Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Cathedral of New York A Wander By..

A Dull Facade
This week-end Eddie and I were wandering up from Chinatown to Washington Square (the NYU Bookstore to be exact) - and we passed a church and decided to go in.
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Turns out it is the original New York Catholic Cathedral.  Here is the (fascinating) Wikipedia entry.
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Apparently the "Know Nothings" (a cross between a political movement and a kind of KKK) attacked the church in an anti-catholic / anti-immigrant rage.  The church had to be defended by gunfire.
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Crazy.  Actually the wikipeida entry is interesting.  Now I know Wikipedia isn't always correct, but the inside of the church mentions the incident as well, so I tend to believe it happened.
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Anyway, here are the pictures we took.
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Beautiful Interior
Here is the story from Wikipedia.....
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In 1836, the cathedral was the subject of an attempted sack after tensions between Irish Catholics and anti-Catholic Know-Nothing nativists led to a number of riots and other physical confrontations. The situation worsened when a brain-injured young woman, Maria Monk, wrote a book telling her "true" story – a Protestant girl who converted to Catholicism, and was then forced by nuns to have sex with priests, with the resulting children being baptized then killed horribly. Despite the book being debunked by a mildly anti-Catholic magazine editor, nativist anger at the story resulted in a decision to attack the cathedral.[9] Loopholes were cut in the church's outer walls, which had just recently been built, and the building was defended from the rioters with muskets.[2][9] Afterwards, the Ancient Order of Hibernians established its headquarters across the street from the church