In their newest attempt to spread the good word amongst the PBR-drinking set, the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn has launched a series of ads designed to appeal to native Brooklynites by referring to Jesus as “the original hipster.”

The ads feature Jesus's bottom half clad in some grubby Messiah-style robes, with a pair of red converse peeking out from underneath them and the text “The Original Hipster” displayed over top. The Son of God: he’s just like you! He smokes Parliaments! He reads Pitchfork! He rides a fixi!

We’re not exactly sure what it is that made Jesus so hipster (he did unto others before it was cool?) but it's hard to imagine Jesus engaging in his rousing feats of proselytization while still maintaining the requisite nonchalant hipster 'tude. (Revised transcript of the Sermon on the Mount: "Christianity? You’ve probably never heard of it.")

According to a press release on the Diocese's website, the ads make reference to - what else? - an SNL Weekend Update spot by Seth Meyers, in which he joked that Converse shoes are the reason why more Catholics are returning to the Church. Now, the Church is trying to prove that Godliness and a sense of humor aren't mutually exclusive.

"Ok, maybe Seth’s comments are a little aggrandized. But the reference is appropriately suggestive of a major problem in the Church today: that most Catholics see the church as archaic and not relevant, nor valuable, to their everyday lives," the press release reads.

"Catholics yearn for a Church they can relate to. That is what Seth Meyers was jokingly referencing, and that is what the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn’s new “All Faces, Everyday Understanding” marketing campaign is trying to achieve."

Geared to show a "cooler and more welcoming side of the Catholic Church," the ads link to the Diocese's "All Faces" section of their website which illustrates the diversity of their congregants.

"Who would of guessed that the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and SNL had similar senses of humor. Whatever the case, imitation is the best form of flattery and the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn is thrilled that SNL can help spread its message," the press release continues.

Yeah, because if there's one thing that SNL is known for, it's endorsing religion.

The ads can be found featured on bus stations and phone kiosks throughout Brooklyn and Queens, and while they may not succeed in getting the local hipsters to trade in boozy brunch for morning mass, they might at least spur an influx of Converse-buying amongst the local devout. WWJD?

Pope Benedict XVI (Getty Images)

Last Friday an Italian daily published stunning claims of a plot within the upper reaches of the Catholic Church hierarchy to kill Pope Benedict XVI, former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Italy is in an uproar over the story and the news has gone viral across Europe. No wonder--it reads like the prologue to a cheap paperback thriller, hinting at webs of palace intrigue:

The Italian daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano published an unsigned letter, written in German, which spoke of a Mordkomplott – death plot – against Benedict and quoted the Archbishop of Palermo, Paolo Romeo, as predicting that the Pontiff would die with in 12 months. The anonymous missive, dated 30 December and marked "strictly confidential for the Holy Father" claims to report comments Cardinal Romeo made on a trip to Beijing last year.

Colombia's Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos passed the letter to a papal aide last month. It was written in German, claims the reporter who broke the story in Il Fatto Quotidiano, because it was intended only for the eyes of the German-born pope.

As reported by Il Fatto Quotidiano the letter is  straight out of The Da Vinci Code, structured in 3 parts with titles: "Journey to Beijing," "Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone" and "Succession of Pope Benedict XVI."  The second part is the most scandalous, detailing an allegedly difficult relationship between the Pope and the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, who has allegedly criticized the Pope for paying more attention to liturgy than daily state business.

Spats between Vatican officials are nothing next to the later bombshell in which  Cardinal Romeo "prophesied" the Pope's death by November, 2012.

Cardinal Romeo spoke, said the anonymous letter writer, "as someone probably aware of a serious criminal conspiracy." Those who heard the Cardinal viewed the confidence with which he made these statements as evidence of  a planned "attack on the Holy Father."

Cardinal Romeo has flatly denied making statements referenced in the letter. The Vatican is also skeptical, spokesman Father Federico Lombardi telling the media that "it is so far removed from reality" that he didn't want to make any further comment.

It's your turn now, suspense novelists. Throw in a tormented American academic with a covert military background and lots of muscular prose and this is a million-seller. Not you, Q.R. Markham.

[The Independent]

Archbishop Dolan, of course, has been on the job for nearly three years already, so it’s not as though he needs an introduction. But his new title will give him more prominence and influence—not to mention new head gear.

By all indications, the future cardinal wishes to follow in the large footsteps of his predecessor once removed, the late John Cardinal O’Connor, who cast a long shadow over New York’s civic, cultural and spiritual life before his death in 2000. Unlike Cardinal O’Connor’s successor, the reserved Edward Cardinal Egan, who retired in 2009, Archbishop Dolan is ebullient, outgoing and, it seems, eager to make friends in his new hometown.

He is steadfast in defense of Catholic teaching on abortion and gay rights, positions with which this page—and no small number of Catholics, including the state’s leading Catholic politicians—disagree. Still, like Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop Dolan seems capable of staking out his positions without creating enemies. Cardinal O’Connor famously cultivated a warm friendship with then-Mayor Ed Koch in the 1980s, even though they disagreed profoundly on many political issues.

If Archbishop Dolan chooses to build on Cardinal O’Connor’s legacy, he surely will want to continue the latter’s commitment to Jewish-Catholic dialogue and cooperation. No Catholic prelate in New York history—perhaps even in American history—was more sympathetic to Judaism than Cardinal O’Connor. His empathy for Jews around the world and his understanding of the sin of anti-Semitism and the abomination of the Holocaust led him to be a dependable and strong friend of Israel. Jewish New Yorkers surely disagreed with Cardinal O’Connor’s social views, but many have never forgotten him.

The new cardinal has a chance to continue Cardinal O’Connor’s good works. But he also faces difficult decisions in his own community. During his tenure, Catholic schools very likely will continue to close or consolidate. New Yorkers have a stake in how that process is managed—Catholic schools have been a beacon of hope in many minority neighborhoods, but that beacon is growing dim, indeed. New York’s education officials have to imagine life with fewer, and perhaps hardly any, Catholic schools. That means thousands more students in the public schools, with correspondingly increased costs.

But that is for the future. For now, it is enough to wish the new cardinal well, knowing that he will be with us for a good long time.

At noon sharp, in the rectory next door, the Rev. Raymond Rafferty, the church's pastor, leaned forward, checked his watch and told The Observer gently, "Now, I really have to go." He had to prepare for the 12:10 Mass. The church holds services at least once daily during the week, and four times on Sunday. But the nave, which holds 400 people, is rarely full.

Once, Corpus Christi would have towered over the neighboring apartment buildings. But now it sits literally in the shadows of Columbia's Teachers' College across 121st Street, yet another totem of the university's swallowing of its upper Manhattan neighborhood.

Columbia, in fact, owns every building on both sides of the street, save for one co-op and the church. And several blocks to the northwest, the university is undertaking a massive 17-acre expansion into West Harlem that will inevitably mean years of demolitions and noisy construction. When it's finished, Columbia will have transformed an area once filled with auto mechanics and small manufacturers into a modern day "piazza," as its architect, the Italian Renzo Piano, describes it.

SLIDESHOW: E=MC Awesome: An Exclusive Look at Columbia's New Manhattanville Science Center

According to the most recent tax assessment rolls, provided by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and analyzed by The Observer, Columbia and N.Y.U. have amassed valuable properties rivaling the Catholic Church's long-held portfolio. The market value of city property owned by each of the three institutions appears to hover around $1.5 billion, based on the assessment rolls. The Catholic Church still claims a slight lead, but N.Y.U. and Columbia trail by only a couple of hundred million dollars each, and will almost certainly eclipse the church soon.

Though exact numbers are impossible to attain (the universities and the church own numerous properties under different registered names, and there are in total more than 11,000 registered property owners in the city), they clearly show that the gap has narrowed. Moreover, given the downward trends for membership in major religious organizations in the United States, time is on the universities' side.

New York City, which even a decade ago boasted a strong (and strongly religious) manufacturing working class, has rapidly become a wonkhub of nearly 600,000 post-high school students, according to the last census. The academic expansion in the city has come at the same time that the Catholic Church-once New York's largest private landlord and community presence-has confronted decline. In neighborhoods like Father Rafferty's, the role reversal is startling, with colleges starting to elbow out the church for space and influence. "New York is an intellectual city," said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning at New York University (and an Observer contributor). "People want to study in New York. You have to recognize how much this has really changed."

While the Catholic Church, like other major religious organizations, struggles with declining resources and attendance, universities are scrambling to find room to grow. Father Rafferty, who before Corpus Christi was a New York University chaplain for almost a decade, smiles kindly when he talks about Columbia's reign over the neighborhood. "I understand the need for expansion," he said. "But you also need to think about the community you're expanding into."

He does not blame the university for any decline in church membership. "It's not their direct intention to cause that," Father Rafferty said. "Some of this is driven by society changing, and the failure of churches to evangelize, welcome newcomers, and scandals within the church."

For decades, Corpus Christi has, in fact, enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with its Ivy League neighbor. While a student at Columbia in the 1930s, for instance, Thomas Merton, later to become one of the 20th century's most famous Catholics as an author and lecturer, was baptized there, and young people still approach Father Rafferty asking to be christened after reading Merton's memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain. But starting in the '60s and '70s, partly because of its neighbor's growing population of students and faculty, Corpus Christi watched its membership drop (though it has climbed slightly in the past decade). Apartment buildings once filled with strongly Catholic Irish and Hispanic immigrants have become housing for undergrads and their TAs, who may or may not see the need for Catholic theology or organized religion in general.

The church still controls some of the city's most valuable real estate. Amid the anxious consumerism of Fifth Avenue, St. Patrick's Cathedral rises largely unchanged over the past 150 years. When the church bought this land in 1810, in what was then the countrified city limits, "People thought it was a folly," said Paul Moses, a journalism professor at Brooklyn College, who's reported on the Catholic Church for decades. But the church's understanding of demographics, its insight into the rhythms of birth, marriage and death in New York, was unmatched. The cathedral cost about $4 million to build, and now St. Patrick's, which is also the seat of the archbishop of New York, has more than $191 million in assets, making it one of the 150 biggest landowners on the city's assessment rolls.    

But even as the value of St. Patrick's and other church properties has skyrocketed, many other Catholic parishes are in dire financial straits. "The church is land-rich and cash-poor," said one person familiar with its holdings. "There is no question many of the properties are an economic drain." Many of the buildings should be demolished, the source added, but a lot still enjoy "prime, prime locations."

Though baptized Catholics still make up roughly 40 percent of the New York City population, according to researchers, church attendance is down locally 20 percent over the past decade (a challenge faced by many other mainstream Christian denominations), and the church has also faced diminishing enrollment in parochial schools. The archdiocese of New York, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island as well as several upstate counties, announced in 2007 that it would close two parishes and merge six with others-although a spokesman noted that the situation is ongoing and all are being used as worship sites.

The archdiocese also recently announced that 27 of 185 schools will close this year-the biggest reorganization in its history-including five schools that will close or merge in Manhattan. Since the closing of St. Vincent's in early 2010, no Catholic hospitals are left in any of the five boroughs.
"Within the church," Mr. Moses said, "there's a real effort being made to use real estate as an asset. They're facing such financial difficulties, and [real estate] will help them develop a solid financial base."

The decisions can be heartbreaking, and sometimes deeply divisive. Closing a school or church is "like a death," said Timothy King, a real estate agent at CPEX Realty, who has helped the church manage some of its assets. "The cardinal and bishop give a lot of prayerful consideration to all of these matters," he said, "to have an outcome that's going to assure the long-term benefit for everyone."

On Sunday, The Brooklyn Paper reported that the Brooklyn diocese, which includes Queens as well, called in three squad cars to oversee the last Mass at Our Lady of Montserrat in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was closed, as scheduled, a day later. Its pastor, the Rev. Jim O'Shea, had vocally opposed the closing, backed by a number of parishioners. "It's a complete shame that instead of making an appearance and thanking the community, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio sent the police in fear that people would protest because they know the truth behind the closure is political," one worshiper told The Paper.

Meanwhile, Bishop DiMarzio put out a statement saying he was "deeply aware of the sacrifice that these changes mean for those who worship in these churches."
Even after closing parishes or schools, the church usually chooses to hold on to its assets, sometimes leasing them to other institutions such as charter schools. The demographics could still change, and the church has also perhaps learned from the tragic example of St. Vincent's Hospital, a Village institution run by the Sisters of Charity that the church sold off ward by ward until it was forced to close the entire hospital. A plan by the hospital and developer Rudin Management to build condos that would help support St. Vincent's buckled under community opposition.

As the case of St. Vincent's illustrates, finding new uses for the buildings is also not easy: What good is a church as anything other than a church? "Unless at some point we're in need of a leper colony, prison or mental asylum," a source said, the buildings are "functionally obsolete."

The church's decline affects us all. For nearly a century, religious institutions stood between many New Yorkers and desperation. "The church was extremely important in helping in the rebuilding of New York City," said former mayor Ed Koch, who recognized early on in his political career the importance of reaching out to Catholic voters, especially the so-called white ethnic ones in the outer boroughs. "And it remains extremely important in delivering services. The Catholic Church is No. 1 in the delivery of social services, better than what the civil service can do."  

As N.Y.U. and Columbia rise to dominance, will their presence be as benign?

The universities have both embarked on their biggest expansion plans in over 100 years, and their respective neighborhoods' opposition has been closely chronicled. N.Y.U plans to grow its campus by more than 40 percent, adding 3 million-plus square feet in Greenwich Village, an engineering school in Brooklyn and a satellite campus on Governors Island. The main campus of the school-at more than 22,000 undergraduates, the largest private college in the U.S.-is already situated in one of the most densely populated areas of the city.
Stone churches once rose a couple of stories above their neighbors; N.Y.U. plans to build space equaling the Empire State Building in Greenwich Village, which critics say will dwarf its surroundings.

Columbia has also announced a $6.3 billion expansion plan that will add 6.8 million square feet of additional classrooms and other facilities, including the 17-acre West Harlem campus. The new campus will almost certainly drive up property values and make it more difficult for members of the working-class neighborhood to continue living there. Some clergy have raised objections that the plans do not include affordable housing on the site of the campus.

Even as Columbia grows and the church's influence wanes, it is hardly a neatly plotted story of the university triumphing at the expense of the church. It's more like two stories running parallel in the same setting. Columbia even met with local clergy when beginning its expansion efforts nearly a decade ago, but it did not go well: Some clergy stopped attending. "The situation has been compared to David and Goliath," said the Rev. Earl Kooperkamp of St. Mary's Episcopal Church on 126th Street and Amsterdam. "All David had to do was take Goliath off the field. ... How do you get Goliath to sit down, make peace and be a good neighbor?"

New Yorkers will have to make peace with the new Goliaths rising in their midst. Universities and colleges already control more than 22 percent of office space in New York City, according to Cassidy Turley, including 72 million square feet in Manhattan. Columbia's holdings totaled 19.6 million square feet, and N.Y.U. owns 15 million feet, according to the report. "These universities have become powerhouses financially," Mr. Moses, the journalism professor at Brooklyn College, said. "The churches don't seem to command that kind of influence. They're begging foundations to keep their schools alive.

"You are talking about money," he added. "Universities have lots of money and the churches don't."

The question remains: Can universities step in to fill the gap left by a declining church, providing education, hospitals and a sense of community, given the relentless hustle in this city?

"Universities help add to the city's quality of life," Mr. Moss, of N.Y.U., said. "Within the university, you have seminars, theater groups, lectures. They become an important part of the city's fabric."

Much like the role the Catholic Church once filled? "Yes, exactly like that."

But when The Observer floated the same idea to the Rev. Thomas Shelley, a professor of Catholic history at Fordham, he laughed gently. "The main business of the church is religion," he said. "Universities don't do that and aren't expected to do it."  

lkusisto@observer.com

While we were tracking down the juicy details for the story, Columbia shared some eye-popping new renderings of the new Jerome L. Greene Science Center at the school's Manhattanville campus--part of its surge in real estate. The new designs are so astounding, we couldn't hold onto them one minute longer. Well done, Renzo.

Enjoy this latest glimpse of the science center, and be sure to check back later to see who is winning the epic collar-and-gown showdown.

SLIDESHOW: Renzo Piano's Jerome L. Greene Science Center at Columbia. >>

realestate@observer.com