Editor's Report

Your Gleaming Cathedral Awaits

Posted

With the scaffolding removed from the interior of St. Patrick’s Cathedral last month, the results left behind are simply breathtaking. The photographs by Chris Sheridan in our last issue showed great glimpses of what has been achieved during the restoration project now nearing its completion, very much in time for the visit of Pope Francis this month.

While my responsibilities as Editor of Catholic New York often place me in St. Patrick’s to cover the special Masses and other celebrations and activities that take place there, I haven’t spent a lot of time there in recent months. Personal circumstances have accounted for some of that absence. I must admit, too, that the prospect of climbing over and around scaffolding and other barriers meant to ensure safety may have had more than a little to do with my absence.

Looking at those photos in the last issue, and then watching the PBS program, “Treasures of New York: St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” which aired on Ch. 13 last week, made me make sure to visit the cathedral.

After work on Monday, I stopped by at about 7 o’clock and found the large front doors on Fifth Avenue open to the city and to passersby. That is always an encouraging sign, often apparent before a large processional or, conversely, when Mass is ending and people are about to stream forth from the cathedral.

As I arrived, the beauty of the cathedral exterior was apparent to me as it has been to everyone in New York since the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe last December, when despite frigid temperatures, the scaffolding outside had receded enough to see how the restoration lightened the stonework, the brighter appearance seemingly lifting the Fifth Avenue landmark even higher and increasing its prominence.

A lot of people are bothered by tourists who traipse through St. Patrick’s as one more stop on their midtown Manhattan circuit. They never bothered me, except when they ignore liturgies being celebrated as they stroll obliviously while whispering and taking photos. Much of it comes with the territory, I figure. If you want to be America’s parish church, then you have to welcome the people of America and many other countries as well. Ultimately, it’s good for the Church to have such a cathedral, right in the heart of the largest and most cosmopolitan city in the country.

As I watched “Treasures of New York,” it reminded me of how the cathedral came to be. Back in 1858, when construction first began, it was regarded as “Hughes’ Folly,” in a rebuke to then-Archbishop of New York John Hughes, who had the idea of moving the seat of the archdiocese from lower Manhattan all the way “uptown” between 50th and 51st streets.

History has certainly proved Archbishop Hughes to be a man of vision and faith. As the television program explained, he had the power of a burgeoning Catholic population, many of them Irish immigrants, who were seeking a personal stake in their new land. They helped to literally build St. Patrick’s stone by stone, with nickels and dimes, over a period of 21 years until its dedication in 1879.

More than 135 years later, the faith journey continues here, under the leadership of Cardinal Dolan and played out by Catholics of many lands who enter their cathedral for one of its myriad Masses or perhaps a noontime prayer. I’ve always enjoyed it when the Archbishop of New York, whoever he happens to be at the time, welcomes people to “your cathedral.” They have it exactly right; it is yours, as much as it is theirs.

The cathedral is gleaming now, inside and out, fixed up and ready to welcome Pope Francis. Come take a look. You’ll be happy you did, and probably proud too. I know I was.