February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
And rightly so. They fought for freedom and opportunity. They fought for normalcy and decency. They fought for a society that placed value on its past, it culture, its commitment to equal rights for all.
They fought for the freedom to remember and commemorate, to preserve and sanctify.
A band of brothers and sisters not in uniform spent part of their Memorial weekend in their very own front line. The battle to preserve St. Brigid’s Church in Manhattan may not be quite an epic of, say, Homeric proportions.
But it does reflect the positive desire of a large and growing group of people to battle for a visible symbol of an era that gave birth to the greater part of the Irish American story.
St. Brigid’s, which dates to 1848, was a testimony to an enduring faith, not only in life beyond this world, but life in it.
The Irish famine has gained the high ground in recent years as an academic subject.
There’s no doubt that what is written in books can be enhanced dramatically by what human hand has forged beyond the written page.
Reading about the Alamo is one thing. Standing in it is quite another.
The same can be said for the still visible manifestations of so many other historical occurrences, the “footprints” of the World Trade Center towers being a prime example.
St. Brigid’s is on a far smaller scale in physical terms. But the story that gave this little church its birth is of a scale that holds us in awe to this day.
Some things are worth fighting for, be they great or small. St. Brigid’s Church is one of them.