Some months ago I attended a meeting about the future renovation of my parish set for 2009. Our pastor gave the talk and then took all questions. I caught him off guard with a query about the 1989 renovation when Immaculate Conception was first changed. You see the second renovation means restoring high altar plus moving the tabernacle back to the middle of the sanctuary. Besides stone floors, this renovation undoes the 1989 renovation. (Though one should add that IHM fared worse in the renovation department. Monsignor Connors ((may he rest in peace)) did far more to change that ekklesia for the worse when he refurbished that interior, according to Mary Wolff. Oh, and Monsignor Connors also briefly had liturgical dancing in tony Scarsdale’s Catholick sanctuary. Yup.) The current altar—really just an old adult baptismal font with a thin slab of stone atop it—will be moved further back into the presbyterium so that more pews can be put in and also straightened. So twenty years later, those parishioners who fought the renovation all the way to Cardinall O’Connor, can smile. And New York’s Archbishop actually agreed with the congregation but did not dare to contradict a fellow priest who was the Monsignor pastor. For my part so long as bispecies Communion continues I shall attend when in Eastchester. (Thence the reason I usually do not attend mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary.) As for sources, consult the privately published history of my parish. Should you require more photographic documentation, my christening, done by a priest famous in my parish, was in the pre-rennovated Immaculate Conception.
