Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to a new edition of our Dawson podcast, Big City Catholics, with Bishop Robert Brennan, the diocesan Bishop of Brooklyn, serving in Brooklyn and Queens, and myself, Father Christopher Henry. Bishop, good to be back with you. We had a little bit of a great reconnect.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: We've had a lot of special editions because we've had a lot of special activity over these last couple of weeks.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: We certainly have. It just seems like the saints are surrounding us. The saints are all around us, all these beautiful feast days, these beautiful days in the church around this time of year and including beatifications, et cetera. So really a beautiful, beautiful time of year.
Bishop. Well, begin with prayer, calling upon the intercession of our Blessed Mother, powerful intercessor for us and for our parishes, for our diocese, for the families and for those who listen. Each and every week we pray 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.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Amen. Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Bishop, you've been all over it and I've loved listening in. I really enjoyed the podcast with Bishop Perez and Monsignor Valland. It was speaking about Fulton Sheen, now blessed Fulton Sheen. What a great opportunity that was for you guys to get together. I'm sure it wasn't easy to get your calendars united for.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: No, as a matter of fact, we were missing Mancini di Crocco. That would have been the full team reunited. But we'll do that sometime soon, I think we'll try to get data for that. That was a program we used to have on the Catholic Faith Network called Insight Mancini di Graco, Bishop Perez and I, and Mansigna 1 was on the executive side of the whole thing. So this will get. We'll get the whole team together again. We had a lot of fun doing it, but we also talked about some important things.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: That's right. I mean, you're talking about a beautiful moment in the Church, especially the Church of America here and the Church, the war, obviously, the universal church. But how proud we are with this beatification of Fulton Sheen. And I know that there's still some more to unpack there.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yes. You know, since then, we've had our local celebrations and made some connections with Archbishop Sheen, now blessed Fulton J. Sheen. And of course, the podcast aired the day after the beatification, but was prepared beforehand. So reflecting back on that, it was a great Moment in the church and in some ways, surprising moments. First of all, there were great ties to us here in New York. We had mass at the Cathedral of St James as a mass of Thanksgiving the next day. But on Saturday night, we had mass in Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. Blessed Fulton Sheen used to preach there. He used to do missions there before he started doing the seven last words in St. Agnes in New York City. He used to do the seven last Words, the three hours agony right there at Queen Amada's church. When I went to mass was very, very beautiful in parish, did a great, great job. But Father Passen, that introduced me to a woman. Her husband had died. The couple was married there at Queen of Martyrs by blessed Fulton Sheen. He had the marriage record and all of that. I got to meet her and her family. They had pictures from the time of the marriage. It was really a nice connection. And that's one of the things here in New York. There were so many people who flew feel a close connection because they would have had some moment to. To interact with him. I heard from somebody who used to work for Propagation of Faith, but he worked, you know, I'll say the mail him or something like that, but just riding on the elevator with the archbishop, he felt that connection. And he always talked about how the archbishop showed tremendous respect for everybody there. And so he always felt good around blessed Fulton Sheen. So you see those personal connections, and you know, two questions were raised. One, does he have any relevance today? You know, he was on TV and a generation ago, and do the young people have that connection? And the answer to that is yes. I was talking to Bishop Whalen. I wasn't at the beatification because we had our Catholic Charities dinner here. He was saying that the arena in St. Louis was absolutely full. That's a big deal. That that's not easy to fill, that arena.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: And they weren't planning on filling it. They thought maybe they oversubscribed it. But he couldn't believe the number of young families, families, couple, young children who were there. And then he said when they came back and they received the relics at St Patrick's it was the same thing. It was a gathering of young families. And people have that connection because of YouTube and Catholic media, net TV, Catholic faith network. A lot of his programs are aired on different channels. And then, of course, people have the access through YouTube and they have that connection. That leads to the second question. How is his preaching back in the 1940s and 50s relevant today? I was asked that question, and you know, what the answer is because he preached Jesus Christ. I guess sometimes he addressed particular questions. But if you look at the programs, it's teaching the catechism, it's teaching the gospel. He preached Jesus Christ that's eternal. You know, he would preach the principles, and then you could apply it to your faith or your individual circumstances, circumstances of your life, the challenges you face in your family, the challenges that the world faces. The message of the gospel is eternal. And I think those two things came together so powerfully during the time of his beatification. And I guess it was a sense of renewal in the church, you know, and my theme when we were doing the Mass of Thanksgiving is saints have been walking among us. I was reflecting on how 175 years, almost in the diocese, all the different saints who walk through the streets of Brooklyn and Queens, Mother Cabrini, Mother Teresa, St. John Paul II, St. Paul VI. I think of people who are maybe on their way to sainthood, people like Pierce Toussaint or Dorothy Day, Monsignor Quinn. Saints have walked among us throughout our history, and that's amazing, but it also reminds us there are saints walking among us today.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Amen. Yeah, that's the truth for sure, Bishop. I mean, we're all called to that,
[00:06:24] Speaker B: to live to be saints. And. And there are some people who are just living heroic lives. Well, maybe another generation will look back on the way that the church lived its life in these days, and you may see some heroic people who stand out for their virtue, for their sacrifices.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: You know, Bishop, you mentioned the stadium filled with young people. And, you know, I'm so happy here at St. Joan of Arc with our school being surrounded with the youth. We have a pretty active youth group, high school and middle school group. But recently I was invited to Christ the King High School to give a day retreat for their junior class. And I must admit, you know, high school is a different level. And it was a little intimidating. Driving out to Huntington, where we were going to be. I was a little nervous, to be honest, thinking, you know, are these. Are they going to listen? Are they going to pay attention?
Am I going to have anything to offer them?
And I was so, so impressed by their attentiveness, by their sincerity, by their prayerfulness. Yeah, they were out a day of school, and it was nice. And certainly spending a beautiful time on a crisp, you know, autumn day in Huntington, which is such a beautiful location, that retreat center. But they were so attentive. They're seeking something real, they're seeking something authentic. And I was so impressed by that, Bishop, and I'm sure you get that chance to kind of go around.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: I think you were at Archbishop Malo High School recently as well. And.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: And High School and St. Francis High School so far. And looking forward to getting to the others. And then we're gonna. I'm looking forward. We have two diocesan youth days coming up later this month, October 17th and 24th. Interestingly, we've had to split.
So we originally had these youth days in a parish. It was too big, and so we moved to Christ the King High School, got too big and so now we're going to have two of them. That's great. And as I always say, you don't accomplish something in a day.
You know, why do we get those crowds? Because there's a lot happening at the parish level and it's the parishes that bring the young people and there's something good happening at the parish level. Then we can gather everybody together. So it's a great gift. Our young people have a great gift. And speaking of young people, more saints. We had young Saints. We had St. Francis. We had the 800th anniversary. That was the other special edition we had. I was with Brother Damien and Father Joe Miller. Brother Damian Noviello is the superior general for the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn. And they have a long standing service here in the diocese. And both of them are so well versed in the life and the ministry of St. Francis. So that was a conversation I enjoyed having. But, you know, God speaks to us through young people. He spoke a message to the church through Francis and 800 years. So we celebrated this past weekend the 800th anniversary since the death or what we call the transitus of St. Francis to heaven. God spoke to the church. And for generations, for 800 years, God's been speaking to the Church more than 800 years through the radical joy filled humility lived by St. Francis and then by St. Clair as well. And. And so there were some great diocesan celebrations around that. I was in St. Francis High School. We were all in St. Francis St. Blaise Parish. Beautiful celebration. They were full church. Father Tom Vasilotti actually arranged for us to celebrate the Transitists. I've always known about it through the Franciscan orders. It's usually done in Franciscan congregations. First time I actually prayed. The transit is very beautiful, very simple, very beautiful. And they had the relic of Saint France from Our lady of Peace, so. And a very beautiful, beautiful Mass. So good things happening at our parishes.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: I was really speaking as a pastor. I was really excited to be able to celebrate that Sunday this past Sunday as a solemnity of St Francis Assisi was pretty cool, if I may use a kind of a unique word for your powers as bishop. To be able to elevate that as
[00:10:51] Speaker B: a solemnity exuded some episcopal authority.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: I think that was pretty impressive. It was very prayerful and, you know, it's a message that needs to be preached and reminded and a care for creation, love for God's world and all that fills it. Animals particularly. Right. As we did the blessing of animals, the message of peace,
[00:11:16] Speaker B: of God's humility. God humbled himself to come among us.
God chose to be poor. And Francis looked. He was a very. He read things right. As he saw it fundamentally. He like.
And so he wanted to follow Christ as radically and as closely as he could. Yes, that. That joy filled humility of God that Francis adopted for himself and teaches us to adopt. Yes. And of course, the other young saint to whom God spoke to us is Saint Therese. And we celebrated this week the hundredth anniversary of St. Therese Parish in East Flatbush. So I've been in that whole Flatbush, East Flatbush area a lot these days. St. Jerome, we celebrated St. Jerome, we celebrated that anniversary. So I've been over that way. But Therese is another one of those young saints a hundred years ago, a little more than 100 years ago, set the world on fire with the love of the heart. And you know, St. Jose, a lot of the older folks call it Little Flower Parish. But think about it. She was canonized 101 years ago. Parish was formed 100 years ago. They jumped right in.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Right in. And that devotion to St. Therese, so he's there too. This young woman spoke to us.
So yeah, the saints surrounding us. I was in St. Jerome's because of the anniversary of St. Jerome's parish. We celebrated their feast. And again, a nice crowd during the week, a night weeknight. And a good representation of our Haitian priests. A lot of our Haitian priests have ties to St. Jerome's there's a strong Haitian presence. And of course, as much as we had the joy of celebrating in these areas, these saints and the culture, we also had heavy hearts. We had heavy hearts because of what the Haitian people experienced with this sudden removal, abrupt removal of the protective status. They not that these are people who came with good faith and followed all the rules. And then all of a sudden it was just taken away from them. So they caught up in this turmoil that they themselves didn't create. And so there was a lot of heaviness of heart still, a lot of fear. People who Couldn't join us because they kind of like laying low. But there, too, St. Jerome, St. Therese, St. Francis, they teach us Christian hope.
And one of the things we kind of kept focusing on, hope will not disappoint. St. Paul tells us.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Love of God has been poured into our hearts and we're not going to let anybody steal our hope.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Has there been any update legally on that status? No.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: No. And we're looking forward as a church for a day forward to pray for the dignity of migrants, of all migrants, on October 17th.
So we're going to meet again at St. Jerome Church. Many of those who are now without documentation will probably be praying with us at home. They would not be at this event, but the church will gather. And we're going.
We're talking about some kind of prayerful witness, not a protest, a prayerful witness. And we talked about processions and we settled in on the Stations of the Cross.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Saturday the 17th, we're going to begin with mass at 9 o' clock at St. Jerome and then do the Stations of the Cross, but going to St. Therese and then to St. Vincent. Farren, like I said, this is not a Haitian movement. This is for dignity for all migrants. But it's something that basically the Haitians inspired for us. So we're looking forward to doing that. And you know, Father hen you, when we do these kinds of processions, I'm always appreciative of our police departments here in Brooklyn and Queens. They have gone. They help us to do these events, to do them safely, to keep that sense of order and safety. We often have to close things down. And so we're always very, very grateful for our priests and first responders. During the prior month of September, we placed a lot of emphasis on our first responders. It's the 25th anniversary of September 11th, and masses of thanksgiving for their service.
We're very, very grateful.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: We also celebrated in September the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, which is, you know, the patron of all police officers and first responders here at St. Joan of Arc. It was really beautiful. I really wanted to do it last year, but it was just my third month in the parish and I was just getting my bearings. But we were able to work with the local precinct, the 115th Precinct, and invited the police officers for a special Mass and a special blessing, and they came. We had a nice showing of police officers that came.
And I think just even for the community, it was a chance for my parishioners to verbally thank and then also, as A community out. Grand applause for the service of our police officers. So it's a great love and respect that we certainly have. And you have a brother police officer, right? And myself retired now. Yeah, mine too. Yeah.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: And you know, I remember Father Henry, I was appointed here on September 29, five years ago on the feast of the angels. And the mass that I can celebrated with Bishop Dimasio on that day, on that feast day we had the then police commissioner with us and you had Mass honoring the police departments right there at the Coca Cola Cathedral. So how appropriate that you're doing that now in Jackson Heights.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Oh, we have a great, great support for our police. And Bishop, that was just a little insight. I didn't know what would you know. No one knew what was ha. Like that you were getting it announced that day and the night before was when I was sort of given a little bit of an insight by Bishop DeMarcio. And I said, but Bishop, you know, the police commissioner's coming tomorrow and. And then we had that timed mass.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Remember we had like a 30 minute, was 8, 8:30.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: But it was an anniversary for you as well as your entrance. And welcome to the diocese, Bishop. As we continue, you know, through this month of October, you've got much more probably in store as the pastoral year really just livens up, huh?
[00:17:32] Speaker B: Yes, we have the rosary for vocations. We have respect life. We had the Sunday before, we had a Sunday for migration. We're going to celebrate our event in later in October. Mission Sundays coming up. And we recall the work of the mission Pontifical mission society is 100 years old this year as well. Yes, October is gearing up. We look forward to all kinds of things. We had our priest convocation last month and we talked about the new breviary coming out. Beautiful, beautiful reflection on the psalms, preparing ourselves so that, you know, this is a promise that we make to pray that we priests make that promise to pray the prayer of the church for the church. It's not just about our own spirituality. It's for the church and yet it does feed us spiritually. So it was good to reflect on that. We have pastor's meeting coming up. Lots and lots of things coming up the rest of these days.
And we look forward of course this week coming up this weekend is Columbus Day weekend. We have a three day weekend. The Columbus State parade is in New York and a lot of people of Italian heritage celebrate that and it's an exciting time. It's also Hispanic Heritage Month.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Yep. It's a month rich with culture and celebrations.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a loaded question, Bishop. I knew that there was a lot going on, but I didn't realize it was that much beautiful. Well, Bishop, great to be with you again today and to catch up and to just recognize again the presence of the saints among us and the great feast days that we've been celebrating and the great work that's happening in the diocese. And really, as you said, to thank the pastors of the parishes that are doing all that building up that. That energy, but also certainly all those that come together to support it. So perhaps you could end with a blessing for us and we'll join again
[00:19:27] Speaker B: next week exactly during this time that we are celebrating the 800th anniversary of the transit, just the journey of Francis to heaven. Let me share the prayer. He prayed before Christ crucified in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Almost high and glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart. Give me right faith, perfect love, and deep humility. Oh, Lord, give me sense discerned in order to carry out your true and holy will. Amen. And may almighty God bless you and your families, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you, Bishop, and thanks one and all who join us each and every week on this podcast, Big City Catholics. We hope that you'll join us again next week.
