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The PNCC in Springfield and Westfield, MA

From CBS3 Springfield: Roman Catholic Alternative

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield announced this summer that 19 Catholic Churches are closing leaving many fighting to keep their places of worship open or looking for another church. We found local Catholic churches that are not part of the Roman Catholic diocese but are Catholic and run their church democratically.

Laurie Costello, member of National Catholic Church, says, “We came from the Roman Catholic Church and we just weren’t happy with the way things ran.”

Laurie Costello and her family changed churches 5 years ago when the Springfield Diocese closed the Roman Catholic school she grew up in.

Costello says, “We did fight to keep it open and we came to find out that no matter what you were going to do it has been decided.”

But at St. Joseph’s National Catholic Church in Westfield parishioners claim that would never happen to their church because they don’t answer to the Springfield Diocese or the Vatican.

Costello says, “The parish won’t close unless we vote on it.”

Susan Teehan, a life-long member of St. Joseph’s says, “The church is a democratic church. We own the property, the buildings.”

Teehan’s grandparents helped found St. Joseph’s 80 years ago. She’s been going to mass here since she was a little girl.

Teehan says, “I think other people feel they come to Sunday Mass and they leave and they have no voice in the church whereas we feel as if we are an important part of the church.”

Father Sr. Joseph Soltysiak says, “The people of this church have very much a say in the affairs that go on.”

Father Sr. Joseph Soltysiak has been the priest at St. Joseph’s for more than 15 years. He says everyone gets one vote, including him. But it’s very much a Catholic church.

Father Sr. Soltysiak says, “We are a very high church. We are a Catholic Church. Our main method of worship is the Holy Mass Eucharist.”

The National Catholic Church was founded in Pennsylvania in the late 1800’s by Polish-Americans who broke away from the Roman Catholic Church partly because of disputes over who owned church property. Currently, there are 8 churches in Massachusetts and have 25-thousand members in the United States. It used to be called the Polish National Catholic Church until recently. They changed the name to welcome all people.

Father Sr. Soltysiak says, “The majority of people coming here and who become part of our family are people who left their Catholic faith and they can find it again here but not under the jurisdiction of Rome.”

That’s exactly what Laurie Costello and her family did and they found a new religious home.

There are differences between the National Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church. One of the most obvious is the priests can marry. Father Joe has several kids. One of them is also priest.

…

The National Catholic Churches in Western Mass are in Chicopee, Northampton, South Deerfield, Ware and Westfield.

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

Pułaski get’s U.S. Citizenship, Polish-Americans of Northampton soldier on

Just in time for the 230th anniversary of the death of Gen. Kazimierz Pułaski the U.S. Congress has voted to bestow posthumous U.S. Citizenship on Gen. Pułaski who died in the Battle of Savannah in the American Revolution.

Senate Joint Resolution 12, sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois along with 8 co-sponsors, was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate on March 2, 2009. The resolution was then referred to the House. House Joint Resolution 26: Proclaiming Casimir Pułaski to be an honorary citizen of the United States posthumously, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and co-sponsored by 39 members of the House passed on a voice vote of 422-0 on October 8, 2009. The resolution is now back before the Senate.

From Nowy Dziennik: Kazimierz Pułaski dostał amerykańskie obywatelstwo

Decyzją obu izb amerykański Kongres nadał pośmiertnie honorowe obywatelstwo USA Kazimierzowi Pułaskiemu, polskiemu bohaterowi amerykańskiej wojny o niepodległość.

Rezolucję w tej sprawie, wniesioną z inicjatywy demokratycznego kongresmana Dennisa Kucinicha przy silnym poparciu Polonii amerykańskiej, Kongres uchwalił jednomyślnie w środę. Wspierało ją 23 kongresmanów i senatorów z obu partii.

Standardy przyznawania honorowego obywatelstwa USA – podkreślali kongresmani w czasie debaty nad rezolucją – są bardzo wysokie. Otrzymały je dotąd jedynie tak wybitne osobistości jak markiz La Fayette, Winston Churchill i Matka Teresa z Kalkuty. Tylko siedmioro cudzoziemców posiada honorowe obywatelstwo amerykańskie.

“Kazimierz Pułaski był oddanym bojownikiem o wolność, który zasługuje na najwyższe uznanie, jakie Stany Zjednoczone mogą wyrazić imigrantowi i bohaterowi wojennemu” – powiedział kongresman Kucinich.

W dyskusji podkreślano także silne więzi sojusznicze łączące Polskę i Stany Zjednoczone.

Kazimierz Pułaski przybył do Ameryki w 1777 roku, aby walczyć u boku amerykańskich patriotów z wojskami monarchii brytyjskiej. W bitwie pod Brandywine 15 września 1777 r. uratował życie Jerzemu Waszyngtonowi za co dowódca sił rewolucyjnych awansował go na generała kawalerii.

Śmiertelnie ranny w bitwie pod Savannah w stanie Georgia w czasie szarży kawalerii 9 października 1779 r., zmarł w dwa dni później.

An the Polish-American of Northampton soldier on. From The Republican: It’s Pulaski Day in Northampton

NORTHAMPTON – Despite the imminent closing of a local place of worship, Polish Americans turned out in force Monday to celebrate their heritage and honor a national hero.

The 23rd annual Casimir Pulaski Day Parade kicked off as usual at St. John Cantius Church on Hawley Street, one of several Catholic churches in the city targeted for closing by the Diocese of Springfield.

Following the traditional Mass, celebrants filed out into the street to join the Northampton High School marching band, the 10th Massachusetts Volunteers Civil War reenactment troop, local politicians and Parade Marshal Edward Borucki for the parade down Main Street to Pulaski Park.

Borucki, a Pearl Harbor veteran, waved an American flag and softly blew a whistle as he rode along the route in a red convertible that matched his rose boutonniere. He was preceded by a float honoring U.S. submarine veterans and followed by a contingent of men, women and children in bright Polish native dress.

They were all there to honor Pulaski, a Polish nobleman who came to America in 1776 to help American forces overthrow the British. He was mortally wounded in Savannah in 1779 and died at the age of 34 on American soil.

Master of Ceremony J. P. Kwiecinski, an Easthampton city councilor and candidate for mayor, hailed Pulaski as he told the crowd it was the biggest he has ever seen at the event.

“Very few folks know that we would not have a country without General Pulaski,” he said.

State Rep. Stanley P. Rosenberg, D-Amherst, and Northampton Mayor Mary Clare Higgins read proclamations naming Monday “Casimir Pulaski Day” both in the state and the city.

Rosenberg, who has attended the event regularly, noted the closing of St. John Cantius but predicted that the Pulaski Day ceremonies will survive as the parish merges with others in the area.

“We hope with all our hearts that we will be back together next year at this parade and celebrate Polish heritage,” he said.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

What 500 dedicated people can do

From the Buffalo News: With spotlight on past and future, exhibit celebrates parish’s faith

Dozens of supporters of Corpus Christi Catholic Church turned out Thursday for a special look at an exhibit that celebrates the East Side church’s past and future.

The exhibit, housed in Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum on Porter Avenue, coincides with the successful completion of the parish’s $1 million preservation fund campaign.

—In a time of crisis, over the past four years, we were able to raise $1 million, which is extraordinary for a church on the East Side where you don’t really have too many people,— said the Rev. Anzelm Chalupka, pastor of Corpus Christi.

—Today’s event is thankfulness from us to the people who donated money towards this campaign.—

At its height, the overwhelmingly Polish-American parish had more than 10,000 members and is now down to about 500 very dedicated parishioners —” about 2 percent from the neighborhood and the rest who travel long distances to attend Mass, Chalupka said…

I applaud the work of the Pauline Fathers at Corpus Christi. You don’t need a big suburban parish of 10,000 well healed people to be successful, you need strong hands and strong hearts. What our forefathers did can still be done. May their work be blessed.

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political,

A Pole in the E.U.

From the NY Times: For Poland, a Milestone in Choice for European Post

The job brings no real power and no extra pay. But the election Tuesday of a new president of the European Parliament was a significant moment for the 27-nation European Union, and certainly for Poland.

Jerzy Buzek, a former center-right prime minister of Poland, was elected president of the assembly with 555 votes out of 713 votes cast, becoming the first politician from an Eastern European country to hold one of the bloc’s high-profile posts.

—Once upon a time,— Mr. Buzek told the Parliament on Tuesday, —I hoped to be a part of the Polish Parliament in a free Poland. Today I have become the president of the European Parliament —” something I could never have dreamed of.—

Never mind that the position is largely ceremonial. It carries prestige, a few perks and a lot of symbolism, and Warsaw wanted it badly.

The vote Tuesday was the culmination of months of lobbying by the Polish government, which wants to silence those who argue that the former Communist nations are underrepresented in Europe’s decision making.

Before the vote, Eugeniusz Smolar, senior fellow of the Center for International Relations, a research institute in Warsaw, said that the election of Mr. Buzek would —be symbolic to many people in Central and Eastern Europe of an evenhanded approach —” and that the old-boy network ceases to be in place.—

Poland’s minister for Europe, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, said, —The fact that Buzek can become the president of the European Parliament is proof that enlargement of the E.U. has been a resounding success.—

Even some political opponents agree, and before voting, deputies from the Green Party had promised to back Mr. Buzek, not because they agreed with his center-right politics, but to send an upbeat political signal as part of the Parliament, which has grown in power even as turnout for elections has declined. Only 43 percent of eligible voters participated in elections to the assembly last month.

As president, Mr. Buzek will serve as chairman of parliamentary sessions. The job also involves representing the Parliament at summit meetings of European Union leaders and international events. All official travel is paid, and the president has the V.I.P. trappings of an international leader. The president also has a cabinet, which totals 39 members, including support staff and advisers.

…

Mr. Buzek, 69, is expected to bring to the post a new focus on Europe’s eastern neighbors, including Russia. Certainly his career contrasts sharply with that of his predecessor, Hans Gert Pí¶ttering of Germany, who has been a member of the European Parliament since 1979 —” a time when Mr. Buzek, then an academic and chemical engineer in Communist Poland, was about to join Solidarity, the movement that helped overthrow the government.

Born in the border region of Silesia, which at the time was a German-occupied part of Czechoslovak territory, he is a Protestant in a country where Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion.

After coming to power in 1997, Mr. Buzek became Poland’s first post-Communist prime minister to serve a full four-year term of office, enacting a series of domestic reforms.

Mr. Dowgielewicz, a political ally, said Mr. Buzek has a good domestic profile: —He is seen in Poland as someone who worked humbly in the European Parliament even though he is a former prime minister. Instead of searching out the TV cameras he was working hard within the Parliament.—…

Current Events, , , , ,

A generation defined

From the Buffalo News (an older story): France honors WWII hero: Veteran took part in Normandy battle which is an ode to the sons and daughters of immigrants. Men like Mr. Pawlik were part of a great generation, not in the marketing sense of the term, but in the way that service, honor, and sacrifice were part of their very being. It came from family, neighborhood, and Church.

Blood shed during World War II never is far from Joseph E. Pawlik’s mind.

In addition to scrapbook photos, medals and recordings of the war stories he once told, a piece of shrapnel still lodged near his spine serves as a reminder.

Pawlik, now 89, was struck by artillery fire in 1944, during the invasion of Normandy at the Battle of Merderet River.

—He carries with him an all-too-difficult memory of his service that day,— said Assemblyman Robin Schimminger, D-Kenmore.

Monday afternoon, with small American flags on the laps of many in a room at Buffalo’s Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Pawlik was named chevalier —” the equivalent of —knight— in English —” of the Legion of Honor by the French government for his contribution to France’s liberation during World War II.

The honor, dating back to 1802 under Napoleon, was conferred April 16 in a decree by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

—Today, you are our hero,— said Pascal Soares, honorary consul of France in Buffalo, as he presented Pawlik the honor.

As a young man in Buffalo’s Black Rock neighborhood, Pawlik was eager to assist his country at war. He enlisted as a paratrooper and served as a technical sergeant.

Pawlik’s selfless nature would carry him through the war.

Three months after receiving a Purple Heart as a result of fighting at Merderet River, Pawlik was back in the front lines.

He didn’t want to leave the troops,— his daughter Terry Hans explained. —They needed him.—

In 1945, on a bitter winter day at Dead Man’s Ridge in Belgium, no one needed Pawlik more than his sergeant, who was wounded. As others took safety in their foxhole, Pawlik left his comfort zone to help his comrade to safety.

…

James Benz, a Vietnam veteran, was on hand as his friend was honored. —I’m very proud,— Benz, 61, said of Pawlik. —He’s like another father to me.—

Sto Lat! Mr. Pawlik, Sto Lat!

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

Capturing the Remembering

From Buffalo’s ArtVoice: Before All Memory Is Lost: The Polish story of survival in Buffalo after Hitler and Stalin. The article is enhanced with wonderful photographs which capture more than history , but loss, bravery, and endurance.

Katyn by Jozef Slawinski

Deep in a dark recess in Buffalo’s City Hall is a terrifying piece of art made by the same Polish exile who created the Calasanctius mural. Jozef Slawinski’s hammered-copper bas-relief commemorates the place, the event, the process, the unimaginable suffering that the Poles know as Katyn.

Everybody has heard of Picasso’s Guernica, that terrifying huge canvas at a Madrid museum that portrays the German bombing of a Basque village during the Spanish Civil War. Everybody in the world should know of Slawinski’s abstract piece on the Soviet massacre of more than 16,000 Polish officers, elected officials, nobles, and intellectuals in the Katyn forest during World War II.

Had it not been for the late mayor Jimmy Griffin making a political gesture to Buffalo Poles, then not even Buffalo would know about Katyn.

It’s as if history has been privatized. Just as Slawinski’s Katyn is hidden away in an alcove few visit, the stories of a generation of as many as 20,000 immigrants to Buffalo have never become known beyond the whispered conversations of survivors. On the border between Buffalo and Cheektowaga, there are hundreds of stone monuments to members of the Polish army-in-exile who came to America, specifically to Buffalo, and who lived out the remainder of their lives in the hope of returning to their homeland, but while here created a complex legacy that literally reshaped our collective landscape.

Andy Golebiowski and a small group of volunteers formed the Polish Legacy Project to try to gather up some of the stories of the Polish DPs. DPs were the —displaced persons— who survived the German death camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald, where so many of their Jewish and Christian countrymen were murdered. The DPs were also the survivors of the German forced-labor camps and farm-labor slavery, people who then found themselves stranded in Allied zones at war’s end in 1945. The DPs were also thousands of Polish military men, like the legions who fought in Italy, who knew that Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt had decided the fate of their country at the Yalta conference in 1945—”which was to leave Poland in the Soviet sphere of influence, and leave them in need of a place to go that wasn’t going to be ruled by the Russians who had also slaughtered, deported, or brutalized their countrymen.

…

Golebiowski’s mother can still tell how she came to America. His father, a prisoner of war who was forced to work on German farms, told his own harrowing stories, but they died with him in 1999. Many of the people who came to Buffalo have died, taking their stories with them. In the Saint Stanislaus Cemetery on Pine Ridge Road, gravestones in a special military section are marked with the names of regiments and the briefest of notes about war-time experiences. These notes form a succinct code of service, and of suffering. —Sibyr,— say many of them, a brief reference to the horrors of young men and women who were deported to Siberia. —Auschwitz— is carved into several of these crosses, reminding us that three million Christian Poles died during the same period that three million Jewish Poles were murdered. —Monte Cassino— is on several, a note about the Poles’ unheralded capture of Sicily before the armies of Patton and Montgomery won glory there.

The world the Poles made here

They began arriving after 1948, when President Harry Truman signed a special displaced persons immigration bill, which he criticized for being so insufficient a gesture that he called it —inhumane.— Americans today can be forgiven for having forgotten how immense the destruction of World War II was—”because that cataclysm ended 65 years ago, and since then we have seen Vietnam, Central America, the Rwanda genocide, the Bosnian massacres, Iraq, and more.

The story that will unfold in the Polish Legacy Project’s conference October 3 and 4 here in Buffalo, though, is partly about the local impact of the largest forced migration in history.

Everybody more or less knows about our great 19th-century immigrant stories. Joey Giambra recently made the documentary La Terra Promessa, about the Sicilian story. Irish-Americans succeeded, after many years, in erecting a memorial to the Irish famine of the 1840s, in which hundreds of thousands died, and which led to the mass exodus of the Gaeltacht. There has even been a film made of the pre-1920s Polish migration.

But the thousands of Poles who found refuge here after World War II are a different, separate, largely untold story.

…

The urgent task

The children of the DPs are themselves now in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. If the DPs themselves are still alive, there is not much time in which to do the job of —rescue— or —salvage— collecting.

Thus the urgency of the conference. Strolling the rows of crosses at the Polish Veterans’ Plot at St. Stan’s Cemetery, one senses the urgency-cognizant of the fact that in five years, when the 75th anniversary of WWII is commemorated, there may be no one left who can give a firsthand account of life then.

The Polish Legacy Project’s mission is to record and to share the untold stories before they join all the other undocumented stories at the cemetery. The PLP is fighting against the clock, trying to make up for 60 years of silence. Unlike the stories of the Holocaust, these stories of survival, suffering and heroism largely do not exist in the English language…

Perspective,

The world, Europe, Chrstianity, and the creation of greatness

A recommended read from The Brussels Journal: Europe and Human Accomplishment with salient points about freedom, individualism, and Christianity. It’s a lengthy piece but worth the read. An excerpt follows:

…

Western culture has by and large enjoyed the benefits of greater political freedom and more individualism as opposed to the common emphasis on consensus and traditionalism. Purpose and autonomy are intertwined with another defining cultural characteristic of European civilization, individualism…

Christianity played an important part in this, too. As Murray writes, —It was a theology that empowered the individual acting as an individual as no other philosophy or religion had ever done before. The potentially revolutionary message was realized more completely in one part of Christendom, the Catholic West, than in the Orthodox East…

The Enlightenment’s passionate commitment to reason was close to religious, yet after Freud, Nietzsche and others with similar messages, the belief in man as a rational being took a body blow. It became fashionable in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century to see humans as unwittingly acting out neuroses and subconscious drives. God was mostly dead among the European creative elites at this time. Such beliefs undermined the belief of the creative elites that their lives had purpose or that their talents could be efficacious. Murray believes that the twentieth century witnessed a decline in per capita accomplishment, as intellectuals rejected religion. He expects that almost no art from the second half of this century will be remembered 200 years from now. It’s a challenge for democratic societies to keep up standards of excellence when there is an obsession with making everyone equal. He has noticed that young Europeans no longer take pride in their scientific and artistic legacy; attempts to point this out to them will typically be met with pessimism and a sense that European civilization is evil and cursed. The decline of accomplishment in Europe, once the homeland par excellence of geniuses, was in all likelihood initially caused by loss of self-confidence and a sense of purpose.

Maybe belief in a higher purpose is necessary for the creation of true greatness. Achievements that outlast the lifespan of a single human being are generated out of respect for something greater than the individual. Many Europeans no longer experience themselves as part of a wider community with a past worth preserving and a future worth fighting for, which is perhaps why they see no point in reproducing themselves. Europe in the past believed in itself, its culture, its nations and above all its religion and produced Michelangelo, Descartes and Newton. Europe at the turn of the twenty-first century believes in virtually nothing of lasting value and so produces virtually nothing of lasting value. It remains to be seen whether this trend can be reversed.

Christian Witness, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

The National Church model versus Ostpolitik

Bishop Hodur strongly advanced the idea of the National Church model (really no different than the Orthodox model – the local bishop with his clergy and people around the Holy Eucharist represents the fullness of the Church). Among the reasons for this advocacy was Bishop Hodur’s knowledge and experience of the Polish Church’s struggles. Real world experience showed that the good of the local Church was often secondary to the political machinations of the Bishop of Rome and the Vatican bureaucracy.

Hillary White (thanks to the Young Fogey for the links) has two articles that explore the Vatican’s betrayal of local Church leaders, particularly Cardinals Mindszenty and Beran. The Wikipedia article on the Vatican’s “Ostpolitik” refers to the phenonena as an invention of Paul VI. In fact it is a policy that has been entrenched in the Vatican for centuries. Poland was betrayed numerous timesNorman Davies, God’s Playground, a History of Poland: 1795 to the present, Chapter 7, pages 207-225 and Georg Brandes, Poland: a study of the land, people, and literature page 251 for examples. in the interest of “global” politics.

Read Church of Traitors and Church of Traitors, Part II. The telling lines from Part II:

Casaroli continues,

…

“We opted for negotiations, because we didn’t know how long those regimes would last, and in the meantime we had a moral obligation to insure that the Church had priests, that the faithful could receive the Eucharist and go to Confession. If we lost the hierarchical institution, we would lose the Church…”

Now, this is interesting, because I have known some priests who were underground in Soviet bloc countries and their stories are illustrative. Had the Vatican supported their efforts, would the Faith have died or flourished? Would the Church have been “lost” as Casaroli said? Hard to say at this distance in time.

But from what I have been told, the Church was flourishing. And one of my informants was a Slovak priest who was ordained secretly in Czechoslovakia, one of the countries that Casaroli described as a “hardline” state in which the Church would have “died out” without his “careful step-by-step diplomacy”.

The difference, perhaps between men like Casaroli in the Vatican and the men actually baptising and marrying and saying Mass in secret in these countries was that the latter knew and accepted the possibility of martyrdom. It seems that Casaroli and his popes rejected that possibility utterly and were more interested in creating comforts, a typical Novusordoist goal.

I wonder, who bore true witness to the faith, who stood on the side of God’s politics? In my book it was the local Church, those who knew the situation on ground, the evils of the communist system, the violence and selfishness of its leaders, and who nevertheless chose to face the consequences of witness to the faith. As Tertullian wrote: The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.

Cardinal Mindszenty on trial

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Poland To Buffalo Through WWII: Untold Stories Come Alive

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the start of WWII. It all began with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Living among us in Western New York are civilian and military survivors of the war who endured Nazi and Soviet labor and concentration camps as well as battles on many fronts. These eyewitnesses to the dramatic historical events of the 20th century have lived quietly in WNY for 60+ years without telling their story to the wider community.

The Polish Legacy Project was formed by a group of people whose aim is to capture the stories of these survivors while they are still among us. Our first major event will be a conference held October 3-4 in Buffalo. The title of the conference is: “Poland To Buffalo Through WWII: Untold Stories Come Alive.”

Baracks Brochure - Poland To Buffalo Through WWII: Untold Stories Come Alive

The conference will allow Polish survivors of WWII who have settled in the United States to share their stories of struggle and survival with the wider community. This unique gathering will be the first large-scale opportunity for the community at large to become acquainted with these untold stories of wartime survival and immigration to America in the English language.

On October 3, a panel of survivors will speak about their experiences, a keynote speaker from Montreal will give a presentation on “The Childrens’ Odyssey” to America, a background will be given on Poland in WWII and opportunities for one-on-one interviews with survivors will be available.

On October 4, the day will begin with a Remembrance Mass, followed by a Reunion of Families who settled in America after the war and a film entitled “Exiles” about a daughter’s quest to learn her mother’s wartime story. Opportunities to share photos, buy books and get assistance with research will be available.

A full program and registration form can be found here [pdf]. In order to obtain a discount on the registration fees, please register by September 15. Admission for WWII survivors is free.

The conference is being organized in collaboration with the Polish American Congress, WNY Division, The City of Buffalo through the office of City Council President David Franczyk and the Permanent Chair of Polish Culture at Canisius College. WNED-TV is the Media Sponsor for the event.

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