BY MARY REINHOLZ | The Redemptorist priest, resplendent in a bright green cassock, stood outside Most Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic church in the late summer sunlight, greeting the faithful that streamed out of a 10:30 a.m. Spanish-language Mass at his soaring cathedral-like edifice, at 173 E. Third St. between Avenues A and B.
The Reverend James Cascione, the parochial vicar and a member of a missionary order that established the parish in 1842 for a then-German Catholic neighborhood, also dispensed blessings on former members of the nearby Church of the Nativity, at 44 Second Ave.
That humble house of worship was built in 1970 out of brick and cinder blocks and mostly paid for with parishioners’ personal funds after a predecessor sanctuary was demolished in the wake of an electrical fire. Nativity closed Aug. 1 and merged with Most Holy Redeemer, part of a massive downsizing within the Archdiocese of New York that reduced the number of parishes from 368 to 296.
Asked about the consolidation of the two East Village churches, which created a new as-yet-unnamed parish amid emotional protests from Nativity attendees torn from their spiritual home, Cascione said it was going pretty well, all things considered. He introduced a reporter to Cristina Tejada, 36, a slim woman from the Dominican Republic, noting she had been at Nativity for 21 years.
“I’m one of the few who doesn’t mind” the merger, Tejada, a naturalized citizen and teaching assistant, said later. “Other people are enraged. I don’t know why they are so attached to that building,” she said of Nativity, the now-empty church that is often derided as an eyesore by locals. “It’s beautiful right here,” she said. “It’s a new day.”
She noted that the former Nativity parish — created by the archdiocese in the 19th century to serve waves of Irish Catholic immigrants — lost its resident Jesuit pastor in 2007. A year earlier, the church faced closing but fought back with a letter-writing campaign. The archdiocese responded by attaching Nativity to St. Teresa’s, at 141 Henry St. Most Holy Redeemer acted as an administrator of the church starting in March 2014.
“We didn’t have a real pastor after the Jesuits left,” recalled Tejada. She was referring to the religious order known as the Society of Jesus, which had led Nativity since the first part of the 20th century, when it was housed in a Greek-revival sanctuary purchased by the archdiocese from the Second Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1832.
“We had diocesan priests coming in from other parishes to say Mass,” she said. “The Redemptorist fathers also helped out. We were like a flock without a shepherd. We didn’t even have an office for years.”
She is clearly comfortable in her transition to Most Holy Redeemer, which was built in 1852 with a majestic array of imported stained-glass windows and marble, along with a tower containing eight bells. Yet, Tejada sometimes joins other former Nativity congregants in saying the rosary outside their shuttered church on Sunday mornings. Some say they are fearful that the archdiocese will sell Nativity to developers eyeing the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
“Cardinal Dolan could do that,” mused Claudio Marte, 60, a cab driver for a private service who attended Nativity for 32 years. He was among about a half-dozen other Latinos praying outside Nativity on Aug. 30 and hoping it wouldn’t become luxury condos.
Marte described Nativity as having been “all about love” and like a second family, especially for a congregation of about 250 that he said had became largely Hispanic over the years.
Dolan, in his Nov. 2 decree, attributed the Second Ave. church’s closing to a lower attendance, fewer priests and changing demographics.
“Dolan talks about demographics,” Marte said. “But for 30 years, we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, and there would be 700 to 800 people coming to Mass, lined up around the block.”
He now attends Mass at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on 263 Mulberry St, saying it’s near his Lower East Side home.
Mercedes Sanchez, 33, a leader in an aborted effort to stop the closure of Nativity, noted in a series of e-mails that Dolan’s decree had been announced at the church, but there was no mention at the time that parishioners had only 10 “useful” days to appeal his decision, a deadline that she and her group missed. Both the archdiocese and the Vatican rejected appeals to keep the church open.
Sanchez is now attending Most Holy Redeemer and claims to have moved on.
“We didn’t get a chance for a fair fight, but we’ve accepted our fate and we will help to rebuild the new parish,” she said. “We’re gradually finding our place as lectors and ministers.”
In the meantime, Sanchez, a media relations specialist at a New York business college who grew up in the East Village, seeks alternatives for Nativity. Along with others, she is proposing that the archdiocese consider turning part of the church’s rectory into a retreat center and chapel, with services for the homeless, named after the late activist Dorothy Day, co-founder of the anarchist Catholic Worker movement and a prospective candidate for canonization as a saint.
Day, who worshiped at Nativity for decades, was 83 when she died in 1980 at Maryhouse, a Catholic Worker residence at 55 E. Third St. Her granddaughter Martha Hennessy, who lives most of the year on a farm in Vermont but stays at Maryhouse when she’s volunteering for the Catholic Worker, said she supports the idea of making Nativity available for the homeless and “providing them with showers and mailboxes.”
The Right Reverend Sean McGillicuddy, pastor of Most Holy Redeemer and superior of the Redemptorist order at the church, said on Fri., Aug. 28, that he had just returned from vacation and hadn’t entered into any discussions about what to do with Nativity’s two buildings, which are now the property of the new parish but under the authority of the archdiocese. He said he believes that when the archdiocese listens to the concerns of the parishioners, “I’m sure it will do the best for everybody.”
McGillicuddy noted that there had been numerous Catholic churches built in “years gone by” — especially Downtown around the City Hall area — for the large number of Catholics arriving in New York more than a century and a half ago.
“But as time went on, the numbers decreased, so the need wasn’t there for so many churches,” he said. “Holy Redeemer has a small congregation. By uniting it with Nativity, it’s a stronger congregation.”
Father Cascione, who is also associate pastor at Most Holy Redeemer, said that church attendance at Sunday Masses had “increased quite significantly” since the merger.
“We were around 120 at the Spanish Mass and now we’re 180,” he said. “We were 35 at the noon Mass and now we’re about 50.”
He noted that the church also has a 9 a.m. Sunday Mass and one at 7:30 in the evening, plus a Saturday Mass at 5:30 p.m., which used to draw 20 to 25 and now has close to 40 attendees.
But Cascione said that the merger also caused Most Holy Redeemer to lose parishioners from Nativity.
“A little more than half are going to other churches and a few have dropped out completely. But I honestly believe that it has gone as well as it can go,” he said of the merger.
He estimated the combined attendance is now about 350 to 400, whereas before at Most Holy Redeemer, “it was 250 to 300.”
Cascione also noted that a painting from Nativity has been transferred to his church. A photograph of Dorothy Day is now in a side altar of the church, “and we definitely want to have some kind of a shrine” for her, he added. Copies of the Catholic Worker are on a table in the back of the church that people can see as they enter for services.
In addition, he said, McGillicuddy is in the process of naming the merged parish. Cascione said the pastor will submit three names and Cardinal Dolan will pick one.
Despite such glad tidings, there is still lingering resentment and allegations of “secrecy” over the manner in which Dolan issued his decrees about the church closings and mergers throughout the archdiocese, which encompasses Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island and six counties to the north.
“Within all of this was the grave chaos that Cardinal Dolan created because he did not make the decrees available to any of the parishes, including Nativity,” said Sister Kate Kuenstler, a nun and canon lawyer in Rhode Island who is a member of an international religious congregation called Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ. She represents a number of parishes in the archdiocese that have appealed Dolan’s Nov. 2 order. It was Mercedes Sanchez who contacted her for help.
Sanchez said she wasn’t able to read Dolan’s decree for Nativity until Dec. 22 — and was monitored as she did so by two women at the archdiocese’s office on First Ave. — weeks after the deadline for appealing had passed. The Vatican’s Congregation of the Clergy required a copy of the decree for the appeal process.
Joseph Zwillling, a spokesperson for the archdiocese, said he and other administrators went to “extraordinary lengths” under church law to publicize the decisions that were reached regarding the parish mergers. He said they did so in a variety of ways, including having letters read in all of the parishes that were involved, issuing a press release, and having Dolan available for multiple interviews.
Zwilling insisted that it was not necessary “or required” for the archdiocese to post the decrees on its Web site, but acknowledged that not doing so was an oversight on his part.
“When this was brought to my attention, the decrees were posted immediately, and they were posted at the time of the follow-up announcements in May,” he said.
Responding to other questions, Zwilling said there were no additional mergers contemplated “at this time by the archdiocese.” He added that he did not know the total number of appeal cases currently before the Congregration of the Clergy in Rome.
