St. Thomas More Catholic Church to Close

Gasps were heard and tears were seen when Pastor Kevin Madigan informed parishioners this past Sunday at each Mass that their church was likely to close next August.  It was a stunning blow for the vibrant church community that had received numerous assurances that St. Thomas More Catholic Church was safe.

St. Thomas More serves a highly affluent family community on Manhattan's Upper East Side with regular Masses, as well as with many informative and noteworthy events.  The church is free of debt and its operations are financially sound. Housed within the church structure, which was built in the early 1870's, is the prestigious St. Thomas More Playgroup, a nonsectarian nursery school that serves as a feeder for the many private schools located nearby. 

The plan announced on Sunday would merge St. Thomas More with St. Ignatius Loyola, located seven blocks away.  Masses would no longer be said at St. Thomas More beginning next August, and parishioners would be invited to join the Loyola Parish.

The Archdiocese of New York has faced a myriad of challenges in recent years.  There have been shifts in the Catholic population, as many families have moved out of Manhattan.  It has been difficult to staff churches and meet other demands because there are fewer priests.  Regular church attendance is down in most parishes, in part because of concerns rising out of the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church over the past decade.

The Archdiocese is hoping that Pope Francis come to New York when he visits the United States next September for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.  The Vatican has yet not announced what additional U.S. cities the Pontiff will visit. 

Meanwhile, there is a $100 million shortfall in donations for the restoration of New York's St. Patrick Cathedral, which is scheduled for completion next December.  The Archdiocese has raised $75 million of the $175 million that was first budgeted for the project according to its website.  Many suspect that the intention of the Archdiocese is to sell St. Thomas More, which would be worth millions of dollars, in order to bolster its finances.

St Thomas More has been an important part of the community since it was first constructed as an Episcopal Church beginning in 1870 to "serve the spiritual needs of St. Luke's Home for Indigent Christian Women."  That home has been replaced by a 40-story apartment building.  In 1925, the church merged with the nearby Church of Heavenly Rest Episcopal Church.  Four years later the church was rededicated as the Reformed Church of Harlem.

In 1950, the Archdiocese of New York, then under Francis Cardinal Spellman, sought to acquire the church to meet the needs of the local Catholic community. Since July 9, 1950, St. Thomas More has been serving the local community, including many prominent New Yorkers, such as the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The memorial for her son was held at the church.  "In the simple stone church where his mother brought him to worship as a small boy, John F. Kennedy Jr., the country's most famous namesake, was remembered as a young man who shouldered the ponderous weight of legend and was still 'becoming the person he would be' in a memorial Mass yesterday that united generations and ideologies," The New York Times wrote in July 1999.

A few months before Kennedy's memorial, The New York Times had an article about the church, describing it as a "Gothic-style building (that) has the air of a picturesque English country church."  Andrew S. Dolkart, the director of Columbia University’s Historic Preservation, said in the article, "It has almost every little quirky detail of the London church...The chamfered corners, the varying planes of the facade, the asymmetrical pinnacle at the top of the tower. It really captures your attention.''

The Archdiocese of New York has now gotten the attention of the parishioners of St. Thomas More.  Meetings have been scheduled, a petition and a letter campaign are being organized, and a Facebook page for "Save St. Thomas More - Manhattan" has been set up. None of this is likely to impact Cardinal Timothy Dolan's decision.  Ironically, Dolan visited the parish a few months ago and answered questions before a packed church. There was not a hint of closure.  In fact, the visit was reassuring for many parishioners.

When the church was first dedicated 144 years ago, a large stone eagle, the symbol of St. John the Evangelist, was located over the main portal with the inscription, "We love him because he first loved us."   Now the question for this beloved church and its devoted parishioners is will love be enough to save their church from the wrecking ball.

My Medicare Milestone

Today I crossed a major milestone: I now qualify for Medicare.  Yes, I am a Baby Boomer, and I am proud of it!

My first memory, I must have been two years old, was of me looking out my bedroom window watching some kids walk through the empty field next to my suburban Chicago home.  It was as if, for some reason, my brain suddenly decided to start recording at that moment.  I was briefly startled, but soon regained my composure.  From that moment the memories came flooding in. 
My first educational experience was at a Catholic school.  The nuns were very strict, and I got hit with a ruler more than once.  But my crimes were always misdemeanors, like talking out of turn in class or writing on the blackboard.

One day all of the students were administered the new polio vaccine.  Actually, some of the students got the vaccine while others got a placebo.  It was one of the earliest tests of Dr. Jonas Salk's miracle vaccine.  My parents had agreed to allow me to participate; I think I got the vaccine. 

I laugh now when I think of the air raid drills we students endured.  We would regularly practice hiding under our desks, which we were instructed to do in the event of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.  The school also had a bomb shelter that was so well stocked with canned foods and water that there wasn't a lot of room for humans.  To convey the urgency of the situation, school officials showed students civil defense films of atom bombs going off.  "Sir, forgive me, but are you sure we'll be safe under our desks?"

Somewhere around this time I received my first exposure to politics.  I proudly wore an "I Like Ike" button on my shirt, even though I only vaguely knew who General Dwight David Eisenhower was.  I watched a bit of the political conventions on our black and white RCA television, which occupied a prominent spot in our living room.  Our favorite television newscaster was John Cameron Swayze ("and the Camel Caravan").  Edward R. Murrow was our favorite radio newsman.  But there was no television or radio while we were eating dinner.

In the early fifties television was in its infancy, but it was quickly growing in popularity. My sister and I watched Kukla, Fran & Ollie almost every day.  It was an entertaining an endearing puppet show that appealed to children but was popular with adults too.  Then Captain Kangaroo came along, and his show would air on CBS at 8am weekday mornings for the next thirty years.  

Most of my free time was spent outdoors playing in our big backyard, or in the field next to our house.  When my dad got me a bike, I was scared to learn how to ride it.  It got increasingly tense over the course of several days as my dad became impatient with me.  One weekend afternoon he ordered me to get on the bike and said he would run along side of me while firmly holding onto the seat so the bike wouldn't crash.  As we rode along, I detected that my dad had stopped running.  I glanced back and saw him standing in the distance.  Yes, I was actually riding my bike! I loved it!

Not too long after that my dad told my mother she had to learn how to drive.  Mom was scared to death of driving and resisted mightily.  Our house was in a rural western suburb where most of the side roads were a combination of gravel and potholes.  But my dad did not want to play chauffeur every time my mom wanted to go somewhere.  So he told her she had to learn to drive or she would have to walk to the grocery store, which was two miles from the house.  She got her driver's license, but she absolutely hated driving for the rest of her life. 

Our first dog was a collie, and we named her Lady.  We did not want to name her after Lassie, the first dog with a television show named after her.  Regretfully, Lady was hit by a car and killed just down the road from our house.  It was my first loss.  By coincidence, not too long after that my father moved our family to a new house thirty miles away.  And I made new friends and I rode my bike all over town. 

But, as I look back it seems that my earliest memories are all in black and white.  This goes for the  nuns, the students, the town and even the giant garden in our backyard.  There were good guys, the United States, and bad guys, the Soviet Union.  The films of atomic bomb explosions were in black and white, as was news footage of President Dwight Eisenhower.  So too was Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper), who had a gunfight with the bad guys in the movie High Noon.  As were the Lone Ranger and Tonto, who helped tame the Wild West, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who hosted a television show called Life is Worth Living.  Every thing seemed so much simpler then.

While I share many memories with millions of Baby Boomers, I wonder: how could time go by so quickly, where have all the years gone?  Maybe that's not all I lost.  Shakespeare said In Much Ado About Nothing, "As they say, when the age is in, the wit is out."