Find this church. No, seriously.

A request from the mailbag:

My name is Debbie Strand, and I am assisting with the effort to help restore Mount Moriah Cemetery to some semblance of a respectable resting ground for thousands of Philadelphia's great ancestors (including a great-great-grandfather of mine).  I spent some time reviewing your website last night, and I must tell you it is very interesting!  Thank you for taking the time to enlighten others about the responsibility we have as a society to respect and maintain such important historical structures.

I have been trying to gather information on a church called Advent Protestant Episcopal Church, or Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia.  Supposedly this church owned a section of burial plots at Mount Moriah, but I have been unable to find any information online which could be helpful to me.  I did uncover an artist's drawing of the church on Flickr-- http://www.flickr.com/photos/library-company-of-philadelphia/4700228189/, and the note below the photo which says it is located on Old York Road. 

My question is-Have you ever heard of this church, or photographed it?  Is it still standing?  Or perhaps you know if it has been refurbished for a different purpose?  Better yet, maybe you know whom would I contact to find out if any records were kept regarding burials of former parishioners at Mount Moriah?  Any information you could provide would be helpful.
I appreciate your consideration-

Ooooo, I love a good treasure hunt.

For what it's worth, I've attached Debbie's photo above. I did some checking around, and I found an entry in a Philadelphia architectural database for a Church of the Advent at 2507 N. 5th Street, near 5th & Cumberland. The church is still standing, and is apparently still in use as the Juan 3:16 Asambleas de Dios, a chapter of the Assemblies of God sect.

However, that's the only entry for a church with that name. Nothing comes up on or near Old York Road, and the church (which you can see through Google streetview) isn't an exact match for the one in the picture.

Even given the inevitable exaggerations that come with artists' renderings, the different address makes me think it's not the one she's looking for--although if there was another Church of the Advent, or if it had a different location originally, I'd think it would have shown up in the database.

So I put it to you, good readers. If anyone knows anything about this church or its whereabouts, please chime in.

Dome Sweet Home

And now for something a little lighter, some great news from West Philadelphia.

You may remember the scaffolding in place during my visit to Cedar Park's St. Francis de Sales a few years back. Well, their work is nowhere close to being done--and that's actually pretty good news.

The following WHYY Newsworks story and audio presentation highlight where the renovation is and where it's going. (Thanks to Bob Miller for passing it along.)

Dome complete, West Philly church reaches renovation milestone

Led by head architect Annabelle Trenner, renovations have finished on St. Francis' dome. The remaining renovations the church needs could take 15--yes, 15--years. But the good news is that, thanks to Partners for Sacred Places and some good fundraising--they're actually going to try.

The Project says: about damn time!

It's good to see some action on what is arguably one of the most impressive churches in Philadelphia. St. Francis is unique because--well, it's unique. There's nothing else like it in the city. (If you even try to suggest the Ukranian Catholic Cathedral, I'll drive to your house and punch you in the face.) I love me some St. John the Baptist, but let's be real--it's not radically different from, say, Visitation BVM or St. John the Evangelist or any of the dozen columned gothic churches around.

But stuff like St. Francis or Our Lady of Hope or Immaculate Conception or even Church of the Advocate--I value them most of all because of how insanely special they are. These are one-of-a-kind buildings.

St. Francis's case is great because of how much damage the place has / had. I noticed some during my visit, but wow. 37 leaks in the roof? Parishioners taking umbrellas to mass? Ay carumba. I'm thankful St. Francis is getting the expert help it needs, rather than wallowing in decay (see St. Boniface) or getting a botch job that dooms it to destruction (See Ascension of Our Lord).

I'll close with one final thought from Trenner, because it's so lovely:

"Philadelphia has all these lovely beautiful secret buildings that people don't know—they're sort of like a hidden treasure," Trenner mused. "More people need to enjoy them and figure out how complicated they are and how beautiful they are."

And that is why I do what I do.

The Monday After the Massacre

So, how was your weekend?

If you’re a Roman Catholic in the greater Delaware Valley, odds are it was pretty awful. Friday’s announcement that the Archdiocese will close 49 schools (45 of them elementary schools) at the end of this school year hit people like a brick in the face, despite months of intense and at times detailed rumors.

It’s times like this I’m glad that the schools I attended are far outside the purview of the Archdiocese. I can’t imagine the pain of losing one’s alma mater, and I extend my sincerest sympathies for those latest victims of the Catholic closing carousel.

It would be easy—far too easy, really—for me to sit here and paint the Archdiocese as a villain. Lord knows I’m good at it. The copious pictures of teary-eyed students certainly don’t help their cause.

But really, this situation is not so black and white. The real revelation of this past weekend is this:

Welcome to your new Catholic reality.

A reality where the institutions you grew up valuing—the parishes, the schools, all of it—can easily be gone tomorrow. A reality in which, despite what you were taught, your faith can forsake you at the snap of two fingers.  A reality where it’s not just someone else’s problem anymore, as city and suburb both feel the pain.

This is the Archdiocese of the new millennium. Stripped down, laid low by bad management and lack of vision. Their empire reduced by greed and arrogance, and probably not for the last time.

But for all of the blame the AD deserves—and they deserve a ton—this is also what happens when you’re saddled with a system that’s outlived its usefulness.

Families today are smaller and more scattered. As I’ve said before in this space, we’re well past the point where we need a church on every corner. The same goes true for schools, no matter how much it might hurt. There’s just too much Catholicism to go around, and you’re seeing the final, tragic aria of a bygone era.

Yes, as always with the Archdiocese, there is always criticism, always questions. Perhaps more schools should have been given the opportunity to come up with alternate plans, like St. Martin de Porres’s recent move to independence. Or perhaps an increased Cristo Rey presence—they’ve been very successful at educating on a budget.

And some choices will be questioned, like why poor Conshohocken was stripped of its one regional school, forcing students to trek all the way to King of Prussia. Or how in the world poor St. Veronica continues to survive intact.

And on and on and on. We could spend hours debating each and every choice. But for where we are now, regardless of how we got here, I’m not sure there was much that could have been done.

Not that it’s any consolation to those poor students and their families. Especially not for the parishes themselves, which will suffer the most. Yes, they’ll be fiscally healthier in the short term. But education still rules the day, and parents and families choose where to live based on access to good schools. If a parish can’t offer that, people look elsewhere, and it loses a large part of its vibrancy, its future.

And that I fear will be the end result of all of this. Not a galvanizing of the Catholic populace to work together, to see what can be done to correct the structural problems going forward.

But rather, a continued slow erosion, an inexorable exodus away from the church and its institutions. Another signpost on the road to irrelevancy and extinction—for schools and parishes.

Because that’s life in this new Catholic reality. If religion is all about trust, about believing that that which you give so much to will always return your devotion—how will you keep your heart open, now knowing what can happen?

As usual, I hope I’m wrong. I hope people are more resilient, and Chaput and his minions are more innovative and prescient than those who come before.

But if I’ve learned anything from the five years I’ve been doing this, it’s that’s the Archdiocese can’t be trusted to do the right, smart thing. That’s too bad, because you don’t get many second chances with this crowd. You don’t mess with the institutions people hold dear. Close a parish, close a school, and they’ll never forgive you, even if you have the best intentions, the best reasons in the world.

No, it doesn’t always make sense. But when it comes to love and loss, family and community, it doesn’t have to.

This plan is alleged to buy at least 10 to 15 years of stability. The cure, though, may be just as bad, if not worse, than the disease.