Thread by @TheFourMarks

2nd Sunday of Lent
Feast of St Patrick;
of St Joseph of Arimathea;
of Bl John Sarkander

St Patrick Catholic Church (Old St Pat’s), West Loop, Chicago, circa 1850s-60s

The Diocese of Chicago established St Patrick parish to serve Irish immigrants in 1846. St Patrick’s current church dates to 1856. “Old St Pat’s” is Chicago’s oldest church & oldest public building. It’s one of few to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

1872 Chicago Daily Tribune article on the dedication of St Patrick’s new altar

St Patrick’s is considered the mother church of all Irish parishes in Chicago

Undated photo of the original sanctuary & altars

In 1885, St Patrick’s topped its twin towers with octagonal spires representing the Eastern & Western churches. 2018 photo.

Old St Pat’s rectory with the church in the background, Chicago, 1910 postcard

From 1912-1922, St Patrick’s interior underwent redecoration in the Celtic Revival style, including elaborate stenciling & new stained-glass windows. But the neighborhood, close to the Chicago River & railroads, had become more industrial.

Undated photo of sanctuary, Lent?

Old St Pat’s, West Loop, Chicago, 1931

Old St Pat’s declined throughout the mid 20th century in tandem with urban decay in Chicago’s city center. The parish escaped destruction in the 1950s when Interstate 94/IL Rt 194 was trenched immediately west of the rectory.

Old St Pat’s in 1969. Chicago's West Loop was a down-and-out neighborhood.

In 1983, St Patrick’s needed a new pastor. 2 young priests set their sights on seizing the Chicago parish to implement their radical vision of an “urban church.”

Fr Jack Wall & Fr John Cusick would face no opposition: St Pat's had only 4 registered parishioners.

Undated photo

Wall & Cusick, joined by Wall’s sister (who sported a degree in Communications), choose a demographic, strategized their attack, & went in for the kill. The target for their "urban church" revolution? Youth.

The trio keenly recognized & exploited a massive cultural shift that occurred in America during the 1970s: The idea that one’s highest duty is to one’s self; that it is OK, virtuous & moral even, to be selfish.

The new St Patrick’s would reorient the Catholic’s worship of God away from Him & towards the worship of man - the autonomous, self-defining, self-expressive individual.

Undated (preconciliar?) photo of sanctuary. Some decorative elements visible in earlier photos now missing.

The “urban church” Wall & Cusick concocted would seek to bring Jesus into a relationship with man, on man’s terms, rather than bring man into a relationship with Jesus. It was just what young people in the 80s wanted.

They knew that while the culture’s elevation of the autonomous, self-defining, self-expressive individual provided an illusion of freedom, it made man isolated, greedy, & more open to manipulation. Their “urban church” would salve man’s loneliness by manufacturing “community.”

By pandering to man’s feelings & not his intellect, by letting man chose what to believe, by offering man participation in “social justice” programs to reinforce & express his self-identity as “a good person,” Wall & Cusick yielded spectacular success with youth. Old St Pats grew

Within a decade, Old St Pat’s was flush with parishioners & cash. Wall set about remaking the House of God into a House of Man with a $6.5M "renovation." The 1872 altars? Gone. New wavy, curving pews ...resembling the Serpent... now devour the laity.

Fr Wall stepped down in 2007 & handpicked his successor, Fr Tom Hurley, ordained in 1993, to continue the revolution. The West Loop is now a gentrified neighborhood of condos & offices.

Among Old St Pat’s various "outreach ministries" is Gay+ ("gay positive," not "gay plus" -it's a play on HIV+) for homosexuals & other sexual deviants.

Gay+ has its own page on Old St Pat's website. The phrase “All are welcome” appears on group's page FIVE times. The words chastity, purity, virtue, holiness, sin, & intrinsically disordered? ZERO.
oldstpats.org/gay-plus/

A 2015 TV documentary on Old St Pat's "renaissance" interviewed a member of the parish's sodomy sodality. He declared, "We really believe that being part of the Church can influence change much more than being outside of the Church.” Infiltrate & subvert.

In 2018, @Church_Militant reported that the leader of Old St Pat's sodomy sodality announced his plans to enter into a blasphemous “marriage” to another man
churchmilitant.com/news/article/c…

Beyond its liberal, Catholic-in-name-only reputation, Old St Pat’s is also known for throwing its “world’s largest block party” every summer since the 80s. But don’t expect an authentically Catholic experience, reinforcing Catholic identity. He's not holding up a rosary...

For $10 admission, Old St Pats offers just another secular Chicago summer street festival with secular music. Young people show up because they can drink in public. The parish claims over the years, 100 couples met & married thanks to its block party.

The list of corporate sponsors for Old St Pat’s block party includes companies that openly promote homosexuality, some even entering their own floats in Chicago’s “gay pride parade.”

If u go to Old St Pat's block party, don't expect to spot Fr Hurley too easily. Rather than witness to the Faith & the priesthood before young Chicagoans by wearing a cassock, or even a collar, he goes for a more casual, incognito, secular look

Modern sacramental life at Old St Pat’s includes 7 Sunday masses for its 3,000 households, most of them “deliberate” parishioners who commute from throughout the archdiocese.

Regular confession times at Old St Pat's in Chicago are limited to a 25 minute window, once a week on Friday mornings, when most parishioners are at work. (The autonomous, self-defining, self-expressive man is sinless.)

We would not contest that many of Old St Pat’s parishioners, & perhaps even its priests, have performed admirable works of charity in the last 4 decades. “So faith also, if it have not works, is dead in itself.”

But what would St Patrick (the actual saint) think of affirming man in his sin, nurturing selfish individualism, & putting on the drag show that is moralistic therapeutic deism masquerading as “Catholicism” at his namesake parish in Chicago?

St Patrick's Academy, Near West Side, Chicago, undated postcard.

The Sisters of Mercy established the academy in 1883. It closed in 1963.

St Patrick High School, Belmont Central, Chicago

Founded by the Christian Brothers in 1861 & originally located near Old St Pat’s in the West Loop, it relocated to the northwest side in 1953. Photo from 1970.

End of thread. St Patrick, pray for us!