Traditions of St. Patrick’s Day · 2007-03-18 12:37
The cardinal seemed to strike an unusually solemn note for a St. Patrick’s Day.
In his homily yesterday morning at a special Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cardinal Edward Egan noted that the saint had been sold for a time into slavery and that the Irish had faced bigotry in America because of their religion.
In 1927, Cardinal Egan said, Al Smith, the governor of New York, was headed for the Democratic nomination for president the following year. But a magazine article argued that no Roman Catholic, like Governor Smith, should be elected president. The writer, citing papal encyclicals, argued a Catholic would follow the pope, not the Constitution.
At that point in his story, Cardinal Egan smiled and said to the congregation, “Might I have a dispensation on this?” After Governor Smith read the piece, the cardinal continued, he is supposed to have growled, “What the hell is an encyclical?”
The cathedral audience erupted in laughter.
And so it went yesterday, a St. Patrick’s Day rich in tradition, humor, and, as is often the case, controversy, this time over the New York Fire Department’s place in the parade.
The celebration came after two weeks of sobering news: a fire that nearly wiped out two families, the shooting deaths of two auxiliary police officers, and the indictments of three police officers in a racially charged death.
Gary Fatone, 50, a banker from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, said the parade “is a little more somber this year, but every year there’s always something. But we’re here, and we always do the best we can.”
Toddlers were everywhere, decked out in giant shamrock glasses, and dignified adults wore outsize leprechaun hats. The concentration of men in skirts was up.
The crowd was thick at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, where the parade kicked off, and was six deep in front of Rockefeller Center. But it thinned as marchers reached the end at 86th Street.
As with most recent parades, there was a dispute, but this time it was not only over the exclusion of gay and lesbian groups from the parade.
Parade officials had moved Fire Department marchers from their traditional spot near the front of the parade to the middle, mainly because last year, New Orleans firefighters delayed the start while unfurling a banner thanking New York for hurricane help.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg – who criticized the move last week, saying the firefighters “should all be up front, and that’s always been the tradition” – marched the entire route yesterday alongside Nicholas Scoppetta, the fire commissioner. The mayor usually gives that honor to the police commissioner.
“I don’t want to get into the politics of parades, but lighten up,” he said, directing a comment at John Dunleavy, the parade chairman.
Cardinal Egan was more diplomatic. “We don’t have a say in the parade,” he said, “but it means a lot to us, and we’re anxious to see that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”
According to New York Times, Outsiders were still impressed. “It’s more than I could imagine,” said Dr. Gurinder Singh, 55, an ophthalmologist visiting from Kansas City, Kan. “This Irish culture is marvelous, and it is still being represented after so many years of immigrants being here,” said Dr. Singh, who is originally from the state of Punjab, in India.
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