We Get Email

Dear Editor:

We are really disappointed St. Camillus is closing. Rockaway is losing a community, personal and spiritual connection and disruption of routines and traditions. We are all anxious about our spiritual future.

While we understand that the building does not make the church, this can be further than the truth.

St. Camillus was established as a mission in 1909 and was built by Thomas Hughes, an established builder with the Brooklyn Diocese. (Mr. Hughes erected St. Joseph’s Church in Garden City and Queen of Angels Church in Forest Hills. He was also a member of the Cardinal’s Committee of the Laity.) If the building is approximately 116 years old (a building in that period would have been influenced by the Beaux Arts style—grandiose and ornamental style with symmetrical facades, classical elements and elaborate detailing) with stained glass which provides natural light, and provides an additional way where parishioners perceive and engage with the church. Furthermore, the marble and the wood are historical.

If you destroy the church and the art within the church, you would be destroying our cultural heritage which is an atrocity of crimes.

St. Camillus has deep historical roots and significance, representing a continuity of faith and traditions for generations. Closing the church will be a loss of a tangible connection to the past and the reduction in the availability of charitable services or programs offered by the church.

We ask the Brooklyn Diocese, In the words of Joni Mitchell, please do not pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

Adriana Sullivan