My Family’s Cathedral

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Beneath the soaring, vaulted roof of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, generations of my family have passed through some of the most significant events of their lives. With great interest, I read about the recently unveiled $175 million campaign for restoring the great cathedral that has come to symbolize the Catholic Church in America.

The Caulfields’ cathedral story began with my father, one of seven children of Irish immigrants who settled in the East 50s, along the teeming streets around the cathedral. After receiving his first Communion, my dad served as an altar boy with his cousin. They became the lead servers for Cardinal Patrick Hayes in the 1930s. Through the years they had some memorable experiences, hearing Archbishop Fulton Sheen preach from the famous pulpit, earning extra money for serving weddings and funerals, and passing by the crypts of the archbishops each time they entered or exited the sacristy.

True to the form of the Greatest Generation, my father served in the Atlantic during World War II, and returned home a “war hero” before his 20th birthday. He met my mother at a parish social and they were married in June 1951, in the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A picture of the youthful bride and groom posing on the 51st Street patio—with bulky American-built cars parked in the background—still occupies an honored place in my parents’ bedroom. After a brief honeymoon at the Plaza Hotel—my dad could only get a few days off from his new job—they moved to an apartment on East 50th Street, and had three sons in regular succession, beginning the next generation’s life with the cathedral.

My two older brothers and I were baptized in St. Patrick’s. It is a fact that gets attention when it comes up in conversation. People think we must be some kind of Catholic royalty to have received our first sacrament in the cathedral. The world looks at the majestic edifice on Fifth Avenue, with its soaring double spires, as a historic tourist stop, or the backdrop to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. But the Caulfield boys always knew it for what it was beneath the exterior—our spiritual home. Although our parish church and school was St. John the Evangelist, on First Avenue, where the New York Catholic Center now stands, our hearts were always closely connected to the place where we entered the Catholic fold.

As an adult, I have had the great privilege of serving Mass in the cathedral for Cardinal O’Connor, and covering many events there as a reporter for Catholic New York. I have stayed all night, and dozed off in the pews, during a first Friday vigil in the Lady Chapel, hearing the city outside slow down, but never quite stop, as dawn’s light glinted through the stained glass.

These days, though I live far from midtown, I still think of myself as a “cathedral kid,” and my heart still swells a bit with pride as I open the grand, bronze doors to come home to my church. I bring my two young sons to the baptismal font by the 51st Street entrance and tell them their two uncles and I were baptized right there, and imagine they are impressed. The next time we visit, we will drop a donation into the basket for the restoration project, so another generation will be able to worship beneath those arches.

Brian Caulfield, a former reporter for Catholic New York, is editor of Fathers for Good, an online initiative for men and their families by the Knights of Columbus.