St. Patrick’s Feast Day Has Been Hijacked–Don’t Give Away the Parade, Too!

TODAY IS ST. PATRICK’S DAY, and in New York City, there’s going to be some kind of a parade or something.

I’m kidding.  Everybody knows that America’s largest, oldest and most famous St. Patrick’s Day Parade takes place on March 17 in New York City.  

Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day–or so they say!–and for 253 years, New Yorkers have been celebrating the feast of the Catholic saint by marching a mile and a half down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.  This year, an estimated 150,000 marchers will take to the streets to celebrate.

BUT CELEBRATE WHAT?

In recent years, the St. Patrick’s Day parade has become the focus of heated debate in the culture wars.  For many years, the parade banned participating groups from displaying banners identifying their sexuality.  However, in September 2014, the organizers of the parade announced their decision to lift the ban on gay groups, as they preferred to keep the parade non-political and the ban was, they believed, having the opposite effect.

In 2014, Monsignor Charles Pope, blogger for the Archdiocese of Washington, posted what could only be called a scathing indictment of New York’s St. Paddy’s Day Parade.  The post was later removed, but Father John Zuhlsdorf (Fr. Z) captured a few paragraphs of the original and reposted this:

Now the St. Patrick’s Parade is becoming of parade of disorder, chaos, and fake unity. Let’s be honest: St. Patrick’s Day nationally has become a disgraceful display of drunkenness and foolishness in the middle of Lent that more often embarrasses the memory of Patrick than honors it.

In New York City in particular, the “parade” is devolving into a farcical and hateful ridicule of the faith that St. Patrick preached.

It’s time to cancel the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the Al Smith Dinner and all the other “Catholic” traditions that have been hijacked by the world. Better for Catholics to enter their churches and get down on their knees on St. Patrick’s Day to pray in reparation for the foolishness, and to pray for this confused world to return to its senses. Let’s do adoration and pray the rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet unceasingly for this poor old world.

And the hot button item which is inflaming the blogosphere this year is whether or not homosexual groups should be permitted to march in the parade.

PARADE-WATCHERS ON THE RIGHT ARE OFFENDED that their parade–which celebrates a Catholic saint, after all!–should be invaded by activists who espouse un-Christian causes.  And they point to the antics of same-sex “marriage” supporters in other parades as classic examples of debauchery.  In San Francisco, for example, the gay pride parade is replete with sexual innuendo, nudity and profanity.

ON THE OTHER HAND, HOMOSEXUAL GROUPS seek greater inclusion in society, and being ostracized from their city’s most celebrated parade smacks of injustice.

So in 2015, the Parade Committee approved the application of OUT@NBCUniversal, an LGBT group at the sponsoring NBC, to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

IS EVERYONE HAPPY?

NO!  In fact, no one’s happy.

• Conservatives and some Catholics oppose what they perceive as usurpation of their saint’s parade by the homosexual lobby.  Opponents of the new inclusivity feel strongly that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, leader of the more than 2.5 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York, should have resigned his honorary post as Grand Marshal of the Parade in protest.  Matthew Hennessey, writing in Crisis Magazine, said that Cardinal Dolan “has been duped” by the organizers of the 2015 parade.  Hennessey writes:

“The real trick appears to have been played on Cardinal Dolan, who assured critics at the time that he knew what he was doing. “If the Parade Committee allowed a group to publicize its advocacy of any actions contrary to Church teaching, I’d object,” he said. “In fact, the leaders of the Parade Committee tried to be admirably sensitive to Church teaching.

“…I wonder if the parade committee—that bastion of integrity—has reassured the Cardinal that any additional groups it chooses to march will also not promote “an agenda” contrary to Church teaching. It’s hard to believe Dolan is so naïve as to think that groups with names like Irish Queers and the Lavender and Green Alliance seek nothing more politically potent than a moment in the sun on Fifth Avenue.

• And homosexual groups are unhappy because only one LGBT group, that of the Parade’s television sponsor, will be permitted to march.  According to Reuters, gay rights activists and elected officials said on Tuesday that they would continue to protest New York City’s main St. Patrick’s Day parade, even as organizers prepared to let a gay group carry a banner this year for the first time in the parade’s history.  The problem, they say,

“…is that the group, an organization of gay NBCUniversal employees, does not represent gay Irish-American people at an event that marks the most prominent celebration of Irish heritage in the United States.

“The issue has never been about having a gay group in the parade,” Daniel Dromm, a City Council member, said at a news conference outside City Hall where he was joined by Irish Queers, a group that has organized annual protests of the parade. “It has always been about having an Irish gay group in the parade. For the parade organizers to try to pull this trickery by allowing an organization called OUT@NBC to march in the parade is not a solution.”

SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Both sides make some good points:

Those who want Cardinal Dolan (and all Catholic participants) to withdraw from participation cite the religious history of the parade, and demand that its character as a religious event be preserved.

Those who demand to be granted a place in the public square will, likewise, continue to insist on their right to march on March 17.

I know some of my readers will disagree with me–but I do not want Cardinal Dolan to step down.  

Despite the reference to the Catholics’ favorite Irish saint, the day has become a day of secular celebration.  Drinking green beer, enjoying Irish food and dance, and the wearing o’ the green:  Sure and begorrah, these are the things which distinguish this day from any other.  

If a certain group of individuals–in this case, homosexual activists–choose to line up and march down Fifth Avenue in the morning, what shall be our response?  

Some gay dudes come and line up, and the Catholics at St. Patrick’s Cathedral are supposed to back off and say, “Oh, here–We started this and it’s part of our heritage, but you can have it!”?  

I DON’T THINK SO!

In John 15, Jesus warned us that we are not of this world; and so it shall always be.  We are, however, entitled to a place in the world.  Along the parade route, throughout the world, there will be those with whom we disagree.  They will take their place, sometimes pushing and shoving.  But we must take our place, too–shining with the light of the Gospel, flashing our smiles, waving our hands joyfully.  If we are asked, we must be prepared to give an account for the joy that is within us.