The blizzard, the volcanoes, and our brother Sylvester
The Tuesday Pillar Post
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Hey everybody,
Today is (for Latin Catholics) the first Tuesday of Lent, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
It might already be getting warm where you live, but today is the 137th anniversary of one of America’s most important weather events, the legendary “Blizzard of ‘88” — which crippled the eastern seaboard for days, and led to the creation of America’s urban subway systems.
The blizzard has fascinated me since I was a kid. It dumped feet of snow from Virginia to the Canadian Maritimes. But the real issue wasn’t the snow, it was wind. They called the storm the “Great White Hurricane,” because of the steady, sustained winds that blew for days at 50 miles an hour, and dropped the temperature down to the single digits.
The wind blew through the shoddy tenement buildings of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. It coated everything exposed in ice, and left snow drifts 50 feet high.
People were trapped inside their houses and apartments for more than a week, sometimes without heat, and often without useful plumbing. Roofs caved in above them. Commerce shut down. The gusts shredded the nests of telegraph wires above city streets, grounded or sunk more than 200 ships at sea, and derailed trains caught between stations, exposed on open plans to the wind.
In Springfield, Massachusetts, a man named Edward Leonard reached down to pick up a hat from atop a mound of snow. Under that hat, he found hair, so he started digging, with his bare hands. He found a girl unconscious in the drift, pulled her from the snow, and carried her to a shelter.
The cleanup was just as disastrous as the snowfall had been. When the melt came, Brooklyn flooded, along with port areas up and down the coast, and the homes of the longshoremen who worked them.
There was a massive effort, staffed by near every man and boy with a shovel in six states, to push snow into the sea before it melted into the streets. But almost no one could keep up with the melt.
The storm took some 400 lives. It left thousands homeless.
It also got city officials convinced they needed to put telecommunications wires underground. And the storm led directly to enough political will for funding the creation of the first American subway system, in Boston, and then to the opening of the New York City subway system, where the trains have been running delayed since opening day.
There’s no snow predicted on the east coast this week. It’s supposed to be 73 degrees today in Washington, DC.
But in March, one never knows. Keep your shovels close, friends.
The news
I have been, these past few days, affected by his death. But I know that stories like this, about violence against the Church in a place far-far-away, can often feel entirely removed from our experience of ordinary life, here in the safety of the United States, or the West entirely.
Here’s what I want you to understand: Fr. Sylvester Okechukwu, who was brutally beaten and killed Ash Wednesday, was like us. He was in many ways the same as us.
Fr. Sylvester was a Catholic, a priest, a pastor. He had virtues and vices. He had opinions about the diocesan assessment, about the synod on synodality, about Pope Francis. If his bishop had some plan to change the age of confirmation, he surely had an opinion on that. In the sacristy, he had vestments he liked, and ones he didn’t.
He was faithful to the breviary, or he wasn’t always. He was a good administrator, or he wasn’t.
There were priests in his presbyterate who liked him, and probably those who didn’t — though you can be certain they won’t say that now.
He was like us.
On the day before he died, he likely thought about what he’d do for Lent. It was Fat Tuesday — he might have had a few drinks, or an extra pastry, or watched a game with his friends. He thought about the Masses he had the next day; he wondered if he had enough ashes.
He may have had debt to the diocese for the church roof, or he may have been worried about the rectory’s plumbing. He was in group texts with his friends. He probably knew priests in our dioceses.
But even if none of that is true, he was like us in this way: He was a priest of Jesus Christ — like you, reader, or like the priests we know.
On the day before he died, he offered Holy Mass. At the altar, he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his people.
At the ambo that day, he read this from St. Mark’s Gospel:
"Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.
But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first."
That night, Fr. Sylvester got ready for bed. It was hot that night — the day’s temperature had climbed to 100. Perhaps he said the divine office before he went to bed. Perhaps he already had.
But at about 9:30, men with guns broke into his house, woke him up, and marched him into the forest. He didn’t seem to have shoes on, or even a shirt. Those men held him for a few hours. Then they tied him up, and beat him brutally, before they shot him in the head, at close range with an assault rifle.
The bullet split his skull. He bled out into the grass. They left him there, dead.
None of that is far from us. We’re two or three degrees from him, at most. The Church is a small world. And it’s a communion.
He was our brother. Pray for his soul. Please.
And read his story — and the stories of his countrymen — here. Those stories matter.
—
Pope Francis is expected to return to the Vatican in just a few days, as doctors say his condition has improved enough to allow him to leave the hospital, and to convalesce at home, in his room at the Casa Santa Marta.
But the pope’s illness is serious, and his recovery won’t be easy. That’s led some commentators to begin talking about the possibility of a conclave in the not-distant-future.
At The Pillar, we want to avoid unduly ghoulish talk about a conclave before it’s actually time. But we also want to correct the record, and provide useful information, when we can. So when discussion online last week turned to the number of cardinal electors in the Church, Ed decided to weigh in with some helpful analysis.
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Yes, you read that right. When South Korean military pilots accidentally bombed a South Korean village last week, they blew up a parish church — and sent the pastor to the hospital.
It’s quite a story. You can read it here.
Since it was announced that the orders would disband, some members — and the Catholics who know them — have had more questions than answers, especially about the pragmatics of what comes next.
In an analysis yesterday, I suggested that Francis might learn something about the pragmatic issues involved from the suppression of his own order, the Society of Jesus, way back in 1773 — especially about the importance of clear and direct communication regarding what will happen to the clerical members of the order.
The bishops announced the commission nearly two years, but to date, they haven’t done much to make it an actual reality, and the bishops’ legal advisory council panned a draft document setting out its guiding principles.
In short, the commission plans are deadlocked — and survivors’ advocates are growing impatient.
In a Look Closer analysis, Luke Coppen explains the whole thing.
—
The bishop temporarily leading the Diocese of Steubenville said Tuesday that the diocese is financially stable, has a relatively high number of priests, but still faces a declining population in years to come.
A report on Steubenville comes two-and-a-half years after then-Steubenville Bishop Jeff Monforton announced that a merger would be forthcoming.
A stay on the subject comes after considerable pushback from priests and laity in the diocese, an unusual transfer for Monforton, and the dismissal of Bishop Paul Bradley, the first prelate appointed apostolic administrator in the diocese.
In short, it’s been a very wild ride for the eastern Ohio diocese — and it’s not over yet.
Lava time
Thousands of people have been evacuated in the Guatemalan mountains this week, as the Fuego volcano began erupting Monday, and threatens to put up to 34,000 people at risk. In 2018, the volcano’s eruption killed 194 people, and left more than 200 missing
Right now, it looks pretty calm. But if you want to listen to Guatemalan birdsong while you work today — alongside the prospect of smoke, ash, and lava explosions, you can livestream the volcano here:
If you prefer your volcanic activity American, well, the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii is in the middle of a months-long eruption, and is throwing off a lot of lava in recent days:
You can watch this one live too:
I’m sure you resolved not to waste time on the internet during Lent, but now you’ve got volcanoes to monitor, so good luck.
Better than a crippling blizzard, I guess.
Please be assured of our prayers, and please pray for us. We need it.
Yours in Christ,
JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar
Editor’s note: This newsletter initially conveyed that Fr. Sylvester Okechukwu was beaten to death, according to widespread reports and sources in the Diocese of Kafanchan. Subsequent to the publication of this newsletter, the Diocese of Kafanchan contacted The Pillar, to report that Fr. Okechukwu’s cause of death was determined to be a gun shot. The Pillar Post has been updated.
Made me tear up a bit with piece about Fr. Sylvester and think of all of us stumbling to Heaven.
I read ‘blizzard of ‘88 and assumed 1988. Wondered why I couldn’t remember it 🤣🤣🤣