Church of St Paul the Apostle in NYC

This article briefly describes my fond memories of Paulists at St Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in NYC. Then it discusses the proper treatment of deceased bodies, relating this to my experience at St. Paul’s Church. Finally, it looks at St Paul the Apostle in recent, less-than-flattering news articles, and I offer my opinion about St Paul’s response as if he were alive today.

The Church of St Paul and Me

The mother church of the Paulist priests, New York City’s St Paul the Apostle, is adjacent to one campus of Jesuit Fordham University, which in turn is adjacent to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

While a Fordham student in the late 1970s, I was blessed to know a young Paulist. He had grown up in St Paul the Apostle parish, where Tony “just met a girl named Maria.” In his opinion, that real life West Side Story locale had been bulldozed for the construction of Fordham and Lincoln Center. Families were forced out, opening the way for luxury housing and the later arrival of yuppies – who were not known for church attendance. Though a densely populated area, St Paul the Apostle parish needed far more church-going Catholics to stay afloat.

Treating Human Bodies as Sacred

I have always been fascinated by places of burial and the honor (or dishonor) given to human remains/ human bodies. God destines our bodies – and not just our souls – for resurrection.

“Most of us don’t really believe in the resurrection of the body. Or we struggle to believe it….In life, we don’t treat our bodies like sacred temples that belong in the heavenly courts” (Scott Hahn with E.S. Chapman, Hope to Die, 2020, pp. 9, 10).

Despite some recent changes, as Hahn and Chapman remind us, burial continues to be the preferred treatment of earthly remains after death.

Through the practice of burying the dead in cemeteries, in churches or their environs, Christian tradition has upheld the relationship between the living and the dead and has opposed any tendency to minimize, or relegate to the purely private sphere, the event of death and the meaning it has for Christians (Paragraph 3, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 8/15/2016).

The Church continues to prefer the practice of burying the bodies of the deceased, because this shows a greater esteem towards the deceased. Nevertheless, cremation is not prohibited, ‘unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine’ (Paragraph 4).

Foremost among honored places of human burial is absolutely the Tomb of Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In addition to visiting Christ’s own burial place, I have been blessed to explore under St Peter’s in the Vatican and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. My Paulist friend extended to me the privilege of visiting the crypt underneath the Church of St Paul the Apostle – where they treated deceased human bodies as sacred.

The Church of St Paul the Apostle in the News

The Church of St Paul the Apostle has been promoting in-church art which fails to “treat our bodies like sacred temples that belong in the heavenly courts“:

• “A controversial art display at a Manhattan Catholic church titled ‘God is Trans: A Queer Spiritual Journey’ is undergoing a name and description change, but has not been removed….”
• “A sign accompanying the display said the artwork, a three-painting collection, ‘maps the queer spiritual journey’ while claiming that ‘there is no devil’….”
• “Fox News Digital reported on May 10 that the exhibit had been removed from the 19th-century mother church of the Paulist Fathers, but Paul Snatchko, a spokesman for the Paulist Fathers, told CNA Monday that the display is still up at the church….”
• “A new name and description are currently being worked on by the artist, Adah Unachukwu — a student at Fordham University — and the Paulists Fathers’ New York City ‘artist-in-residence’ Father Frank Sabatté….”
• “Snatchko said that Sabatté directs a group based at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle called the Openings Collective….”
• “The ‘God is Trans: A Queer Spiritual Journey’ display was one of eight displays in an exhibit,” Snatchko said.
• “The full exhibit, called ‘Vessel: A Spiritual Art Experience,’ is scheduled to run from May 6 through June 14, 2023. It is sponsored by the Openings Collective and Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture Duffy Fellows Program” (UPDATE: ‘God is trans’ exhibit remains in church, but with controversial title removed (Catholic News Agency, 5/15/23).

It is tragic that the Paulists allow this and that there appears to be little public objection.

What Would St Paul the Apostle Himself Say?

By whatever name it is known, it is challenging to believe that intelligent people would not see how very much the “art” at the Church of St Paul the Apostle promotes confusion about Christ’s teaching and Christ’s mercy. This is absolutely inconsistent with St Paul the Apostle himself:

St Paul writes in the First Letter to the Thessalonians: ‘… this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity, that each one should know how to keep his body with holiness and respect, not as the object of libidinous passions, like the pagans who do not know God’ (1 Thess 4:3-5)…. ‘God has not called us to impurity, but to sanctification. Therefore, whoever despises these norms does not despise a man, but God himself, who gives you his Holy Spirit’ (1 Thess 4:7-8) (Paragraph 1, General Audience, Saint Pope John Paul II, 1/28/1981).

Let each one know how to maintain his body with holiness and respect’ (1 Thess 4:4). This is an important thread, perhaps the essential one, of the Pauline doctrine on purity (Paragraph 6).

The first steps in receiving Christ’s mercy are always to recognize our sins, beg for His mercy, and firmly decide to avoid sin and whatever leads us to sin.