"The Villager" makes an interesting suggestion

While many of us are slaving over a hot tax return, a Villager editorial, "Trump’s edifice complex" reflects on Friday's opening of Trump's condotel on the corner of Varick and Spring Streets. The editorial decries the zoning regulations that allow structures of this size to irreversibly alter the character of the neighborhood and change the quality of life. But given that the tower is already there, the author goes for the silver lining:

"Maybe Trump and Co. can bring some of their clout to addressing Hudson Square’s pressing traffic concerns. Former congregants from shuttered Lithuanian church Our Lady of Vilnius, on Broome St., have long said that the church would be in greater demand once the Trump Soho was built.

Who knows? Maybe if Trump got involved, this historic church could be resurrected."

Mercy Sunday, Mercy Now

New York Times: Please give us the anti-Dowd

In one of her recent columns Maureen Dowd proposed installing a Nope, a Pope drawn from the population of nuns, in the Vatican. As a Roman Catholic New York Times subscriber I am begging the Times to administer the anti-dote to her poison pen: the anti-Dowd.

Since when does an Irish surname and some childhood reminiscences qualify someone to produce what the innocent might misconstrue as analysis?

Please give us the anti-Dowd: Father James Martin, SJ. He made his way in the secular world before becoming a priest, he writes well and is, needless to say, well catechized. He has appeared on your op-ed page before, to good effect.

Both sides of this controversy have sent in the clowns. Now send us a ringmaster.

St. Teresa of Avila Parish: The Cradle of Our Lady of Vilnius

According to a history of Our Lady of Vilnius prepared on the occasion of its 90th anniversary, the parish was founded by Father Šestokas in 1905. The congregation gathered at St. Teresa of Avila Church in Chinatown until our church building was completed in 1910. Andrew the Sinner, of the Catholic Churches of Manhattan blog visited the church of St. Teresa on Good Friday and documented his impressions. An interesting sidelight:

"Further up towards the ceiling I noticed the beautiful wood beams and pillars that hold this church up - renovated back in 1995 because the ceiling collapsed, dropping 60,000 pounds of plaster down, through the floor of the church, crashing into the parish hall below."

It is interesting that, as recently as 1995, a failed roof was not the harbinger of imminent closure. God bless the church of St. Teresa of Avila, birthplace of our parish!

Love Lives Again!

"Now the green blade rises

from the buried grain.

Seeds that once in dark earth

Many days have lain

Love lives again,

That with the dead has been:

Love is come again like wheat arising green."

Agnus Dei