Let the Church Bells Chime On

My current parish, Saint Thomas More Church, is scheduled to close if Cardinal Dolan doesn't come to reason.  That is the one I am fighting for.

The Cardinal is working a strategic plan known as "Making All Things New."

The "new" religious structure in my neighborhood is the 96th Street mosque.  The terrorist jihad is not the time to close three Catholic churches within seven blocks of it.  We all need to keep worshiping peacefully.

Saint Thomas More Church rings the noon bell for our entire neighborhood.  The origin of the noon bell is best described in Michael the Archangel Church Pastor Fr. Rutler's current column:

"Following the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims and the desecration of the world’s largest church, Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”), the Ottoman Turks had worked their way into Europe, hoping to conquer Rome.  Pope Callixtus III saw the Devil’s work here, and summoned the brilliant Franciscan, Saint John of Capistrano, seventy years old, to crusade against the foe. At a meeting in Frankfurt, the friar found the Germans and Austrians too indifferent to take up arms, so he enlisted the Hungarian general, John Hunyadi, and both of them, riding into battle against great odds, lifted the siege of Belgrade and delayed Muslim progress into Europe by about 60 years.

   Hunyadi brandished a sword and Capistrano a more powerful crucifix. These great crusaders died shortly after from contagion. The Pope had ordered church bells to be rung at noon before the start of the conflict. News of victory reached Rome on the Feast of the Transfiguration, so the Holy Father made it a universal feast. Moreover, he ordered that church bells be rung at every noonday. 

   In 1956, Pope Pius XII invoked the “Turkish Bell” as a summons to a crusade of prayer for oppressed Christians in Communist East Europe and China. The terror that stalks our world now, and would seek to block Christ, is diabolic, and can only be attributed by the naïve or cynical to poor social conditions and economic deprivation. Christ knew his enemy when he said, “Get behind me, Satan.” Today there is great need for the bell to ring and move us to prayer and action."

St. Thomas More Church was built in 1870, the year Syracuse University opened "coed from the beginning" in New York and graduate schools began at Yale and Harvard.  The first sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta was founded at DePauw University.  First railroad. Canadian independence.  Queen Victoria was on the throne in England.  Ulysses S. Grant was in the White House.  Most importantly, the 15th amendment gave blacks the right to vote.  Three years later, the right to marry.  Any historical associations with the architecture from this period are inspiring as we fight the new slavery of the terrorist jihad.