Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: As we come together on this Thanksgiving week, I almost feel like we should begin by saying grace. But thank you for joining us in this big city. Catholics. Welcome back to another edition with bishop Robert Brennan, the diocesan bishop of Brooklyn, and myself, father Christopher Henu. We won't begin with grace. We will begin with a prayer, however. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: So we are recording this Thanksgiving week prior to Thanksgiving. It's great to be with you, Bishop. And you were it's great to be back with you.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Yes, I was down last week in Baltimore. It was a great experience just being together with the other bishops from the United States. Time for prayer, time for some work. But even just to be together is always a good thing. It's good to go. It's good to get back home again.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: A little competition. I may have a co host competition with Archbishop Nelson Perez. That's right.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Well, when I was in rockville center, when I was a priest in Rockville Center, he and monsignor Joe Degracco and I did a program called Insight. It was sort of modeled after the five, but we were three, and we had a lot of fun doing that. Nice.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: We are preparing for Thanksgiving. Bishop, do you have any special plans for Thanksgiving?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Yes, I'll be at one of our parishes over by St. John's University, a Holy Family parish in the morning for Mass. And then I'm going to go home from there to my folks, and it'll be a quiet Thanksgiving. For many years in my family, Thanksgiving was the time that we all gathered together. It wasn't any kind of an agreement or anything. It just happened to be that was the one where all my brothers and sisters and all their families were together at the same time. Other days, Christmas, Easter, we did different things. There were two sides of families, but for some reason, Thanksgiving always worked. And now they have families of their own and their obligations. And so we're a little more spread apart. But I'll be with my family, and as it is harder for my folks to get out, they're basically tied to the home. It'll be nice. It'll be nice just to be together.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Nice, nice myself, same thing. We're going to all join my brother hosting up in Rockland County and looking forward to just being all know the idea of Thanksgiving. Of course, this is the time when you start doing these catechesis on the word Thanksgiving, the word meaning eucharist. Eucharist meaning Thanksgiving. The banquet you're thinking of the banquet of turkey and all the stuffing and the sides. But we're sitting here as ordained ministers. We're not thinking of that banquet as the Catholics. We're thinking of the eternal banquet, right? And that's been the theme, really, these readings these past few weekends just continues to talk about that, being prepared, being ready, entering the banquet, entering the right.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: You know, we're wrapping up, you might say, the reading in this liturgical year from the Gospel of Matthew. And we're in those last chapters before the Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. And we have all of these parables about banquets, about the coming of the kingdom, about the judgment, but all of this gathering in that the Lord who loves us so much, wants to gather us together. That's what pleases him so very much, to gather his people together. And Jesus draws on those parables. And also tied to that, we have the different images in the Old Testament. On this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will provide a banquet for all peoples, a rich, fanciful banquet, good food and choice wine. So those ideas of banquet are very, very biblical.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: And again, we are as we celebrate this Thanksgiving week. This past Sunday was the second to last Sunday of Ordinary Time. We're quickly approaching the feast of Christ the King.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: And Christ the king. What a powerful, powerful feast. It is the last Sunday in Ordinary Time before we go, the following Sunday into Advent. It's unusual the way the calendar falls this year. Thanksgiving is a little early, advent is a little shorter. So what happens is, often enough, we celebrate the feast of Christ the King and head into Thanksgiving. This year, Thanksgiving precedes, and then we go into the feast of Christ the King. It's a beautiful feast and a very powerful modern day feast. I remember I used to know a priest, used to complain, we don't have the image of Christ as King and all of that. That's precisely why it's so important, because it is Christ who reigns supreme.
It's interesting. The feast was established almost 100 years ago, 98 years ago, in 1925, pius, the 11th Institute of the Feast, we already had the expression of worship of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, but he founded it as a feast in order really to place at the center of everything Jesus Christ. With the reforms of the calendar and the liturgy. Basically, it comes now to be the fulfillment before we start a new liturgical year. It's the fulfillment of all that's been. It's sort of like in the Western hemisphere, the harvest time, right? Put yourself in those times. 1925, world was reeling after a terrible world war, a war that saw new instruments of killing, that saw up close terrible, terrible, terrible violence and bloodshed. It was an awful, awful experience.
And now they're coming out of that experience. But then, after the war, there were all kinds of movements in the world, a growing secularism, a growing amount of pushing God out of the center in the world. So you had that with the Russian Revolution and the growth of the Communist Party in Russia. You had that going on in Mexico at that very time, a real persecution of the Church. But this growing idea of secularism, of people thinking we can do this on our own, and these power grabs. And so Pius Xi very wisely looked and said, we need to have a strong reminder. The law of prayer is the law of the faith. And so he brought this to our liturgical life, to our prayer, the dedication of Christ the King, and instituted this feast. So that what we remember on the feast day is that it is Jesus Christ who is supremes. Kingdoms come, kingdoms go. Jesus Himself said that empires come, empires go. He said that in the midst of one of the most powerful empires in civilization. Where's the Roman Empire now in history books. Right. But Jesus Christ remains. His word will not disappear. His word will remain. So this feast is really recapturing the centrality of Jesus Christ.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: In fact, it was in his encyclical, Quas Primus that the Pope wrote, in regards to this feast day, in regards to Christ the King, how Christ must reign in our minds, which should ascent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires, and love God above all things and cleave to Him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God. The idea is he must reign in.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: All parts of every part of our life. It's not like he gets a corner of our life on Sunday morning, but that he must reign supreme in our ascent, in our wills, in our firm belief in everything. In other words, remember the great commandment, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Christ must reign supreme, and then everything else falls into its place.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Now, this day was, as you said, instituted in the rise of right at the aftermath of the World War, but also in the rise, which I think is important to note, the rise of a secular world, the rise of secularism and atheism in the world. Now, we're thinking 1925, right? It's incredible to acknowledge that was a.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Reality hundred years ago.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Why isn't it concerned today?
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Yeah. In fact, recently, Bishop, you've been sort of the center of some Catholic news circles. Has related to a letter that was released to the diocese, to the faithful of the diocese regarding some important facts, statistics, and realities of what's happening here in the diocese in terms of mass attendance, the reality of our retiring age priests, and the needs of the faithful, the needs of the church here in.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: The you know, we had an opportunity I spoke. With Monsignor Grimaldi about these realities just a couple of weeks ago on this very podcast. And then we were getting ready to send out this letter. This is all part of these discussions I've been having with the priest, with pastors, with deans. We had our convocation of priest back in the end of September, and it was a wonderful gathering of the priests and a chance for us to talk about these things. We've been working with each other. And one of the things that I recognize that I need to take the lead on the conversation, that the priests themselves, the pastors, are willing to do the hard work. And I really appreciate that. We have some great pastors. I'm so grateful for the pastors who are here and for the staffs with whom they work, with their associate priests, with the laypeople who work with them. Our parish leadership is really committed to working to enhance the life and the faith life of the people. They serve the parish councils as well, and the finance committee. Everybody's engaged in the same thing. But one of the things we have to do and one of my responsibilities as bishop is really to pull together all of our efforts. We speak of the Church as communion, a communion of communions. We are in communion with the Church throughout the world, but we here in Brooklyn and in Queens need to build communion, be a communion with one another. So we're not talking about a new concept here. What we're talking about is living truly to be Catholic, our shared Catholic life. So in this particular letter, which is kind of a step along the way in the conversation, we're sharing some of the basic statistics and the need for us to work together, to continue to build the life of faith here in Brooklyn and Queens.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: In the letter, Bishop, you mentioned some of the essential facts that are just the realities of our diocese. High number of priests, retirements and deaths of priests. In recent years, there are fewer priests serving in our 175 parishes. And of those 175 parishes in our diocese, it's a very diverse diocese. Of course, we know that each and every Sunday Mass is celebrated in many.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Many languages and in certain parishes. For example, here at the Co Cathedral, different languages on a weekend. We're not just bilingual, we're multilingual.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: That's right. Here at the Co Cathedral we offer mass in English, Spanish, Creole, Italian and Polish. At Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Astoria. English, Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese and Czech every Sunday. This is incredible. Needs to minister to the people. But I think, Bishop, the piece that really was picked up by Catholic media outlets was the specific numbers of Mass attendance. You mentioned that in 2017, our diocese reported an average of 205,000 and so people attending Mass per weekend. Yet five years later, in 2022, our average report was 124,000, which was nearly a 40% decrease in Mass attendance. And that echoed throughout our Catholic news services here in the United States for varied reasons, perhaps. Were you a little bit surprised at how your letter, just to the faithful of the diocese was picked up?
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Perhaps a little, but it reflects a lot of things. So there are certainly national trends in terms of the numbers of people who aren't going to Mass, and that's a concern for us. There are national trends of the numbers of people who haven't returned from Mass after COVID. That's a concern for us. And so we have some very real challenges to get at. But one of the things that makes our numbers somewhat unique is the changing face of Brooklyn constantly. And this isn't a new story. For generations now, Brooklyn and Queens have been adapting to new cultural realities. Many of our parishes were formed specifically to meet the needs of an incoming cultural group or an incoming language group. And then those people move on to other places. Often enough, they be replaced by other Catholics coming with the same kinds of needs in their own language and culture. What is new in Brooklyn is that migration continues. A lot of people are coming and then moving on to other areas. Maybe the next generation goes elsewhere. But the newer arrivals are less Christian, not only less Catholic. So we certainly still have great numbers of new arrivals of people from Hispanic populations who speak Spanish. And you can see that reality in our Spanish speaking parishes. Those numbers actually continue to grow. Mass is celebrated in Spanish. There you see young families, you see great life, a lot of expression of the faith. And that's one of those good signs, the healthy signs. You see it likewise in many of the other newly arrived peoples. But we also have to recognize that many of the new arrivals come from other parts of the world where they're not Christian, where you see growths in other communities and in other faiths and even among Catholics. So, for example, Bay Ridge, which was a stallwater like Irish and Italian Catholicism, now has people from the Middle East. And even among the Catholics, more and more of those Catholics are Eastern right Catholics. So you see the changing face of Brooklyn and Queens. And like I said, that's not new. What is new is the change of some of the peoples. There are other demographic changes happening too, and there were other social problems that we have to consider. So we talk about the gentrification that's taking place in Brooklyn. We talk about some of the neighborhoods where people are coming. It's generally young people who are here for a while, starting careers, maybe beginning to date, maybe getting married, maybe not getting married, but then beginning families, then moving on. And many of those people fit the category that's classified today as none of the above. Right? And many of them are here at a time in their life when they're exploring and they're not exploring the things that we're connected to as younger people in their homes and in their families. So the faith life there is not being practiced. So even among those who might be Catholic, there's not a real practice of faith. And then you have situations where, again, through gentrification or other changes in the neighborhood, brooklyn and Queen's property is incredibly, incredibly valuable. We're facing something of a housing cris this way, or at least an affordable housing crisis. And so as some of these fancy buildings are going up, they're going up at the expense of other places where people lived and those who were.
If you sell property well, then you do pretty well when you move on. But a lot of people who are renting are being pushed out. So some of our traditionally, maybe even poorer neighborhoods, some of our very committed Catholics who've been serving for years and years, either they or their children can't afford to live here anymore because the rent has gone beyond their means. The building is sold and they're out. So people are facing real crises.
That was a discussion during the Synod for us. These are some of the realities that people are facing. And again, that too is not new. You've seen this happening in Brooklyn and Queens before in other generations, but it's something very acute right now. So this issue of Mass attendance, while it's important for us, it reflects and it contains within it so many other social realities that we as a church need to take a concern with. One other thing the reality of COVID Brooklyn and Queens were hit especially hard during COVID I was in Ohio at the time, and I was seeing what was happening in New York. And there are different consequences from that. First of all, we did lose a lot of people. I can talk to any priest who can just give me names of some of their very faithful people. We can talk about some of our priests who died during COVID It was a very dark time. It was a time of tremendous suffering and tremendous loss for the people of Brooklyn, Queens. There's still a great deal of caution in many of our neighborhoods because of the trauma of that experience.
And we're inviting people back. And yes, in some circles, people are out at restaurants and out at theaters and they should be out at Mass. But there are some people we're still living trauma, real trauma. So all those things.
Another outcome of COVID too, is we did many things, you just kept doing them. You repeated, well, we lost the rhythm and boy, we got to get back on track that's right.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: It takes a lot longer to form a habit than it does to break a habit habit.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: And even some of our groups, a lot of parishes, one generation were altar servers, and then as soon as that next grade hit, if they became altar servers, you always had a steady flow. Now you have to start from scratch. And some parishes have been having a hard time with that. Some parishes have a very hard time with that because there are no families. It's all older people. It's just the reality of life here in Brooklyn and Queens. It's challenging. But you know what?
[00:19:22] Speaker A: It also has I may I think some of those opportunities are looking at the positives. When I came to this Co Cathedral parish from Holy Child Jesus, which was a parish with an active school to this parish with no school, there's obvious differences in the demographics. There was a parish that had generational families to a parish here, which has a very transient community. If I were to spend my days comparing it, I would be disappointed. Day after day after day, mass attendance is lower here. Number of students in our religious education program is lower here. I'd be disappointed. The reality, however, is that when we have our Young Adult social event and 30 young adults come out, or we have our Young Youth Ministry program, which we formed from scratch, and we have 23 kids high schoolers coming to a youth ministry group Thursday after Thursday after Thursday. Going to retreats and going to camp. When we see the good things that are happening the good things that are happening in our parishes, that is what should give. US the joy and the strength to say, okay, we're going to keep going and keep moving and keep building on the good that is happening. And I think, Bishop, in a recent interview on Currents News, you also explained some of the good things that are happening in our diocese.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Well, I mentioned earlier the people who are coming from other nations that don't bring Christianity with them, but they're encountering it here. So the parishes where there are Chinese populations are seeing 40, 50, 60 baptisms at the east of Vigil every year. People are coming into the church. They're coming here. Non Christians coming here, experiencing encountering Christianity, encountering Catholic families and seeking to know more, seeking to know Jesus Christ, seeking the faith of the Church, and seeking to be baptized. So there were evangelization possibilities here. That's true, too, among young people. You mentioned the young people who are here. So you mentioned the young people in your young adults community.
What we have here in Brooklyn and Queens are, yeah, a lot of people who don't want to share the faith, that category of none of the above. But embedded in there are good, faithful, Catholic young people who are looking to connect with the church, who are looking to share their lives with people who share that faith. And those young people form something of a foundation. And so you're experiencing that as you have your different events and as some of our parishes have different events. And those young people will bring other young adults and that will continue to grow. When I was in Columbus, I learned of an organization called Young Catholic Professionals. They had just started a chapter in Columbus the year before I came. Was I ever impressed by them. That same national organization established a chapter in New York last year, and they're looking to establish a chapter here in Brooklyn this year. So all of these young adults groups in our different parishes will have opportunities to encounter other young adults because, as we know, there's much more movement in the young adult community.
Bishop Dimasio began certain ministries to young adults. So the Sandamiano center, the Shalom community at the San Damiano Center. They're doing wonderful work. And young adults, I was with a fellow just this week who was talking about the experience, and that continues to grow. So, yes, there are concerns, but, yes, there are opportunities, and yes, some of those opportunities are bearing fruit over it.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: No, I think it's the joys of those who are and the responsibility that we each bear. Both you as the shepherd, myself as a priest and pastor, but all of us as faithful Catholics all bear the responsibility of evangelization and sharing the good news of the Gospel. And so we pray that maybe that all things work for the good. We know that. And so we pray that in this letter and in the realities that exist in our diocese, that while more people should know about them, so that it helps us to motivate and to be, I think, greater evangelizers and also, again.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: To meet the needs of the present time. So we need to have strong communities if we're going to attract people, we need to have strong communities of faith. And so that is going to mean some amount of cooperation. It's going to look different from place to place, but we're going to have to address the Mass schedules in such a way that we have lots of things for people to choose from. But maybe not everything in every parish.
The classic example I use is not every parish needs an early morning Mass on Sunday morning, but we need somebody to have one. Not every parish needs to have in Sunday evening Mass or a Saturday vigil Mass, but somebody's got to have it. So how do we our organization, we're organized into deaneries. Now, that's not hard and fast, but it's a group of pastors working together how in our deaneries. And then maybe we extend beyond a little bit, but how do we in our deaneries just try to assess what the need is and how we're meeting it. The same is with the language groups. Maybe we need to come together rather than split apart. There are opportunities there. There's also the reality that neighborhoods have changed so much so and they're not going in anytime soon to have a greater Christian population. And we're going to have to face harder decisions. We're going to have to do some joining of parishes, mergers of parishes. Again, this isn't new. This has been going on in Brooklyn and Queens for a very long time. We have parishes that have been merged together or parishes that now have become one parish and they've been together for a long, long time. But we have to do it in a smart way, not just because basically we also have to when we talk about the numbers of our priests, we're not looking for priests to fly in, say Mass, and fly out. The idea is to walk with people. The idea is to engage. So that too fits into the Mass schedule issue and into how much we can ask our priests in terms of how many places they can take on. The key thing though, and I go back to what I said before, these are issues that our people are already concerned about. I'm not raising something that because I came in and had an idea. I'm picking up on a conversation that I heard from the priests and the pastors. I'm picking up on conversations that I heard in all of the synod reports. So how do we preserve, how do we practice and how do we enhance and grow our Catholic life together? That's what we're all concerned about. And it may mean some adjustments, but there's an awful lot of goodwill around here and already a sharing of things. One good thing about Brooklyn and Queens, we're pretty close to one.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: You know, when I was in Ohio, I used to joke that the city of Columbus had churches built a mile apart so that no one would have to walk more than half a mile to church. And I would say, isn't that funny? Who walks to church? Well, guess what? In Brooklyn and Queens, a lot of people walk to true.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: So we're already in a mode where people go to Mass here in one parish, but they belong to the senior group in another parish and they might go to weekday Mass in a third parish. And so we're already in that mode. It's really trying to make that very intentional.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: That's right. It's very reassuring, Bishop, for the priests and for the pastors of the diocese to recognize that we need to be working in conjunction with one another, but also following your leadership. And so I'm exactly.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: This isn't about reducing work for priests. This is really about enhancing our work. If we quite honestly saying Mass is our greatest joy.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: So that's not the issue. The issue for us is that we want to do it well and we want to be able to be present to the people who are there at Mass and there are great opportunities to do that. It just takes sometimes a little bit of working together.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Bishop, thank you again. It's a great blessing to be with you as we enjoy and continue to develop this conversation. I know that it will be a continued topic and theme of our diocese for weeks and months and years ahead as we continue our preparations and our planning. I hope that you have a great Thanksgiving. Bishop.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: We're recording a little early in the week, but this will air after Thanksgiving. So, yes, I hope all of you who are listening had a good Thanksgiving and really get to enjoy this whole week. And that Thanksgiving gives us a chance, really to ponder God's many blessings even in the midst of suffering. I know many people who are suffering these days.
And even in the midst of your sufferings, the Lord is there with you. He loves you an awful lot. And so we all have reason to pause and offer some kind of thanks to the Lord also, go back to where we started and maybe we could conclude with the prayer of the feast of Christ the King. Let us pray. Almighty, ever living God, whose will is to restore all things, in your beloved Son, the King of the Universe, grant, we pray, that the whole creation set free from slavery may render your majesty service and ceaselessly proclaim your praise through Christ our Lord.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: Amen. The Lord be with you and with your spirit.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: May Almighty.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Thank you, Bishop. I hope that you all enjoyed our newest edition of Big City Catholics. We hope that you'll share it among your friends and on your platforms and that you'll join us again next week. God bless.
