Matthew of the Holy Whapping has moved to the Big Apple and immediately…found a cause!
The historic New York parish of St. Vincent de Paul down in Chelsea (116 West 24th Street) is facing closure. A recent article in The New York Times focused on the parish’s small but vibrant Francophone congregants, but there’s a lot more to the story than the church’s monthly French Mass.
What the story doesn’t say is there is a determined group of laymen who hope to save the parish by bringing a new focus to the parish’s mission. While not forgetting the church’s special mission to French, Haitian and Francophone African emigrants in Manhattan, these men and women hope to emulate the examples of other parishes such as the Tridentine revival of Chicago’s St. John Cantius and St. Gelasius, Opus Dei’s work at St. Mary of the Angels, and the work of a number of other urban religious orders in places such as Wilmington. They have thus an interest in inviting to take over the care of the parish either an order not unlike the Institute of Christ the King; like the historically French Vincentians–who have no presence in New York yet; or Opus Dei, already close by at Murray Hill but lacking a parish as such.
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