Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome back to another edition of our diocesan podcast, Big City Catholics, with Bishop Robert Brennan, the diocesan bishop of Brooklyn and Queens, and myself, Father Christopher Henu. Last week, Bishop and I discussed the topic of All Saints Day as our podcast released on November 1, the solemnity of All Saints. Today we want to begin a little by remembering, especially in this month of November, all the faithful depart. November 2nd, the church celebrated the commemoration of the faithful departed, and the month of November is a month when we remember those who have died. So we'll begin just offering the prayer. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Entrusting the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God. We also pray through the intercession of our Blessed Mother. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: So, Father Chris, yeah, this past weekend was a pretty busy weekend when you think about it. We had the feast of all the Saints on Friday, remembrance of all souls, the commemoration of all the faithful departed. Then the changing of the clocks, the darker days, the leaves falling. It really is that ominous feeling. You know, November is here, but also there's a sense of remembrance, of finality and of the promise, the hope that belongs to God of what's to come, the hope that we receive from God.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Bishop Every November 2nd, the Catholic cemeteries of Brooklyn and Queens offer masses in commemoration of the faithful departed. You were this year year celebrating Mass?
[00:01:37] Speaker B: I was out in Flushing in Mount St. Mary Cemetery, which goes back over a hundred years and was a simple country cemetery that kind of remains an enclave, a little bit of a country cemetery in the middle of a bustling metropolis. But it was my first visit there. I teased a little bit and said, you know, I had been scheduled twice before, and other things ended up making me need to change the schedule. So finally I got to Mount St. Mary. We had a great day. It was a beautiful day out, and it was a Saturday, so we had about 600 people there. I understand there were about 750 people out in St. Charles. Good crowds at all of the masses. And those things, to me, are always very, very touching. That was part of our tradition in the Diocese of Rockville Center. It was not part of the tradition in Columbus, and I missed it and I tried to encourage it. And in the end, I'm glad I didn't because I wouldn't have been there to do it. Yeah. Impose something on somebody else and then get up and leave. But I always find those masses to be very, very touching. You have there people who experience loss within the recent year and people who've been coming for years. That's right. And years. And that's, I think, a real sign. I always focus in on these days on faith, hope and love. People are there in love because they love the people whose remains are interred there. People come in faith because they believe in the resurrection from the dead. As the Book of Maccabee says, it would be silly to pray for the dead. If you thought that was the end of life, then of course they're in hope. And that was what I focused on this year. Hope will not disappoint. That virtue of hope and hope is not a pipe dream. It's not wishful thinking. Hope is based on certainty. And that certainty is that God is faithful to his promises and that Jesus is risen from the dead. So those virtues, faith, hope and love are very evident on that day.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I remark often on November 2 that although it's not the holy day of obligation, whereas All Saints Day is generally depending on what day of the week it falls, November 2 seems to draw out a larger crowd.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: I think it's something that touches the heart. It's something that connects people to their experience.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. We're all united. I mean, every time we come to Mass, we are all united in prayer.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: We always pray for the dead. So we're in communion with those who have died.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Exactly. And so here at the CO Cathedral parish, we had a trilingual ceremony for all of our communities to come together at one Mass together to certainly remember those who have died in the last year. Those whom we've buried from this parish, which compared to other parishes is a much lower number. I think we had 23 burials in the last year. But we also, because of the connection with NetTV, we asked for people to send in their names of loved ones that they wish to have remembered. And I think DeSales and NetTV were able to compile a list of over 300 names. People calling in and asking for those names to be remembered and scrolled on the screen. So it was a beautiful ceremony, beautiful opportunity to pray. And like we said, as I said at the beginning of this podcast, it's the whole month. But it's not even just the whole month. It's every day when we come to Mass.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: It is something that we're very dedicated to that remember remembrance in November on Thursday, we'll have remembered the priests and the bishops from the diocese who have died, and again, remembering particularly those who died in the last year, recalling those who have served for the generations. And many of the groups, many of our fraternal groups, our guilds, all have masses during the month of November for remembrance. And I saw the photos. You had people bring photos.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: That's right here. It's a tradition that predates me, but at the Co Cathedral of St Joseph, this tradition of bringing a photo of your loved one and placing it in front of the Blessed Mother's altar or at the Blessed Mother's altar. And it really does grow. Every year it's gotten bigger. We needed to add a table this year so that more photos could be placed, and people will leave them there for the month of November and then collect them at the end of the month. And so it's sort of entrusting those souls also, in a way, entrusting them to the care of our Blessed Mother through her intercession as well. And in St. Teresa of Avila, we have a book of the dead that we ask people to write their names of loved ones in. So it's a beautiful gift, for sure, a beautiful sentiment.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: That really is great. You know, in my home parish, Our Lady Perpetual Help in Lindenhurst, they had a Mass on Saturday afternoon, and I know it meant a lot to my dad, and my brothers and sisters were there as well. I was out at the cemetery here, so I was united with them in prayer. With my mother's death in January, she was one of the people remembered. And it just meant an awful lot to get that letter from the pastor inviting them and then being there to pray. So these are good things. This is part of our heritage as Catholics, of who we are and what we're all about. We are united. I remember those words from the wake service. We believe that all the ties of friendship and affection which knit us together throughout our lives do not unravel with death. We're still connected. We call that the communion of saints. We're still connected, one with each other. We pray for those on their journey through that purgation, those who are on their way and in need of our prayers. But we're connected with all of those who are in heaven, and we hope to be with them one day as well.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: That connectedness, it spreads through, not just connected to the souls of the faithful departed, but just even a sense of being connected in our diocese, a connectedness among Catholics.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Catholics. So during the month of October, Pope Francis gathered together the delegates from all around the world for the synod. It was the second year of a two year process. And then, yes, at the end of it, they closed the synod in a solemn fashion. One of the bishops who was. It was amazing because when I went to Rome in the beginning of October with our Priesthorn retreat, everything is under construction in Rome in preparation for the jubilee year, including the inside of St. Peter's and for the closing of the synod. They had removed the scaffolding and all the covering in front of the high altar.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: And so you started to begin to see the beauty which, you know, now that I think of it, this is only occurring to me here, is that's not a bad image for the synod, that in one sense we're always under construction, we're always under renovation, we're always under renewal, and we need to do the work, which means we need to talk to one another. But there's that great unveiling of our communion, and we'll come back to that in this discussion. But that's the heart of it all. This is about our communion, our unity with one another, but our unity with one another through Jesus Christ, because we're all united with Christ, and through Christ, we're united with each other.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. That union or that community is something that's actually in this edition of this week's Tablet some of the recent meetings that you, Bishop, have had with Monsignor Grimaldi and with Anna Puente, with numbers of parishes in our diocese. One meeting in Queens, in one meeting that happened in Brooklyn, to talk about that continued formation, that continued renovation, that continued work and progress.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: No, those were great experiences in a sense. Those meetings that we had were really exercises in communion and synodality. So I always go back to my arrival here. It'll be three years at the end of this month. And Bishop Dimasio left me a great gift and Pope Francis did the same in that we were just entering the diocesan phase of the synod and we had deanery sessions, so delegates from the parishes attending, they had all done their own exercises, their own conversations, and then they were getting together on a deanery level. It was a great way for me to meet the priest and then all of the people of the diocese in representative ways. I said, it's like the plane landing. You kind of circle around at a high level and. And you work your way down and you get down into the granular level where you really start to meet people face to face. But that early part was a great way to get a sense of the diocese through meeting the deaneries and listening to what they had been talking about, what the priorities were. Now, there were certain things that were unique to each area because of the concerns of the particular neighborhoods, Things like housing and population change that differed from one neighborhood, one deanery to the next. But the three constants that came up were youth, ongoing formation for adults. How can I be more confident being able to speak about my faith? I need to know it better. And we know that there are changes kind of connecting to those shifts in population. We know there are changes. We want to be part of the discussions. And it was that third point that really brought us to what we're doing now. So last year, that my first year was all about that synod phase. Last year, Monsignor Grimaldi and I went around to the different deaneries with the priest. And that was an exercise in just listening. What are the realities? And we talked about the granular level, what's going on in the parishes, what activities are happening in the parishes, how do we need to be able to collaborate on things like youth ministry, religious formation, what's the mass attendance like? Just hearing where there might be possibilities for sharing, and then encouraging the deans to continue those conversations to get the parishes talking about what are the things that we could be doing together at the same time, we had an ad hoc commission which did a deep dive into the statistics. Not that we're only about statistics, but you need to know it. What are the finances? What are the population trends? What are the numbers? What are the building conditions? You know, all of those are going to be factors as we move forward. So now we're in this third year and going around, we are identifying places where some amount of collaboration has begun or that something desperately needs to be done at this moment. And that came down to about 16 parishes. There were 10 in Brooklyn and six in Queens. And in two cases, the death of a sitting pastor, that's something that hit us kind of hard and in an unexpected way. And Rockaway Monsignor Wallmeyer had already started the process. He'd started raising questions. Just like a couple of years ago, Father Cashman in St. Mary's Star of the Sea, had been talking with Monsignor Massey, but Father Almayer had already started some of the conversations down in Saint Camillus and Saint Virgilius, Rockaway and Broad Channel. So we kind of picked that up and kept the ball rolling. Father Gillen in Brooklyn, that came as a surprise, too. We weren't quite as far along there, but we Were hoping as he was getting closer to retirement age, that we would begin those conversations looking ahead. So we had those kinds of issues. We have other issues where pastors are already like they're coming up on retirement age. And the parishes had been working with that as a goal in mind. So the first step in the phase, in some situations, that's as far as we're going to go. We call it a collaboration. Two individual parishes, two individual pastors. But maybe working, complementing Mass schedules so that people could find Mass at the times that work. Maybe two parishes next to each other. Don't both need to have an early morning Mass and an evening Mass. Sure, but one needs to have something the morning Mass. One may need a vigil Mass or an evening Mass. So that's one phase, collaboration. Another phase might be what we're doing, a partnership where one pastor takes on two parishes. And then the third might be that sometimes that leads to merger, where they become one reality, where they realize, hey, we're really stronger together. Those are the conversations that we want at the local level. And in these parishes, what we want to do now is begin the conversation, sort of like a ripple effect. Start with the pastoral council, finance committees start to work with the staffs, start to reach out, use the pastoral council to be able to foster conversations at the local level. And it's all about how can we be stronger together?
[00:13:52] Speaker A: In reading, there's an article in this week's Tablet about this topic, about these two meetings that you had. And Anna Puente, who works within the office there as a pastoral planning and associate in that regard. She uses this image. I thought it was kind of a fun kind of image to use, was the image of sort of like a relationship dating. First is the dating phase. You're kind of working together to see how this goes. Then there's the engagement phase, and then there's the marriage. So that would be some just stay in one regard, as you're saying, and then others make that final commitment to be canonically merged together. You mentioned, Bishop, that you know, working in collaboration sometimes means collaborating with Mass schedules.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: And, you know, that has a couple of effects. So first of all, we need to be complementing the Mass schedules. But on the other hand, we are not able to offer the same schedule that we always offered. Again, we want Mass times to be available to people. And so that's why we want the parishes to work together, not to just individual pastors to make individual decisions as if they were living on their own, but to work through the neighborhood. So back in the spring, I asked the pastors to hold off on opening the Mass intention books Beyond June of 25 so that we could use that time in the summer and the early fall to look at those schedules and those collaborations. That's something we all have to do together. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody is going to reduce. There are some places in the diocese, and I think mostly of that section of Queens, Corona, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, where they're bursting at the scenes. Yeah, but you know, given language realities, given population, given transportation, it's important that we work together, listen to one another. There were some places where you might have a Mass, and There were only 25 people at the Mass on every week. And we just don't have the number of priests to be able to offer those Masses. But there's much more than that. There's the ministers at the Mass, readers, music, all of that, and the people. You know, it's healthier when we're gathered together.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: You know, you do better with the assembly. The idea is that we can be stronger in our prayer, united together. That's what the Eucharist is about. So we can celebrate the sacred liturgy much better by gathering together. Now people say, well, wait a minute. What's wrong with the priests saying multiple Masses? Well, that's, that's not the problem. As priests, if that were all we had to do, it's the same Mass we would love. That's. That's our favorite thing to do. If that's what I was doing, great. But the fact of the matter is, sometimes what we're doing is we're running from place to place or Mass to Mass. And our encounter with people is usually at the Sunday Mass. And if we're always rushing, what are we really offering? And of course we offer the Eucharist. We offer the body and blood of Christ. But there's. There's something more that Jesus gives us himself in the Eucharist, but he does so he draws us together. And so there's that reality. There's also the reality that, like I said, sometimes I need to be able to count on the priest going from one place to another. We need to cover one another. And then sometimes we're covered through the gift of senior priests and visiting priests. And those guys are often pressed in multiple places as well. So we need to be able to function in such a way that even if we have the help, that if some week somebody was sick or there was an emergency, one priest could cover all these things.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: You speak about being present to the people. This is not just a common thought about here in the Diocese of Brooklyn. It's across the church in the United States. I noticed, you know, when you have to celebrate a Mass in one parish, we're a merged parish here and a priest is away or a priest is not. Well, as you're saying, I have a 9:30 mass which ends at 10:30. I have to rush down here for the 11:00am Mass and I don't get that chance to greet the folks and to say hello. And you get a lot done at the doors of the church in those moments. And it reminds me of my mother's home parish in Ireland when they got this new priest that came in and they were all amazed. They said, this guy, there's something unique about him. After Mass, he walks down the aisle and he shakes everyone's hand at the doors. Now this is like in the year 2022, you know, because for years it was the common way in this parish in Ireland that the priest says the Mass goes back into the sacristy and goes back into his house and there was something missing, obviously there. There's something wrong there.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Well, I often say how many people ring the bell of the rectory? We're busy with things going on, but the vast majority of people, their encounter with the pastor or the priest in the parish is at the door of the church.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: That's right. I loved as a child greeting the priest, you know, my pastor, shaking the father's hand. And I still love as the priest, to be able to do that and make those encounters with people. I know, my family, we were Sunday Mass only, you know, we didn't come back to the parish on a Tuesday or Wednesday, unfortunately. And I'm so blessed. We're so blessed that we have people who do, who are active in our parish on a daily basis, but the majority are not. They're more so by Sunday.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Right, exactly. And you know, that's when you find out who's sick, what are the needs. So that's really our larger goal. And then of course, this is just one phase of the discussion over time, we have to look at facilities, we have to look at finances, but we also have to look at how do we function as a people of God. So we have wonderful schools and academies. We have varying levels of faith formation. And that's something that we need to work on a lot and develop that. And some parishes, especially after Covid, some of the parishes don't have the people don't have the resources to be able to offer what we understand as the traditional faith formation program. So we have to find new ways of forming a new generation. And that's going to take a lot of collaboration. You know, I often say here in Brooklyn and Queens, we talk about diversity, and boy, are we ever diverse. And that's a great blessing. On the other hand, diversity means that we have to work together a lot. And you know what, unity is as important. Diversity only works connected to unity. And we have Catholic terms that speak of these realities that are much deeper. So when we speak about diversity, what we really mean is what the church calls catholicity. Catholic with a small C. Universal. It's like James Joyce used to say, here comes everyone. The arms of Jesus through his church are extended to gather all people together. Universality. So it's not just diversity, but it's universality, it's catholicity. Second reality, unity is one thing. You know, you can be unified in a political way. You can be unified in a common goal. Ours is a communion. We are Catholic communion, joined together with Jesus Christ, joined together with one another. And in a sense, communion of communions, you know, we're not just parochial, but we're a communion of communions. We're people of communion, you know, family of families. I say a parish is a family made up of families. A diocese is a family made up of the families of the parishes. But also now we have new realities in the Catholic Church. It's not just parochial. In fact, sometimes some of the stronger ties are with the lay ecclesial movements, the groups neocatecuminal, Lay Shalom, Emmaus, Cursillo Sierra. So again, we're communions of communions, people who are gathered. But what is the one ty, and what is the one permanence? Jesus Christ? It's Jesus who's at the center of it all. And so we're going to continue on these discussions. But it's really, in the end, it's not about mergers and closures as if we were doing a business. The key concept that we want to really drive home is communion, a Catholic communion. What we really want to do, it's about building for strength, and it's about strength in mission. It's about being apostolic, going out to the world. But we do that as a unit, unified people gathered together by Jesus Christ and trusting in his help. So you know what? Sometimes, you know, you have to figure things out. It's not always clear. And I know as bishop, in the end I'm going to have to make some decisions and make some hard decisions, and I accept that. I'm not saying, let's just throw this out and okay, you deal with it. There's going to be feedback and then I'm going to have to make those decisions and stand behind them. And I'm ready to do that, I really am. But it would be silly for me to do that without just these conversations taking place so that I could listen in to what are the needs and how are the ways that we can do things together.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: That's the aspect of synodality. That's the aspect of having our voices heard. This idea also about unity in one spread, as you mentioned, not just ecclesial communities, not just parishes, but even just as Catholics of the United States. So the church rejoices recently, actually, and I'm sure you did as well personally, when we recognize the great achievement of a brother priest of yours who is named as the bishop, Archbishop Henning.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Archbishop Henning now is up in Boston. I was there last week. Wow, what a great celebration. Good day for the church. Many sacrifices for him, but it's a wonderful day for the church. And yes, isn't that great? That sense of synodality is universal. We're not just Brooklyn. Yeah, not Brooklyn and Queens. We're part of one holy Catholic, an apostolic church. And so it was a great, great day for the church.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: I was struck by his homily, which was basically that what do I believe in? I believe in one God, the Father Almighty. And what do we believe? This is what we profess. And no matter where we are, no matter what parish or diocese or country, we all profess our faith in one God.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: You know, in speaking of new bishops and universality, a shout out of congratulations to Archbishop Galbus. He's the archbishop designate of Warsaw. Why am I mentioning him? He was just here at the CO Cathedral about two weeks ago for the Polish Day celebration. I knew him when he was the head of the Palatine Fathers. I had a chance when I was in Columbus to receive him there because he helped. We brought the Palatines, came here and Palatine, served two of our parishes in Brooklyn and Queens. When he came back, he celebrated mass as the Archbishop of Katowice and then he went home and was named the Archbishop of Warsaw. Boy, that's a historic diocese. You think of some of the greats who were there. So we pray for him. I pray for my friend Archbishop Henning. We pray for our Holy Father, especially at the end of this synod. Now, as we continue to, as he says, walk together, listen together on the journey. But then to go out, to go out and to bring in next week, we'll have a chance to talk a little bit about Catholic Charities, the anniversary of Catholic Charities. And Cardinal Pierre will be joining Catholic Charities for a symposium and then the Mass here at the Koch Cathedral. So we'll look forward to that celebration and talk about the great things, the legacy of Catholic Charities. It's one of the first Catholic Charities in the nation 125 years. So we look forward to that.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: That celebration is on Sunday, November 17th at 11:00am here at the Cook Cathedral so people can come in person or watch on net TV and join us.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: In prayer and pray for us. Next week, the bishops, we have our meeting next week, our annual meeting in November. It doesn't look like a heavy agenda, but it's always good to be together and to speak with one another.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: And finally, we're recording today on this election day. We don't know. We can't plan the future. We don't know what the real results will be and perhaps, who knows, even by Friday if we'll know the results will be. But we always do unite in prayer. That's that common unity as well. We're united as citizens as well. We pray for our country and for our elected officials. Bishop, perhaps you could lead us in prayer.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Sure. The Lord be with you and with your spirit. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he look upon you with kindness and grant you his peace. And may the blessing of him, Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you forever and ever.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you, Bishop. Thank you for joining us for another edition of our diocesan podcast. We'll see you again next week. God bless.
