A Priest Among The Temple Of The Secular

Continuing with some off the beaten path New York coverage, we come to Time's Square.  A little bit on the beaten path, you might say?  Maybe if one focuses entirely on the neon signs, huge advertisements, people lining up in restaurants and shops to spend, spend, spend...  But among the noise and glitter, right in front of everything and everyone stands a statue of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Francis P. Duffy.

Like your author, he was born in Canada, moved to the United States to live there, and responded to a divine call to become a priest in the Roman Church.

He felt very passionately about his adopted homeland and served as a military chaplain for her.  He proved himself every bit as much the leader on the battlefield that he was in a parish or seminary and was regarded highly in this respect by his Irish-American regiment.  Back home in New York he was among the most influential speakers in the public sphere to convince the country that Irish-Americans and other Catholic Americans could be and indeed were patriots and in love with their country, a rather uphill battle for anyone to fight until well into the 20th century.

Times Square, like so much of New York, has been paved over and illuminated to attract tourists, commerce, and perhaps help the city get rid of the memory of its difficult rise to global prominence.  The prosperity and immensity of today's New York, however, has been built on a foundation of racial and cultural conflict, environmental destruction, and the illumination of history.  The arduous and often bloody struggle to help define American liberty and purpose saw New York burned and turned into a pit of people against people in segregated bastions of neighborhoods.  Men and women like Father Duffy were there as American consciousness awakened here in the heart of her historical imagination and memory.

He is honored by a statue that no one looks at (not a single person took even a passing glance in the ten minutes that I stood near it just to see if anyone cared) in the northern part of a square that bears his name.  In some ways we are like a Rome of Late Antiquity, too concerned about the politics of the moment to pay any attention to the statues in our forums that record our past, even while we continue to build more monuments to the glory of our people.

If ever you find yourself among some great wonder of the human world, do not be afraid to question where the foundation lies for what you stand upon and have come to appreciate!