You can do the same to a church. I mean, if good money is involved.
Here's The New York Times, August of 2017, reporting on how the Catholics of New York were crucified on the altar of the almighty dollar.
The church is supposed to guide its flock by offering hope. No? No, not in New York City, where real estate values are high, and the heads of the Catholic Church have dollar signs blinding their eyes.
This is the same church that has the record of ignoring pedophile priests and even shunting them to other parishes to avoid prosecution.
Let's keep that thought for a little later. I have an anecdote to tell about Cardinal O'Connor.
St. John the Martyr was once the Knox Presbyterian Church, built in 1887. The Catholics bought it on September 25, 1904 for $39,000 and you'd think that DeBlasio or some of the local politicians in the area (Ben Kallos for example) would've pushed for it to be declared a landmark.
You can Google how a church can be pronounced unholy. My guess is that you wave a few Benjamins under a Bishop's nose and the geezer in the satin dress stands in front of the church, does the sign of the cross backward and then gives the finger.
Maybe not? Why even show up there, or the other churches now sanctioned to put money in the hands of the church elders? Just write a note at a lawyer's office. Isn't it magical how, with some medieval gesture, some mumbling words, somebody can be ex-communicated and a church can be magically turned back into just a building put up for sale?
Let's not pick on the Catholics, of course. Aside from mosques, which seem to be doing ok, any type of church, and any synagogue had better have affluent people donating, because the tax shelters and no rent and other perks are just not enough. Not to keep the elders living in style. Hell, if they wanted to give up worldly possessions, they could've become monks.
The warning signs that St. John the Martyr wasn't going to be saved, or turned into a mosque or something, become obvious when the stores on the corner suddenly went under.
The "law" regarding greedy landlords building monstrosities is simple: they can only block the sky by taking over corner buildings. Nothing mid-block. Watta concession.
The weasels scout out small apartment buildings and tenement buildings, and begin their patterns of bribery and harassment. Shut off heat or hot water on the tenants. Don't renew the lease on the stores. Wait a while. Then start building something ugly and expensive for the hedge fund weasels, oily Middle East slime, Russian mafia kingpins, and every other damnable rodent and parasite taking a nibble at The Big Apple with corrupt earnings.
Conveniently, St. John the Martyr was next to the corner buildings. Wow, what a BIG MONSTROSITY can be put up! God love it!
Politicians are supposed to make sure these grotesque and soulless buildings aren't TOO tall, but landlords know how to get around those rules.
The landlord didn't renew leases, and was probably tormenting the tenants in the above apartments to either take a few bucks to go away or suffer the consequences. Next door...
Was there a Divine Light to shine down and save it?
NO.
I wanted to get over to the church and take some pictures when I first saw the green panels go up, and the workmen being termites and crawling all over scaffolds and the deteriorating face of the building.
Guess what. They work fast when they're well paid and BIGGER MONEY is involved. While Councilman (and thirsty Borough President wanna-be) Ben Kallos recently cried about how ugly scaffolds stay up in his neighborhood for years, BOOM.
St. John the Divine turned into a skeleton of rubble VERY quickly.
All over Manhattan, storefronts are empty. Yes, every now and then what used to be a video rental place will, after six months of being empty, turn into a DOG GROOMING SALON. Yes, what was once a bookstore will, after six months of being empty, turn into another NAIL SALON. But more often, the bodega, the restaurant, the curio shop...remains empty year after year. Greedhead landlords hope that a TARGET will want to buy, or an upscale MORTON WILLIAMS gourmet shop, but that doesn't happen that often. The real money is knocking the store AND the building down, and creating a glass-and-steel residence for the rich.
What's that Zevon line? "I wanna live on the Upper East Side and NEVER go down in the street." Yep. You don't have to, if you can order online and get everything delivered. Who needs stores? Those are for the hoi polloi, and they can go fuck off to Newark or Jersey City and get shot to pieces.
GOD HAS LEFT THE BUILDING.
Admittedly, these are not good times for the Christians who believe in Jesus, or for those who follow his religion, Judaism. Either way, those old-fashioned religions are losing followers, because people can see there are no angels in clouds, and they find it harder and harder to find excuses for the amount of suffering and stupidity in the world. It's also harder and harder to wonder why the hell GOD would care whether you wear a beanie or not, have two sets of dishes, eat or not eat meat on Friday, use or not use birth control, or forgive pedophile priests who should certainly know better than to commit sins of the flesh.
And so I return to the pedophile priest issue with a little anecdote.
At one time, I was the acquisitions editor for a publishing company. It was unusual, being on the other side of the fence, and being the one reading book proposals instead of writing them. The job had some perks, including bringing celebrities (who had written autobiographies) to book conventions everywhere from Miami to Phoenix.
Religious celebrity Cardinal O'Connor didn't submit a book proposal to me; he was mentioned in a sample chapter sent in by a novice author, Father Terry German.
Father Terry looked like someone from a 1940's movie, a little guy with a touch of Mickey Rooney and a bit of tv character actor John Fiedler to him. Wispy hair, ruddy complexion, he was perhaps 55 or 60. The elfin ex-priest was offering his insight into the problem of pedophile priests. He knew some of the perps, and most certainly counseled a lot of victims over the years.
His last residence was a room at St. Patrick's Cathedral. This was the domain of Cardinal O'Connor, who was probably the most famous Cardinal since Cardinal Spellman. Father Terry had been jotting down names and places and victims for some time, but being a true believer, he felt that the best thing to do would be to visit one of God's most powerful men on Earth. No, the Pope was too far away. But Cardinal O'Connor? The great Cardinal O'Connor?
Father Terry met with the Great Man, and explained, probably with his pale face reddening, and his voice climbing an octave, his outrage over pedophile priests. "It must be stopped! They must be removed!" He'd shown the same fiery outrage in meeting with me to discuss his book proposal.
The Cardinal looked skeptical. Wasn't Father Terry being a bit too dramatic? Did he have any evidence at all?
"I've been keeping notes," Father Terry explained. He told Cardinal O'Connor how the manuscript was in his little desk, and that it named names. He was hoping the good Cardinal would read the pages, and then take action.
Apparently, Cardinal O'Connor did just that; Father Terry discovered that his manuscript was missing. He hoped it meant that Cardinal O'Connor was going to take action on the men Father Terry wrote about.
Cardinal O'Connor took action against the man that wrote the book; Father Terry was ex-communicated and left homeless.
I'd thought of titling the book, "Losing My Religion," but the question was what kind of book could this be, with all the facts now missing? What he now had, was pages of accusations that could lead to a libel suit if published.
Since being ejected from St. Patrick's, Father Terry moved from place to place, staying a week with some good-hearted person, moving into a shelter, finding somebody else who could put him up for a while. One night, he showed up at the front door. How he got the address, I have no idea, but here was this little aging leprechaun with the high husky voice, suddenly dropping to his knees in front of me, his hands in a prayerful pose: "Can you let me have a peanut butter sandwich?"
He got a dinner, but ultimately, he didn't get a book deal.
Some years later, age 51 he tried (1994), to sue Pope John Paul II, Cardinal O'Connor and the Catholic Church for $120 million.
According to a piece in the Sun-Sentinal:
"German says he gave up all of his "worldly goods" when he took his vows in 1964 in exchange for a promise that the church would care for him until his death. The underlying assumption, of course, was that he would "live a life guided by the established principles" of the Catholic Church...
German says the church - by acquiescing to pervasive sexual and financial misconduct - broke its part of the covenant and he was left with no choice but to resign, which he did in 1989.
"The church wasn't enforcing its own rules, so he wasn't able to live according to the church's own rules. He had to live with people stealing and sexual alliances with small boys," said Carl Person, German's lawyer.
N"ow he is on street corners - foraging for clothes in New York City garbage bins or visiting soup kitchens. His unemployment benefits ran out a few weeks ago and he recently was evicted from his $324-a-month one-room apartment in Manhattan. He said he cannot keep a job because the church has branded him a troublemaker."
Obviously his lawsuit was not successful. I have a feeling he moved quite a few times before there was another blip of publicity for him. This happened in 2007, in Las Vegas. During the sex assault trial of Rev. George Chaanine, Father Terry spoke to a reporter for the Review-Journal:
"Terence German, a former Jesuit priest...said he wasn't surprised...
...The public doesn't "realize how much force the administrative priest has over any job," said German, a current Las Vegas resident who has observed the unfolding case. "You can be out of there if you don't do what the priest wants. ... People like that are just afraid."
There's a website, bishopaccountability.org that features a page on whistleblowers. Father Terry is on it, but there's no information on him past 2007.
I don't know if he's still in Las Vegas. I do know if he comes to Manhattan, he'll find less churches than ever. He can't go to St. John the Divine begging for a place to stay or a meal. A dozen other churches have shuttered, and as the real estate business booms, more of God's houses will be smashed flat.
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