Well, to begin with, I don’t spend a lot of time in churches. I find myself looking at them a lot, though, and like a lot of tourists I have sought them out.
I don’t associate my appreciation of something such as St. Patrick’s Cathedral and my strict Christian upbringing ( which actually I found so confining that it had to a large extent the opposite effect of what I think was intended– especially since my parents both openly expressed doubts and sometimes a great deal of anger about their own rigid (Catholic) upbringing; they were prisoners of it no matter how much they tried to rebel against it or dispute it). So I was raised a Methodist, more liberal in some ways, but also forbidding gambling, drinking and smoking ( I signed a pledge not to do this when I was 13 and confirmed—I never was one for gambling but the smoking and drinking were to be problems later on, with my guilt about them and endless attempts to quit. The alcohol was finally easy to give up, while the cigs really took a monumental struggle and belonging to Nicotine Anonymous).
But this is not about me, ( as Chris Christie likes to say) , this is about the great little architectural treasure we have on Fifth Avenue in the middle of Manhattan.
By the way, while not conventionally religious now, I don’t condemn religion or people who have deep religious conviction; on the contrary, religious thought holds in it most of the ethical values I most prize…and I am always very touched by faiths like Baha’i ( I spent most of my childhood in Wilmette, IL, home of the incredibly beautiful Bahai’ Temple).
But this is not an essay on religious belief or religious practice, either.
It comes more under the heading of Architecture and Current Events.
St. Patrick’s is a noteworthy architectural landmark in New York City and once again it has the pristine quality it had when it was built– built also with the small donations
of the cleaning ladies and nurses and people like my mother’s mother, who after her husband died in the Great Influenza epidemic was a cook in a convent and also a cleaning lady. She raised my mother and her brother in their lower Yorkville “railroad flat” as best she could, sending them out to work on farms in the summer and trying to shield them from a lot of the problems of City Life.
I was so glad the bag check was over with soon and I was permitted to tape away to my heart’s content– I would have done more, but a lot of my videos are simple forays I make without detailed scripts and are more personal travelogues ( such as my visit to the NYC Fire Museum and to ones I have done to the Museum of Natural History and Grants Tomb).
I don’t care what the current fashions in architecture are, I find the interior of St. Patrick’s now to be absolutely stunning. I hope my little video gives you a real glimpse of its now almost shimmering beauty and its innately spiritually uplifting aspects.
The Cathedral is in the news again because of the imminent visit of the Pope, and there will be a great deal of pomp and ceremony about that. Even though this current Pope is the least set on pomp, ceremony and trappings of wealth and finery than any Pope for a long, long time.
I guess in keeping with this, Cardinal Timothy Dolan wrote an essay on “the Dignity of Work” ( which was printed in the NY Post– xhttp://nypost.com/2015/09/06/the-dignity-of-work-the-restoration-of-st-patricks-cathedral/)– worth reading, no matter where you are coming from in re the religious angle ( except for people I have known who are real diehard intolerant atheists, or maybe religious fanatics who have to destroy anything they do not feel fits their own ideas of religion and “purity”).
And there are architects who have a bone to pick with anything that even vaguely reminds them of what might indicate a fondness for a “feudal” past, such as Frank Lloyd Wright and others.
For more on the historical and sociological importance of the Cathedral, you will have to look elsewhere..
I remember one event in particular about the Cathedral that I will always remember. When I was at NYU I was with a friend of mine who had been to Italy the previous summer and a bunch of friends he had made in Milan had come over to New York for a visit.
A young Milanese woman named Didi cried out as we walked down Fifth Avenue and saw St. Patrick’s– she was elated by it ( “But when was this built?” she said– my NYU friend laughingly told her it was no landmark of the late Middle Ages or anything, it was an awful lot more recent than that. She found this hard to believe).
To me, enjoying St. Patrick’s Cathedral just for what it is is something like doing Yoga.. I do Yoga and enjoy it enormously , but I do not buy into the ancient religious beliefs which it grew out of.
And I do not in the least bit find it oppressive or “feudal” in some distasteful way ( and I am totally committed to Democracy and government for, of and by the People).
So— oh, also, please indulge my little side step before getting to the Cathedral of going to the NYC Fire Zone store, where I had hoped to tape all the kids ( shame they wouldn’t let me– you should have seen the joy on the faces of those kids as they clambered over the fire engine near the entrance and imagined driving it, much as I always did as a kid when visiting a local Firehouse).
What more can I say? Our City is so rich in monuments, memorials and all kinds of architectural wonders…( as well as much that is definitely less than wonderful, of course).
And it gives me one more reason to get out with my little camera and indulge my rampant curiosity about the World and the City around me.
NOTE; BETTER TO WATCH VIDEO FULL SCREEN

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