The local paper for the Upper East Side
CAMP GUIDE
WEEK OF JANUARY-FEBRUARY
pg 12
2017
2017
26-1
ONWARD: 400,000 TAKE TO THE STREETS Huge turnout at the NYC Women’s March BY CHARMAINE P. RICE
Solemn Mass at Our Lady of Peace on East 62nd Street on July 30, 2015, the evening before the church was closed. Photo: Richard Khavkine
PARISHIONERS TO CONTINUE APPEAL OF CHURCH’S CLOSURE They say a Vatican decree contains a number of inconsistencies BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
Parishioners of Our Lady of Peace will appeal a Vatican decree upholding the closure of the nearly 100-year-old church by the Archdiocese of New York and its merger with a nearby parish. The decree, by the Congregation for the Clergy, followed five extensions by the Vatican body to allow it to gather and review more information from parishioners and the Archdiocese. Since appeals by various churches within the archdiocese also shuttered in 2015 were being looked at individually, parishioners were hopeful the Congregation would overturn the Archdiocese’s decree. “We had very high hopes,” said Janice Dooner Lynch, a longtime parishioner who is on the church’s appeals committee. “I don’t know what happened. I thought we had a good case.” Parishioners received a letter con-
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taining the decree on Jan. 9. They intend to appeal to the Apostolic Signatura, in effect the Vatican’s Supreme Court. “We move on and we won’t give up,” said Lynch, whose family has worshiped at Our Lady of Peace since 1921. The Archdiocese cited declining attendance, shifting demographics, financial constraints and a shortage of priests for the closure and merger of Our Lady of Peace and dozens of other parishes in the city and across the region in late July 2015. Parishioners at Lady of Peace have since disputed each of the Archdiocese’s assertions to close the East 62nd Street church, whose parish was merged with the Church of Saint John the Evangelist on East 55th Street. The church’s appeals committee sent the Congregation roughly 10 volumes of documents, including financial records, to try and persuade the Vatican the Archdiocese acted
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The anti-Trump sentiment was strong, the signs spirited, and the chants, loud. By all accounts, the crowds attending the New York City Women’s March exceeded expectations. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press secretary said the official count topped 400,000. Organizers had expected 100,000 to show up. Regardless of the exact turnout figure, women and men of all ages, families, millennials and teens turned out in full force the day following President Donald Trump’s inauguration to rally around the issues they care about. Vaughn Bobb Willis, a law student who walked with his two sisters, held up a sign that read “Quality men do not fear equality.”
Violet Smith, left, and Christine McGregor at the march Saturday. Photo: Charmaine P. Rice
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“Tiny hands Tiny feet, all you do is tweet, tweet, tweet.” Photo: Charmaine P. Rice “It’s important for men to do their part,” Willis said on East 55th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, near the march’s finish line. “If women aren’t equal, then none of us are. Women’s rights are human rights.” Whoopi Goldberg and actors Rosie Perez and Taylor Schilling kicked off the event at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza just before 11 a.m. Chirlane McCray, the first lady of New York City, attended, as did actors Helen Mirren and Cynthia Nixon. Star power aside, marchers came from all walks of life to support a variety of causes, the vast majority of them progressive. “I came down here from New Hampshire. I fear for the future of the country and the future of my kids and grandkids,” said Violet Simpson. Simpson’s friend, teacher Christine McGregor, held up a sign listing issues and institutions she supports, among them unions, public education, refugees and LGBTQ rights. “My sign says it all,” she said.
Indeed, many signs said it all, with some depicting caricatures of Trump, catchy slogans and images of cats as a cheeky nod to Trump’s “locker room banter.” One sign gleefully proclaimed “Tiny hands, tiny feet. All you do is tweet, tweet, tweet!” Another stated “Make America tolerant again.” One was a riff on the Serenity Prayer: “I am no longer accepting things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” Inside the 57th Street subway station on Seventh Avenue, discarded signs were arranged into a display. “I’m here because I am appalled at his [Trump’s] attitudes toward
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