Current Events

Is it something about the Transfiguration?

From the Philadelphia Daily News: Urban Warrior | Church Meets a Sad Fate by Chris Brennan

A MASSIVE stone church, stately rectory and sturdy elementary school once held the power to transfigure long lines of West Philadelphia rowhouses into something bigger, greater, more glorious – a community.

But the Catholic Church turned its back on the 5500 block of Cedar Avenue six years ago, closing the Transfiguration of Our Lord parish that sits on the high ground of a full city block surrounded by small houses.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia sold the property last year for $1 million to real-estate speculators who went into business to scoop up land cast aside by the Catholic Church.

I took a long, slow walk through six years of neglect last week. There was nothing exalting about it. Boards have been pried loose from the church’s massive stained glass front. The rectory’s first-floor windows are smashed. The school is a burned-out wreck.

And then there’s that name, that terrible, mocking irony.

If you check out my most recent entry on Diocesan restructuring and the Fix Buffalo blog (search for Transfiguration), you’ll notice that the same thing happened to Transfiguration R.C. Church in Buffalo, NY —“ exactly the same thing. By the way, it was the church my father was baptized in.

Biretta tip to the Young Fogey.

One thought on “Is it something about the Transfiguration?

  1. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia, over the past thirty-five years, has closed or merged dozens of parishes.

    Those churches are mostly in inner city areas.

    The buildings are promptly stripped of altars, statues, etc., and these artifacts are used in the mega-churches they Church builds in the rich, Republican suburbs.

    The same thing is going on in South Jersey right now. The Church higher ups are all about the money.

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