Raleigh RC Cathedral Buys Stained Glass at Fire Sale Prices From Philadelphia Temple Closed / Tossed Aside in Inner City

Architectural Rendering - New RC Raleigh Cathedral

$50 million in Pledges for the new RC Raleigh Cathedral. Stained glass recycled out of a dead Harrowgate Kensington Church, a true city on a hill structure in its day amidst the factories of Kensington. They let the roof go for years, decades. The factories closed, the whites ran to the burbs and the ‘po folks, the feared blacks and Hispanics have moved in to compete with the majority numbers in the old Irish neighborhood.

The ultimate decline of Ascension Parish took it final hits while Cardinal Rigali mismanaged everything in sight while he slept mostly in Rome with Philly as his second or third home. AD of Philadelphia obsessed on Abortion (never mind Birth Control) since Humane Vitae instead of race relations or anything remotely Christian led in part in my opinion to a racially divided Philadelphia to this day.

Rigali still exists, unpunished,  as a house guest of the Bishop of Knoxville Tennessee, a “protégé” who is also building some sort of hundred million dollar Cathedral in the burbs where the white Catholic money is these days.

Cathedral building and pledges of millions of dollars is the new pet project of American Bishops to show financial power and laundering abilities and to move onto a RNC approved red hat appointment.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/01/01/2578566/raleigh-cathedral-will-have-stained.html

RALEIGH — The Catholic Diocese of Raleigh is still months away from breaking ground on its new cathedral off Western Boulevard, but already it has bought the windows. 

 Forty-two stained-glass windows are being removed from a church in Philadelphia and painstakingly restored so they can be installed in Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh. The 85-year-old windows from Ascension of Our Lord Catholic Church tell the story of Jesus’ life, from the angel’s visit to Mary to the resurrection and ascension, in vivid colored glass held together by lead. 

 Ascension of Our Lord closed Oct. 1, one of countless once-thriving churches and synagogues in the Midwest and Northeast whose congregations have shrunk as members move to the suburbs or beyond. Their buildings are often filled with ornate windows, statues, carved woodwork and other works of art that sometimes find new homes in the growing churches of the South.

Deceased Ascension Church Philadelphia -  Photo by: Bradley Maule

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Peace - Stained Glass (B&W Photo) - Artist Nicola D'Ascenzo - Trenton Court House - 1905

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Medieval Stained Glass - St. Michael's Cathedral Coventry UK

I ran into one of those strange finds in life.  One thing led to another researching one thing on the net and then ran into a remarkable find of Medieval stained glass, over five years hundred years old, that had been taken out of Coventry Cathedral in England for protection at the beginning of WWII and before the infamous German fire bombing of Coventry in November 1940 and the destruction of St. Michael’s Cathedral as part of the destruction in the city and loss of life there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Cathedral

The glass by medieval glazier John Thornton has been in a vault since.  The collection is of course not all the stain glass of the lost church.  A small part of a whole, the oldest and perhaps the best in terms of art was saved.  Salvation and now resurrection.

A recent need to raise a million pounds for emergency repairs on the still standing memorial shell of the old cathedral has arisen and the glass is to be exhibited to help raise needed cash.  They built a modern cathedral next to the lost one.  A mixing of the new with the old gives a certain continuity to the St. Michael community.

http://www.digitalhen.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-15694422

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Father Mychal Judge O.F.M. – Patron Saint of 911

(September 11th Memorial window – St Francis of Assisi Church NYC - -Father Judge depicted, lower right quadrant – click on above image to enlarge)

Memories Of Sept. 11's First Recorded Casualty Endure

“…Another retired fireman, Jimmy Boyle, agrees that Father Mychal was one of the boys — but not when he was performing religious ceremonies.

"He could go into the firehouse, have a cup of coffee, have a meal, listen to all the talk, watch the ballgame, hear your problems, talk about anything you want," Boyle says. "But when he said Mass in the firehouse, I always felt when he got to the Eucharist, he just transformed himself. He became like Christ. He was just so pious."

Boyle says in any kind of emergency, Mychal Judge was a first responder. He rushed to the crash site of TWA Flight 800; to countless buildings on fire; and to hospital burn units — which is where Vina Drennan met him, in March 1994.

Drennan's husband had been severely burned the night before. Judge sat with her virtually every day, sometimes for hours, while her husband lingered.

"In 40 days he was always there," she recalls. "And when he prayed over John's burned body, you felt you had a chance that God would listen, anyway. You felt that the words were just flying right up."

For years after her husband died, Judge called just about every day. Drennan wasn't alone. Each night, the priest would have maybe 30 messages on his phone, which he'd return before going to sleep.

"Everybody called him!" Drennan says, laughing. "You know, 'Can you baptize my baby, can you do this,' and I'd say to him, 'Mychal, Jesus didn't have an answering machine! Just disconnect it!'"…--“

(Father Mychal Judge, front, FDNY Chaplain, 1933-2001, killed in the line of duty to his fellow man.)

“--"His mother always reminded him, 'You can't go wrong with a song. When you don't know what to do, sing,'" Fay says.

Judge was famous for his rendition of the murder ballad, "Frankie and Johnny," which he sang at birthday parties. He once sang "God Bless America" at the funeral of a gay man in the middle of the AIDS epidemic.--“