by David G. Duggan ©
Special to Virtueonline
December 23, 2024
I don’t know what has happened to this world. Forty years ago, I was a captain of one of the usher crews at St. Bartholomew’s Church at 50th St. and Park Avenue in New York City. Seating over 1,200 people in pews that if people squished would accommodate 12 backsides, St. Bart’s was the largest Episcopal parish church in this hemisphere. Ushers were predominantly male, and regardless of gender dressed in pin-striped grey livery, with white shirts and a black and grey tie, unless the usher owned a morning suit with its swallow-tail jacket. White carnations were pinned to their left lapel.
Imagine my surprise when on a recent trip to NYC I walked into St. Bart’s and saw chairs instead of pews, 2" thick cushions instead of kneelers, and ushers wearing uncovered blouses, sport coats and multi-colored shirts. Even communion was dispensed, not while kneeling at the rail, but while standing at stations in the nave. Quelle sacrilege.
Back then, ushers would count the house, pass the collection plates, and guide congregants to the communion rail where vectors of priests would dispense the bread and wine. Built in the 1910s and designed by Bertram Goodhue in the Byzantine style (the only such building in Manhattan), St. Bart’s featured a mosaic and stained-glass by Hildreth Meiere, a sculpture by Gustav Thorvaldsen, and a movie-set backdrop for films as diverse as rom-com “Arthur” and spy-thriller “Salt.” After the service those ushers who had trained for the role gave tours. I was one of those.
I won’t comment on the nature of the service. Having had my connection to the Episcopal Church of my upbringing strained to the breaking point by wokesters and heretics, cowards and grifters, all I can say is that God must have a sense of humor to allow one of the cardinal parishes of creation to fall into an abyss of irrelevance greased by the triple-threat of diversity, equity and inclusion. The people whom I saw there (and did not remember me from my service decades ago) seemed to have drunk the Kool-Aid of what has become the Democratic party at prayer.
God has a long timeline. He, and He alone can stem the tide, stop the clock, and raise the dead. Perhaps those dead will include the Episcopal Church. Or perhaps not.
Sadly, well said. Your experience is much like mine concerning Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis from the 1960s. Little did I know where our Dean, Paul Moore, Jr., would lead the church when he became BIshop of New York. I have not visited in 60 years; what I see on line suffices.