Set to Close: First Catholic Church Past the 13 Colonies, Holy Cross in Kentucky
A sixth grader's fear, 200 years of faith, and a question for our generation: will our youth arrive to find a locked door?
HOLY CROSS is on the draft plan to close as a parish. It’s the first American Catholic church past the 13 colonies.
Yesterday, we were discussing our Kentucky Catholic history in class and a student raised their hand. They asked: “Are they gonna tear it down?”
I replied something like: “No, they just won’t have its regular Sunday Mass.”
The 6th grader then said: “No! They are gonna destroy it.”
I assured her again that won’t happen. I did tell my students that the lesson is that “you all need to get your parents to go back to church. It needs people.” I then said to the class: “It needs you all.”
“It’s up to you to keep this history alive which your ancestors have passed on for 200 years. It has to be you. Some day I’ll be dead.”
“Mr. Snellen, that was harsh.”
But its true.
I have waited weeks to say anything about the closing of Holy Cross, where our ancestors, the pioneer settlers from Maryland who came to Nelson County first established the light of the Catholic Church in the West.
The church is surrounded by the graves of those early Americans and Kentuckians, so that one has to walk past them to enter the doors.
One may notice the 1823 sign on the brick: a marker of when it was completed under the care of Fr. Nerinckx, the saintly apostle of Kentucky, a priest who helped build the church with his own hands, a man who sacrificed much in making this the Kentucky Holy Land.
From what I gather, and thus why I restrain my opinion, its not a money issue to keep the doors open. It’s more of a lack of baptisms, confirmations, and things of commitment.
Thus, the rescue and preservation of Holy Cross is to give it attention, to give it love, to visit it, to bring your children to church.
In reality, no longer having its Sunday Mass and only having Wedding Masses and other special things is far better than destruction.
Still, what that child felt is an inclination toward a cold fact. At a time when the youth of America, during this year of our 250th anniversary, are coming back to the Church in record numbers, will these youth grow up too late to keep the doors open?
Will our youth find a locked door?
Since 1785, our ancestors have found peace and faith on these sacred grounds. The land of the Holy Cross colony is far from impressive land, and often the settlers who preferred worldly things, left to go further out west. The ones who stayed did so because of the value they gave to their Catholic faith, knowing that it could risk being forgotten if they separated from the unity of faith found at Holy Cross.
The historian Benjamin Webb wrote: “The good people of Holy Cross congregation have sometimes regarded as wanting in polish, and in those delicate virtues which form the basis of what is known as social gentility. I am not going to deny that very few of them, whether men or women, have the appearance of having just ‘stepped out of a band-box.’
“(...) But whatever may be their foibles, I can say of them with truth, that I never witnessed amongst them anything that was deserving of severe censure. Under rough exteriors they carry honest and open hearts. They are kind and hospitable and obliging. They are compassionate of human suffering, and they are to the full as liberal in their benefactions, according to their means, as others who are more boastful of their givings.
“But it is because of their warm and steadfast Catholic faith that they are most deserving of praise from without their own gates. Little affluent otherwise, they esteem themselves rich in possessing this precious gift of God. But theirs is by no means a faith that is inoperative of good works. It is fruitful of good works, of charity and practical piety.
“There are few households in the parish that are not gathered together morning and night for prayer in common, and I have never known a people who were more exact in their observance of the wholesome laws of the Church in relation to religious duty and moral obligation.”
May this last part become true again.
This June, we will host the first Kentucky Holy Land Conference ever!
This national conference, with over a dozen speakers and musicians coming in from out of state, will have Holy Cross promoted on its map.
May the American Catholic Church rediscover its heart, a gem in the heartland.
June 12th, the same day that the bishops of America are consecrating our country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we shall return to Holy Cross as pilgrims, as people searching for Jesus, to the very spot where the first log cabin chapel was built on that land: a building called “Sacred Heart Chapel.”
God’s providence has brought this conference to be before the news of this potential closure was announced. May God bless the Kentucky Holy Land!
I hope to see you at the Sacred Heart Conference in the Kentucky Holy Land!