This afternoon, Ben Yanke at New Liturgical Movement weighed in with enhanced photos that help illustrate the chronology of the icons’ removal.

unnamed (2)
Interior of Our Saviour with icons removed, July 22, 2015

Before going further into the issue at hand, perhaps it would be helpful to take a moment to step back and offer some historical context.

When Fr. Rutler took over Our Saviour, it was almost literally, as he described it, a “baptism by fire.” His official date of installation was to be September 17, 2001, but he was in the process of moving in when the tragic attacks of September 11th began, occuring just a few miles further downtown. As if the crisis those dark days plunged the country (and New York in particular) into weren’t enough, the parish was in terrible financial shape. Its prospects were so dire, in fact, that some have speculated it might soon have been closed down and put up for sale, where its Park Avenue address could easily fetch a multi-million-dollar price to pad the waning coffers of the Archdiocese. But Fr. Rutler, concerned only with the task entrusted by Our Lord to his care, put his shoulder to the wheel and got down to the work of being a pastor. And a good pastor who cares for the needs of his flock can expect God to bless his endeavors. In his final homily at Our Saviour, he recounted the fiscal obstacles that the parishioners had managed to overcome:

The good people of our parish, along with our extended family far and wide, have sacrificed to change the financial situation of this parish. Twelve years ago we were burdened under millions of dollars of mortgage and other debts and costs for the repair of a building in which everything seemed to be collapsing at the same time. All that has been reversed, every penny of debt is paid, and the church has virtually been reconstructed, along with the installation of a new organ and many other improvements, renovations and fine art. Our Lord was not fortunate in the one he chose to hold the moneybag, but the same Lord mercifully sent me trustees whose selfless devotion in these challenging years will bring them a reward more than I can give. There may have been times when my concern about the dire financial situation of our church made me seem, in the vernacular expression, cheap. Part of me is Scottish, a people known to practice thrift to an heroic degree, and in recent years I have even been made chaplain to our city’s two leading Scottish societies. What once was owed is now matched by what is held in fixed funds for the maintenance of the church. The daily costs remain the responsibility of the people, in addition to our charitable and evangelical obligations, and I leave in the good hope that the results of the hard work of many will be preserved and stewardship will increase.
A stewardship program detailing existing expenses and budget cutbacks during Fr. Rutler’s pastorship still exists on the parish website, along with public financial data for 2005, 2006, and 2007, though these links appear to have been removed from the site’s homepage. There is no subsequently published financial data on the website (a link to a 2012 Financial Summary goes to a login prompt) but the final public report, dated in 2007, shows a deficit in 2001 that turns into a surplus in 2002, which grows steadily each year thereafter. Despite commissioning the gorgeous art that graced the sanctuary and effecting a “virtual reconstruction” of the church, Our Saviour was on a consistent uptick into the black.
Fr. Rutler’s successes were far more than financial, however. During his time there, the CCD and pre-cana programs grew, liturgical reverence was increased while abuses were pared away, and sacred music was a feature, not an anomaly. The aesthetic improvements to the parish made it a favored place of refuge and prayer, lifting minds and hearts to God and drawing visitors who might never have otherwise known the church from hundreds of others throughout the city. Under Fr. Rutler, Our Saviour also offered the vetus ordo, that ancient liturgy of the Church which has been a blessing to so many parishes that have welcomed it. In other words, the efforts of the pastor and the parishioners who worked with him to accomplish his goals created a parish that became identifiably Catholic, with tangible results that stood out in a struggling diocese. Fr. Rutler recounted that during his twelve years as pastor, “623 have been baptized into Christ” and “433 have been united in Holy Matrimony” while “Since 2001 our flock has doubled, and there have been among them nearly a dozen who have been called to the priesthood.”
Nearly a dozen called to the priesthood. Do you know how many men were ordained in the New York Archdiocese in 2015?
In all of New York. With 296 parishes and 2.8 million Catholics. And twelve is a high number for an archdiocese that hasn’t exactly experienced a vocations boom in the 21st century. (In 2011 there were four. In 2012 there was only one.)

But despite his track record at Our Saviour, in 2013, Fr. Rutler was reassigned — not without protest from his congregants — and the parish he built began, despite his fervently-stated hopes, to falter.

Not long after the arrival of its current pastor, the Traditional Mass at Our Saviour was done away with, and not gently. In a story published last December at First Things, Nicholas Frankovich recounted:

In August 2013, only a few weeks into his new assignment, the new pastor wrote to an altar server to rebuke him about some Mass cards, a standard accessory of the traditional Latin Mass. They display the text of the ordinary of the Mass; the priest at the altar prays from them. “If I choose to clean the sacristy of paraphernalia and place it in a closet, that is my prerogative,” the pastor wrote. “Placing laminated cards which were superseded more than 45 years ago all over the sacristy is part of the schizophrenia under which OS has been allowed to operate. That is no longer the case.”

The key word here is “superseded.” That is what the 1962 missal was once thought to be. What has been superseded in fact is the pastor’s misrepresentation of the Church’s teaching on this point. Contrary to an earlier misunderstanding common even at the highest reaches of the prelacy, the traditional Latin Mass was never abrogated, as Pope Benedict XVI noted by way of explaining his decision to liberalize its use. “Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows,” he urged. He was concerned to correct those who regarded the older, extraordinary form of the Roman rite as harmful. The old misunderstanding about its status persists in some quarters. Younger priests are less prone to insist on the error.

month after the “supersession” email, the new pastor discontinued the extraordinary form at Our Saviour, without notice, making it difficult for congregants to collect one another’s contact information and organize themselves as a “stable group” who, per the apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, could approach him to request Mass in the extraordinary form. In a comment on Facebook on July 24 of this year, he referred to the extraordinary form as “ridiculous.”

The bias of Fr. Robbins came quickly into focus.

It was also in August of last year that the icons began disappearing. Fr. Zuhlsdorf covered the “demolition”:

I suspect this is ideological, and not restoration at all.

It looks like a modern example of iconoclasm.

If the iconic work that frames the sanctuary has been effaced, how long can the work around the triumphal arch and in the tympanum of the apse survive?

What’s going on there?  Is this “Get Rutler!” time in NYC?  Deface Rutler’s work at Our Saviour? Slate St. Michael’s and Holy Innocents for closure a year after he arrives?  By next year he’ll be pastor of a cardboard box over a grate near the Hudson.

Others chimed in as well. As blog posts questioning what was happening accumulated, an email exchange between a friend of the iconographer and Fr. Robbins over what was transpiring earned a curt response from the pastor:

In this world of “lynching by blogs” and since I don’t know you, I will simply state that the icons removed will be displayed in the Undercroft. Those that remain are planned to remain.

And so they did, until this week. And once again, it’s challenging trying to piece together a coherent picture of just what, exactly, is transpiring at Our Savior. As I reached out to my network of contacts, information filtered back in. Lots of off-the-record anecdotes, an allegation about motive here, one about untoward behavior there, all plausible, all in line with the larger story, and little of it verifiable enough to put before the public.

Some view what is happening as an attack on Fr. Rutler, who is well-known and well-liked, and unusually successful. Some view it as an attack on the artist, or his art. And it might be either or both of those things. But from where I sit, it appears appears to be an attack on the sacred. Such attacks, by nature, are only too happy to inflict collateral damage on those who promote the sacred. So in that sense, it’s probably all of the above. We’ve seen it before.

The Case of the Vanishing Sense of the Sacred, you see, is a murder mystery with a tried-and-true formula. It has been field-tested in parishes across the world for over half a century, and found more or less foolproof if the steps are followed. The diminution of Catholicism has been imposed by parochial fiat from thousands upon thousands of pulpits, and has been enforced in the breaking of as many altar rails, the shoving off of as many tabernacles, and the stripping of as many altars and sanctuaries. It all plays out behind a thick, velvety curtain of plausible deniability, or of pastoralism, or both, and complaints must be submitted in writing to the amicable but noncommittal bishop, who is inevitably shielded from such inconveniences by a small army of bureaucratic chancery staff, spinning red tape like diocesan spiders, ready to catch any grievance in their web.

This leaves critics of things like what is right now, at this very moment, transpiring at Our Saviour…out in the cold. If it only played out like in the cartoons, we’d all of us be able to stand around at the inevitable denouement, one of us reaching giddily to remove the rubber mask from the defeated culprit while he growled about how he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for us meddling kids.

But this isn’t the cartoons. Things aren’t that simple.

That said, the message is no longer as easy to control as it once was, either. It’s the age of the laity, after all, and the laity are empowered, and the laity are more than a little tired of this game.

Foremost among those who are upset is Ken Woo, the artist who spent six years creating the thirty-one icons — including a 28-foot-high image of Christ Pantocrator — for The Church of Our Saviour. He began the massive undertaking when he was commissioned to do the work in 2004, and finished in 2010. What is happening now isn’t just the wreckovation of an old, out-of-date church, the artisans and craftsmen who made it a reality lost to history. This aesthetic assault deeply affects the man who created the transcendent artistry that graced Our Savior just five years ago.

I spoke with him to get a sense of his thoughts.

Woo was born in Communist China, but moved to the United States when he was four years old. Artistic talent, he told me, runs in his family, his mother and grandmother having both been avid painters. Raised in California as a Methodist, he later came to New York, and, having become interested in the Catholic Faith, enrolled in the RCIA program at The Church of Our Saviour, while Father Rutler was still the pastor. Father indicated that he was looking for an artist to paint a mural behind the altar, and Woo was one of seven artists to submit a design. Ultimately, his work was chosen, and the resulting iconography earned him critical and international acclaim, as seen in this writeup in China Daily:

Woo also gained a reputation through his project at Our Savior Church at Park Avenue and 38th in New York, which won him Best Renovation of the Year and a 2006 Gold Leaf Award. He was the winning bidder of an international competition of seven artists from all around the world.

The 24-foot-high icon recalling the great age of Cathedral painting took three phrases, six years, and funding from the Vatican, the church itself and private donations.

Woo created a series of 27 paintings so large and broad that they had to use scaffolding, electric lifts and other high-tech equipment to install. The centerpiece of the work is 10 feet above the ground. It’s made up of 15 separate panels of treated wood with paint and gold lead. Thirty icons representing various saints are also included. The concept took six months just to be developed.

With the amount of talent, care, effort, and passion that went into the paintings, it’s no surprise that Woo feels very strongly about the inexplicable removal of his work.

“[Fr.] Robbins has been taking them down without any notice to the parish in the cover of night,” Woo said.

When asked what had become of his artwork since its removal, Woo didn’t know the answer. “No one has seen the state of the icons.” he said.

On the parish’s official Facebook page, a somewhat lengthy explanation was posted yesterday evening and signed by Fr. Robbins and Lawrence Hoy of Renovata Studios – the company tasked with the latest “restoration” of the parish, so soon after the last one was completed. The post — conveniently timed with the renewed online interest in the removal of the icons — is accompanied by an old mock-up of the church interior, and explains:

This original watercolor/gouache interior sketch of the proposed interior of the Church of Our Saviour was created by Mr. Richard Zimmerman of the Rambusch company under the artistic direction of Harold Rambusch and architect Paul C. Reilly before the church was built. This was the vision that the pastor and archbishop approved prior to beginning the construction of the building. Note that most of the colors in the sketch, such as the walls, ceiling and side altars are as the church appears today. It is also evident from this sketch that the baldacchino and sanctuary screen were always intended to be part of the sanctuary design even though early 1960’s photos show the sanctuary without them.

[…]

To date, twelve large and twelve smaller icons have been removed from the four columns that flank the altar. According to archival photos, these columns did not originally have decoration of any kind. All icons were carefully and sensitively removed by the same restoration craftsmen that restored the beautiful decorative ceiling of the church. The icon panels have all been wrapped individually in plastic and carefully stored in the undercroft of the church to await re-installation in other parish buildings or perhaps another church. The painted panels were installed on the two columns of the proscenium arch between the main altar and the two side altars.

Woo indicated that yesterday was the first time an explanation has been given for the removals since they began last summer. “I don’t buy it,” he told me. “It’s just an excuse.”

And indeed, as comments critical of the explanation began piling up on the Facebook post — the majority of them respectfully stated — they were removed with the same swiftness as the icons and the parish’s Latin Mass. The narrative, it appeared, was not to be challenged. Whoever is responsible for the page then posted the following comment:

This post is not intended to be a forum for grievances, but a statement regarding the renovations at The Church of Our Saviour. Thank you.

In point of fact, it appears that grievances on this issue have no forum at all – at least not within the New York Archdiocese. My emails to Cardinal Dolan and Father Robbins have gone unanswered, and not unexpectedly. Reaching the prelate of the second-largest diocese in the country on short notice is a bit of a stretch on a good day. Reaching a priest who is under fire for his assault on sacred art in a parish of that diocese while he is on vacation — I’m told that he is enjoying a trip to the pricey and exclusive Hamptons — is only slightly less unlikely. But despite the unavailability of those who can do something about it, the icons have been disappearing this week right on schedule. The parishioners of Our Saviour weren’t given any notice at all. They just show up for morning Mass, and more are gone.

There are real questions here that demand to be answered. This isn’t just a matter of taste. While the pastor of a parish has a certain degree of latitude to make changes in his own parish, unilateral changes of a substantive nature require diocesan authorization. According to the policy manual of the New York Archdiocese, “At the inception of a project” in which a church or “worship space” is to be renovated, the pastor is required to send a letter to the Archdiocesan Liturgy Commission “describing the proposed change(s) and the purpose for the change(s).” (Section 308.7) This is to happen for “all renovation and restoration projects that involve any change, modification, or addition to the church or chapel, regardless of the cost involved.” (Section 308.6) And further, “A schematic design, along with a recommendation from the ALC, is submitted to the Archbishop for further approval. No further design work may take place until explicit approval has been received from the Archbishop’s office for the schematic design.” (Section 308.7)

Was this done?

And what of Section 308.6, which states, “Accordingly, every building or renovation project must include a component of education and formation for parishioners on the church’s liturgical tradition and the spatial requirements of the reformed liturgy.” Were the parishioners going to receive a “component of education and formation” about why their sanctuary was being stripped of its beauty?

And what about the financial implications of this second “restoration”?

Among the many emails I received while researching this story was one that included a scanned copy of a draft financial report for The Church of Our Saviour for Fiscal Years 2012-13 and 2013-14. The 2012-13 year was Fr. Rutler’s last, whereas the 2013-14 year was Fr. Robbins’ first. This report, which I was told was distributed to parishioners in their bulletins last fall, depicts a serious change in the financial health of the parish in a very short time. For FY 2013-14, expenses were over $100,000 higher than in FY 2012-13. At the same time, income dropped more than $250,000.

In other words, while Fr. Rutler finished his tenure at Our Savior with a $35,000 budget surplus for the year and money in the bank, Fr. Robbins finished his first year with a more than $300,000 budget deficit. The largest portion of the loss in income came from a nearly $200,000 decline in weekly collections – a potentially significant indicator that parishioners have not been happy with changes made to the parish under new leadership. Meanwhile, permits were filed last summer with the city for a renovation to the rectory with a cost estimate of nearly a million dollars – work that was reported to have been completed this past April.

For a parish that worked so hard to get out of debt, where is the stewardship in spending even more money on a new renovation project that is clearly a matter of choice, and not of necessity?
We are, lacking comment from him, left with no clear picture of Fr. Robbins’ thinking. But based on the facts available, one is hard-pressed to see an example of responsible stewardship or financial transparency taking place at The Church of Our Saviour. And as we scratch our heads trying to piece this together, most of the icons have been taken down – 24 of the 31 originally created.

To that end, Ken Woo has organized a rally to save the icons this evening. On Facebook, he notified friends and fans of the last-ditch gathering:

Across from the cardinal’s residence which is: at Madison Avenue & 50th Street at 5:30 to 6:PM – Thursday, July 23rd. One poster will be used to indicate who we are and that we are demonstrating against the destruction of the magnificent interior artwork/icons a Our Saviours.

Hope you can make it, I’ll be there!!!

It is likely the last of the icons will be taken down including the Pantocrator in the next day or two so time is of the essence! Please spread the word

If you’re local, and can make it to the rally, please consider doing so. Whether you’re local or not, please contact Cardinal Dolan, and ask him to not only put a stop to any further destruction, but to see to it that the icons in The Church of Our Savior are restored. And wherever you are, please sign this petition, which will be sent to the archdiocese – and then share it with your friends. When it comes to situations like this, numbers matter. The more signatories, the better.

If you want to contact Cardinal Dolan, the quickest way to reach the chancery is: [email protected]

Letters, marked “Personal and Confidential”, can be sent to His Eminence Cardinal Timothy Dolan, 1011 First Avenue New York, NY 10022.

If you would prefer to call, leaving a message stating your concern, the number of the chancery is: 212-371-1011 ext 2935.

This is a tragedy unfolding in slow motion. Let’s do all we can to make it right.

 

63 thoughts on “Naked in New York: The Unceremonious Stripping of Our Saviour”

  1. It looks like in a few years the Church will be empty of people and of anything that brings the mind towards God. Then a leader of the Church might walk inside, look around at the state is in and exclaim, Bravo!

    Reply
  2. The Church of the Holy Innocents did NOT climb out of debt. It was not in debt at all, either before, during, or after it was slated to be merged.

    Reply
      • Thanks for making the correction.
        I did not buy the correction either. I was simply stating that that is what the Archdiocese said.

        Additionally, some of the parishioners were informed that the Archdiocese had also made known in a letter –with a very angry tone– to a parishioner of Holy Innocents that the hundreds of letters received at the Cardinal’s office in defence of preservation of the daily traditional Mass at Holy Innocents had nothing to do with the decision to save Holy Innocents.

        I did not buy that explanation either. The bad publicity the Archdiocese received from that was felt all over. And the anger at the fact that so many people, even outside of NY, had made their voices heard about the preservation of the daily Latin Mass, was obvious.

        Reply
        • Well, they certainly would not want to create the impression that the archdiocese is responsive to the expressed concerns of its parishioners.

          Reply
    • The original design of the Sistine Chapel had a blue ceiling with stars painted on it. To simply say “it’s the original design” is not enough. We wouldn’t paint over Michelangelo’s frescos. You have to make an actual argument that the original design is better.
      Furthermore, the claim that they are simply reverting to the original design is belied by the fact that in relighting the Church they’ve chosen to make it more brightly lit than the original design. If they were merely returning to the original design, they’d have not increased the lighting levels.
      In addition, they’ve added fencing outside the Church which is inconsistent in design with pre-existing fencing and which is not found in Reilly’s plan for the exterior.

      Reply
      • I can’t make the argument that the original is better than the icons since I am not privy to any of that information. I certainly don’t see any evidence of a 1980s wreckovation.

        Reply
  3. DISCO-DECAYED

    Disco-decayed

    They cancelled
    all color

    Sanctuaries
    stripped

    First Communions
    were duller.

    No crinoline
    whites

    Pale hues they
    stressed

    Only
    pearled-Pharisees

    Are ever so
    dressed.

    Roses,
    carnations,

    Flowers, all
    manners

    Left just to
    wither

    Gainst assertive
    beige banners.

    Pillars of marble

    Corinthian styles

    They decided to
    paint

    Like pink
    bathroom tiles.

    Cassocks of red

    Habits blue,
    white,

    Robes of
    distinction

    Extinct over
    night.

    Missals with
    pages

    Embossed in
    gloss-gold

    Latin in tint

    English-black to
    behold.

    Even the ribbons

    To mark
    scriptural prayers

    Were of green,
    yellow, silvers

    So to keep us
    from errors.

    The soft votive
    flames

    The red opaque
    glass

    Gave an aura of
    stillness

    Like time could
    not pass.

    Yet time it
    passed

    Vividness drained

    And populations
    without color

    Cannot be
    sustained.

    So those
    underground

    With red blood in
    blue veins

    Birthed
    knowledge, the arts

    Great virtues
    they’ve gained.

    They did not
    decay

    God’s colors kept
    green

    For the day up
    above

    Once again to be
    seen.

    Except for those
    beige

    Banner-like-blind

    Gray fertility
    fades

    In their black
    open minds.

    Reply
  4. I wonder what the actual, attending parishioners (not former parishioners, not disgruntled enthusiasts across the world) have to say on the matter? From what I gather, they are very pleased with Fr. Robbins, the staff of the place, and are also growing in holiness and charity.

    Perhaps the cult of Fr. Rutler is at play here . . .

    Reply
    • “Parishoners” are those who live in the parish, not those who attend the parish. I can tell you that there are actual disgruntled parishoners.
      What you “gather” anonymously from Kansas City, Missouri is pretty worthless.

      Reply
    • The absolute worst of the worst sexual abusers were some of the most popular (still popular in some cases) pastors of the Novus Ordo Sect who made the parishes “[grow] in holiness and charity” and did away with the personality cult of the previous, orthodox pastor. Your point?

      Reply
  5. I am also against their removal but not on aesthetic
    grounds, but mostly because they had an impact on our spiritual journey at some
    point in time. Their removal is painful and personal as they may have been the
    catalyst of many conversions. But I have been struggling with my own reactions
    to this news because I feel that this is in fact a test for all of us who had
    the gift of being at COS during Fr. Rutler’s time. What the icons signify and
    who they directed us towards, cannot be stripped away in the dead of night by
    any decorator or pastor with his own aesthetic vision.

    Reply
  6. Egregious clericalism at its worst. AND passive compliance of the faithful. If this happened in the Eastern Church there would have been hundreds of people STOPPING THE LITURGY WITH SHOUTS OF “UNWORTHY” IN LOUD CHANT!

    Reply
    • Egregious clericalism, indeed. How is it possible that these drastic, expensive
      changes to the church are being imposed without the parish leaders condescending
      to bring the parishioners into the loop? Seems to me that if the pastor had the
      least respect for his flock he’d have given them straight answers to their valid
      questions sometime in the past year. Or maybe even taken their wishes and
      opinions into account– as one does when working with reasonable adults.

      It’s very hard not to conclude that the parish leadership at Our Savior simply
      has no respect for the folks in the pews. How else to explain the way this
      fiasco has unfolded?

      Reply
      • Of course he doesn’t. The pro Vat ll modernist crowd has NO respect for people who wish to worship in the traditional liturgy. I do believe their end game is to close the Church just as they wanted to from the get go. The Priest is also getting his marching orders from Cdl. Dolan as I’m sure you are aware. He wouldn’t be able to do what he’s doing without the ‘blessing’ of the Cardinal. NOTHING like this happens without the direction and approval from ‘Downtown’.

        Reply
    • It’s fine over here in the East. Even without iconoclasm I found myself in a fast moving current to the ancient home. This vandalism is part of the general assault of the episkopoi taking advantage of Benedict’s departure .

      Reply
  7. And this is why it has become crazy to give any money at all to diocesan capital campaigns. Because after decades of telling parishioners that the churches belonged to the people, so they needed to pay for the buildings, the repairs, and the renovations, when they want to close a parish down and sell prime real estate, suddenly the church isn’t yours anymore. Hey bishops, you can have our money when you sign a document saying we get it all back if you close our church or sell the building–with interest.

    Reply
  8. A man who speaks with the voice of the Holy Spirit is notable by his ability to speak to your heart – with words that mean one thing in the public, liminal sense, and another in the private sense of the individual who hears them. Also by his arguments, that can be accepted by the faithful or ignored by the heathen, but can be disputed by neither.

    Reply
  9. If there is not a sodomite behind this neo-iconoclasm IANS will eat every palm tree in Palm Beach County, Fl.

    Reply
  10. I observed to my wife after touring the newer suburban churches in our area that sense of unbelief was projected from every corner in most of them. The exaltation of the Priest over the sacraments made him and his ministers the center of the rite in a sterile, faithless and ugly environment.

    One church actually used the corpus of the Good Thief rather than Christ from a traditional set of the crucifixion scene (from the original more traditional church) for the Crucifix over the main altar until a more orthodox priest replaced it with an authentic Crucifix.

    It was common knowledge that the unpierced, supplicating and beardless corpus was used by the original pastor because he considered it less offensive and off putting than the corpse of Christ in the original because in typical Protestant Catholic sense he would say “We worship a Living Jesus not a dead Jesus”.

    How nice.

    Reply
  11. For me, a parishioner at OS who stopped attending when the traditional mass was ended, the fate of the icons is not that important. What troubled me more was the rather abrupt end to the traditional mass without much regard for the parishioners who regularly attended. I and others, I suspect, felt bereft and started going to Holy Innocents. The Holy Innocents intrigue then made it seem like there was some kind of concerted effort to wipe out the traditional mass in New York. As it happens, last Friday I found myself near OS and decided to attend the noontime mass. I was surprised to see that the icons on the main pillars had disappeared. I noticed that the lights were brighter and the sound system louder. The latter puzzled me because I recall that the OS audio system had been upgraded under Fr Rutler not too long ago and seemed more than satisfactory. What dismayed me about my visit to OS, however, was the mass itself. I do not know who the celebrant was, but he delivered his homily like he was shouting. It was quite off-putting, especially for those used to Fr Rutler’s measured speech. After the sermon, the priest skipped over the creed! And then worst of all, just before he went down from the altar to give communion, he gave some rather odd lecture about how there were people who didn’t know how to receive communion by hand and then proceeded to give a demonstration of the proper way to do so (with the dominant hand under the other), as if instructing children. I was so distressed by this condescension, that I got up and left.

    Reply
  12. This is madness. Weekly contributions drop $200,000 and this priest bithely continues on the same course of action. No clergyman behaves this way unless there’s something seriously wrong with him. Or is there a hidden agenda here to put this parish out of business? I would like to know more about Father Robbins’ background.

    Reply
  13. Why no clarification from the Archdiocese? The alteration of a sanctuary requires the approval of the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission. Since these recently commissioned icons cost over $100,000 would the pastor not need permission of the Archdiocese to remove them? What about the intention of the donors of the funds for the original commission? This proves that clericalism is not about cassocks, collars and candlesticks…it’s unchecked power and authority over people and their money. Is it customary for pastors when moving to a new parish to bring employees along with them? Is it professional for a pastor to holiday with church employees? How can a pastor living on a priest’s salary pay for a home/pool/hot tub in East Hampton?

    Reply
  14. Wonderful story:
    One of the donors of the Pantocrator was a friend of Father Rutler who sold his business to become a monk, and gave his money to pay for the Pantocrator with the stipulation that he remain anonymous and that the Pantocrator be designated (as it is with a plaque) as The Gift of the Poorest of the Poor who cannot afford to give their own gifts. If the Pantocrator is removed, that sign will also disappear.

    Reply
  15. The Cardinal doesn’t make any decisions in this diocese. The more important decisions are made by the Chancellor, Msgr. Greg Mustaciuolo.

    This is who you should be contacting.

    His email is: [email protected]

    Copy in the cardinal but please make sure you email Msgr. Greg with your concerns!

    Make your emails count!!

    Reply
  16. Based on the experience of a close friend who worked in the NY chancery before leaving:

    You *might* want to take a closer look at the ethnic/religious background of the folks working there.

    Hint: A lot are not Catholic or even Christian.

    Reply
  17. So I have friends who are in the Archdiocese of NY. I’ve heard lots and lots of interesting stories.

    I live in the South. For a long time, my diocese has had a growing, bustling little FSSP parish.

    When I looked on the FSSP site, I see no mention of permanent churches or chapels for their order.

    http://www.fssp.org/en/messes.htm

    What gives?

    Reply

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