Talk Bronx New York

Saint Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church, also known as the Cathedral of the Bronx, held its final mass today.   The church has seen a decline in attendees and is suffering from its dilapidated structure.

The church was established in 1849 when the Bronx was a rural community.   The parish grew as the Bronx, itself, transformed into an urban area at the turn of the 20th century.  The church was around when the parish was predominantly German and Irish and remained a part of the community as the parish and the community saw an increase in African Americans.

As crime increased in the 1960’s, a portion of the parish left the South Bronx.  The leaders of the Saint Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church accommodated the changes and the issues by incorporating various social services to help the people in the community.

According to News 12, parishioners hope to build a smaller church nearby. Read more..

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Taxi drivers, grocery store owners and a group of mothers are all backing Saturday’s first gun buy-back program in the Bronx.

“It’s to our personal concern that programs like this do work,” said Fernando Mateo, head of the New York State Federation of Taxis and the Bodegero Association. “These are the industries most affected by gun violence in New York City.”

As he directed dozens of taxi drivers and bodega owners to hang up posters for the No Questions Asked event co-sponsored by the Bronx district attorney’s office and the NYPD, he thought of Crown Heights bodega owner Mohammed Monsoor Abuzaid and his son Abdul, 18, who were shot and killed during a robbery. Read more..

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The air is thick with paranoia in “Doubt,” but nowhere as thick, juicy, sustained or sustaining as Meryl Streep’s performance as a distrustful nun in John Patrick Shanley’s screen adaptation of his stage play. Wearing flowing black robes, a bonnet that squats on her head like an upside-down Easter basket and the kind of spectacles Mr. Pickwick probably wore to read his papers, Ms. Streep blows in like a storm, shaking up the story’s reverential solemnity with gusts of energy and comedy. The performance may make no sense in the context of the rest of the film, but it is — forgive me, Father — gratifying nunsense.

Although the play, which pivots on accusations of child molestation, was first staged in 2004 — two years after the Roman Catholic Church sex-abuse scandals erupted in America — it unfolds at a historical remove in 1964. Sister Aloysius (Ms. Streep), the principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx, comes to suspect that her supervisor, Father Flynn (a tamped-down Philip Seymour Hoffman), has developed an erotic interest or worse in one of their charges, Donald (Joseph Foster II), the school’s first and only black student. Shored up by the tentative suspicions of a younger nun, Sister James (an unsteady Amy Adams), Sister Aloysius begins circling Father Flynn, going in for the kill. Sister James has doubts. Sister Aloysius has, well, none. Read more..

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