Opinion

A godly gem in Hell’s Kitchen

“The tall building is itself artistically akin to the tall story,” wrote G.K. Chesterton during his visit to New York City. “The very word skyscraper is an admirable example of an American lie.” The enormous Hudson Yards development is another admirable story of sky-high American ambition. But in the shadows of the tall buildings, Father George W. Rutler, pastor of the newly renovated St. Michael’s Church on West 34th Street, reminds New Yorkers a luxury condo in the sky is not equal to a place in heaven.

And he and the church are a blessing to the newly built-up neighborhood as the winner of the 2019 Stanford White Award for Craftsmanship and Artisanship newly announced by the Institute for Classical Art and Architecture.

St. Michael’s is familiar with mega projects. In 1907, the church was relocated to accommodate the construction of the North River Tunnel and Pennsylvania Station. On Easter Sunday this year, Fr. Rutler dedicated a new red oak baldachin as “part of an ongoing project to furnish our church with art and craftsmanship representative of the unsurpassed aesthetic patrimony of Catholicism.”

Inspired by Fr. Rutler’s memories of Oxford University’s Pusey House and designed by local architectural designer Patrick Alles, the carpentry was completed by Mike Cangelosi’s team at JMP Wood and painted by John Ragnatelli and his folks at Architectural Finishers, both in Brooklyn. Parishioner Robert Weiss, a Manhattan flooring contractor, installed the marble floor and steps around the central altar.

The project’s total budget was less than a single day’s expenses for the $25 billion development project nearby.

As Fr. Rutler watches the construction of towers around his parish, he solemnly remembers the day of destruction when tremendous evil brought down the Twin Towers.

After the first plane struck, he ran downtown and gave general absolution to the firemen lining up to go into the first tower.

“They were going into a battlefield,” Fr. Rutler recalls. “One always has these mental images of the firemen going up these staircases and the people coming down.”

For his help at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, he was honored by the City Council and made an honorary firefighter.

So that the many domestic and international visitors to the church do not mistakenly believe that this evil has vanished from the earth, last year Fr. Rutler dedicated the world’s first Shrine to Our Lady of Aradin for the prayer intentions of persecuted Christians, especially in territory controlled by ISIS.

The icon depicts the Virgin Mary in the traditional dress of an Iraqi bride. The border is the text of the “Our Father” written in Aramaic, the spoken language of Jesus, which is still spoken in Qaraqosh, the home of the icon’s Iraqi Christian artist Mouthana Butres. In 2015, Butres and his family were driven from their home, along with all the Christians of Qaraqosh.

By the time US forces expelled ISIS militants from the area, over 12,000 Christian houses and over 300 churches had been destroyed or damaged.

At St. Michael’s, Fr. Rutler continues his long-running collaboration with New York artist Ken Woo, which began at his previous parish, the Church of Our Saviour at Park Avenue and 38th Street. There Woo completed a series of icons crowned by a 28-foot-high Christ Pantocrator, which rivals John Lafarge’s “Ascension” mural for finest in the city.

For St. Michael’s, Woo crafted large icons of Moses and Elijah bracketing the sanctuary wall under the apse, which was painted a vivid blue and gold by Emily Sottile and her team at EverGreene Architectural Arts.

Woo, who was born in Shanghai and trained in Italy, also contributed the gilt altar frontispiece under the baldachin.

To complete the baldachin, Fr. Rutler commissioned New York artist Christopher Alles to design the angels guarding the four corners of the canopy.

Alles also created the handsome bronze statue of the newly canonized St. John Henry Newman displayed opposite the long line waiting for the confessional.

Newman’s definition of a perfect gentleman is a fitting description of Fr. George W. Rutler and a model for any pastor in Hell’s Kitchen: “Tender toward the bashful, gentle toward the distant and merciful toward the absurd.”

Stephen Schmalhofer is a writer living in Greenwich, Connecticut.