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Month: June 2021

Perpetual adoration chapel will be a ‘spiritual gamechanger’ for New York City, priest says

Posted by | Jun 5, 2021 | , |

An artist’s rendering of the planned adoration chapel in Greenwich Village. Courtesy photo.

New York City, N.Y., Jun 5, 2021 / 06:01 am (CNA).

A perpetual adoration chapel slated to open next spring will bring spiritual healing and revitalization to Manhattan, according to a Dominican priest overseeing the project. 

“This is really a project of the Holy Spirit. There’s so many times when it’s seemed like we’re running into snags and they just work themselves out,” Fr. Boniface Endorf, a Dominican friar and pastor of St. Joseph’s parish in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, told CNA. 

“It’s clear the Holy Spirit is a driving force, and I think this will be a spiritual gamechanger for Greenwich Village and the city of New York, to have a place where you can encounter Jesus Christ.” 

Manhattan, one of the most densely populated and influential areas of the entire U.S., currently lacks a perpetual adoration chapel. Last year, Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York asked Fr. Endorf if his parish would be willing to take on the challenge of opening one. 

The new chapel will be constructed in a basement space that the parish is currently using for storage. At present the project is in its last stage of fundraising, with construction set to begin in early fall. The goal is to have the chapel open by Easter 2022. 

Fr. Endorf’s catchphrase for the project is “The city that never sleeps deserves a chapel that never closes.” 

The location is ideal, Fr. Endorf said, because the area is well-served by public transit. He said St. Joseph parishioners and students from the nearby universities are very excited about the project. 

The neighborhood needs the graces that will come from the chapel, Fr. Endorf said. Greenwich Village is a quieter, more residential neighborhood of Manhattan, but also is known for being artistic and bohemian, and also as a haven for LGBT culture. 

Fr. Endorf said he fully expects the adoration chapel to be a source of grace for vocations among those to visit; to help ordinary Catholics to grow in holiness; to aid in the strengthening of marriages in the neighborhood; and to provide spiritual healing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit New York City early, and especially hard. 

In terms of aesthetics, the parish church itself is neoclassical, and the design of the chapel is somewhat romanesque. The theme for the chapel is Divine Mercy, and it will feature a mosaic of the Divine Mercy image above the monstrance.

The main design element is a large wooden rood screen, a feature born partly out of necessity— the screen protects the monstrance from theft— but which will also serve as a large, visible surface on which to place additional artistry and symbolism. 

The chapel will also have choir stalls to allow the faithful to join in with the Dominicans as they pray the liturgy of the hours throughout the day. To keep worshippers safe, the chapel will be secured through a PIN-based or biometric security system, according to the project website. 

Fr. Endorf said that when the chapel opens they plan to pursue locals who can sign up for an adoration slot. But he also hopes that people from across New York, as well as tourists, will take advantage of the chapel as well.

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Boniface, Laying the Axe to the Root of Evil

Posted by | Jun 5, 2021 | , , |

Saint Boniface, bishop, missionary and martyr was hacked to death by a band of Frisian idol-worshippers on this  day, June 5, 754, along with 52 of his companions. His life was one of tireless struggle to convert the pagans of Germania, steeped in dark, superstitious practices.  The famous story of his boldly chopping down the ‘Donar[…]

The post Boniface, Laying the Axe to the Root of Evil appeared first on Catholic Insight.

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Revitalizing languages key to UNDRIP

Posted by | Jun 5, 2021 | , |

When it came time to officially endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Guadalupe Circle chose to focus on what UNDRIP could mean for defending and revitalizing endangered languages.

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Catholicism and the Future of Culture

Posted by | Jun 5, 2021 | , , , |

EducationCatholicism is the future of culture in America and the Western World. Why? Because Catholicism understands that humans are cultural animals and that we have a rich and splendid cultural inheritance rather than proclaiming a deracinated and orphaned inheritance or advancing an ideology of self-hatred and cultural destruction in the name of progress.  Humans are […]

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Beowulf in a Nutshell

Posted by | Jun 5, 2021 | , , , , |

BeowulfBeowulf, the Old English epic, probably dates from the early eighth century, a golden age of English Christianity when the land was awash with saints. The Beowulf poet, who was almost certainly a monk, was a contemporary of St. Bede the Venerable, a Doctor of the Church, and St. Boniface, the English apostle to the […]

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Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr

Posted by | Jun 5, 2021 | |

Readings for the Memorial of Saint Boniface, bishop and martyr

Reading I Tb 12:1, 5-15, 20

Tobit called his son Tobiah and said to him,
“Son, see to it that you give what is due to the man
who made the journey with you; give him a bonu…

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Immigration summit laments ’empty’ Central American towns

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At this week’s emergency immigration meeting a prominent moment for Bishop Mario Dorsonville was a conversation he had with an El Salvadorian bishop who described the growing emptiness of some of his diocesan towns.

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