America's Cathedral

 

In our local liturgical calendar, today is celebrated as the feast of the Anniversary of the Dedication of New York's Saint Patrick's Cathedral, perhaps the most famous and most visited Catholic cathedral in the United States. New Yorkers, famously given to unseemly grandiosity about our city, sometimes speak of Saint Patrick’s as "America’s Cathedral" or sometimes even “America’s Parish Church.” However overdone such language sometimes sounds, it is certainly true that Saint Patrick’s is one of the most recognized cathedrals in the country, regularly visited by resident New Yorkers, and a major tourist site to which flock visitors - Catholics and non-Catholics both - from all over the world.

When the Diocese of New York was created in 1808, it still had only one Catholic church, Saint Peter's on Barclay Street, dedicated in 1786. Thanks to the Napoleonic Wars, New York's first bishop never made it across the Atlantic. So, it was Boston's Bishop John Cheverus who dedicated the first Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street in 1815. It was New York's fourth bishop (and first archbishop), John Hughes, the same Bishop who approved the founding of the Paulist Fathers and established this parish in 1858, who also began the construction of our present cathedral on 5th Avenue. His intention was "to erect a cathedral in the city of New York that may be worthy of our increasing numbers, intelligence and wealth as a religious community" and "a public architectural monument of the present and prospective greatness of this metropolis of the American continent." Saint Patrick's was formally opened by Hughes' successor, John Cardinal McCloskey, in 1879, and was finally consecrated by Archbishop John Cardinal Farley on October 5, 1910.

According to archdiocesan historian Thomas Shelley, in those early years "two parishes set the standard for the rest of the diocese, the new cathedral and the Paulist Church of St. Paul the Apostle." 

I know I have said this before, but it probably bears repeating. When we celebrate the dedication of a church, we obviously celebrate a place, a very special and sacred place set apart unlike any other. We also celebrate a people, the people the place represents. And we celebrate a relationship, the community connection that binds the people together.

All churches are special places, of course. Obviously, God cannot be confined to any one place. Still, as human beings, we can only operate in space and time, which is why God himself became human – in a particular place and at a particular time in human history. So, it’s no surprise that, through the ages, God has continued to inspire his people to set aside special places in which to assemble to worship him. So too Archbishop Hughes and his successors planned and built and consecrated New York's great Cathedral, a gloriously neo-gothic imitation of the Cathedral of Cologne, Germany, located (like its model) at the heart of a great city center. The Cologne Cathedral is big and grand and illustrates the legacy of the Old World of Christendom. Its American imitator is likewise big and grand and signifies the aspirations of the New World.

 

But, when we commemorate the dedication of a church, we also celebrate the people the place represents. As New York's principal church, Saint Patrick's is, in a sense, the church of everyone in this city. and, since this is a city of and for the entire world, it is a church for everyone from far and near. It is no accident that one and the same name, “Church,” is used for both the people who continue Christ’s presence in the world and the place where they assemble to experience his presence most directly, by proclaiming his word and celebrating his sacrament.

 

And, when we commemorate the dedication of a church, and especially when we celebrate that of a cathedral church, we also celebrate the relationship, the community connection, that binds its people together. As the site of the cathedra, the chair from which the bishop exercises his teaching office and pastoral power within the local church, a cathedral is a sign of the unity of believers in the one faith, which the bishop proclaims and represents, which is why having a proper cathedral is so important in the life of a local church.

 

We need all three. We need places where we can be Church. We need to be a people who aspire to be Church and to build the Church in our city and our world. And we need the relationships with one another, the institutional and community connections, that can make this possible.

 

Homily for the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Metropolitan Cathedral, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, October 5, 2026.