Downtown New Bedford is an awkward combination of the historical and the abomination that hit many Massachusetts cities, the 1960s through early 1970s urban renewal. Some beautiful buildings were allowed to keep their original architectural beauty that had shown the world that at one time this was the richest city per capita in the country, others have been stripped of their character to get the clean cut futuristic lines that the 1960s thought would be the look of the space age, while other buildings were torn down to be replaced with cheap looking, boxy architecture.

Route 18 is a scar that cuts the downtown district off from the water front, a six lane highway that called for the razing of whole neighborhoods and architectural beauty so a person can get from the interstate to the stop light at Cove Street real fast, a highway to which traffic lights were recently added after the road was there for 40 plus years, one of which now stops traffic where there is no cross street.

One of the down town Buildings that replaced a wonderfully ornate 19th Century building is a flat, glazed brick fronted monastery and chapel to Our Lady of Yet One More Thing. It sits opposite the old newspaper building, a Renaissance Revival-style building, which was built in 1894, the massive public library with its granite steps and huge bronze doors, and City Hall, another structure that harkens back to the city’s wealthy standing, and it stands defiantly staring at them, mocking them like a new person in the neighborhood who shouldn’t be there.

Like many inner city monastery/chapel combos it has daily mass, perpetual adoration of the Eucharist, recitations of the Rosary, various other religion based activities, and the monks you occasionally see in the downtown area close to the monastery. Each day at 6:00 p.m. one stands on the building’s roof ringing the bell signaling vespers.

For all intents and purposes they are there, but not there, unseen, so you hardly see anything that would indicate any activity throughout the day unless something Gay is happening at which point the monks organize whoever is connected to the place to gather near a Gay event to yell false witness at the Gay people and anyone else at the event, or praying the Rosary in a very ostentatious way that, I am sure, makes them feel like they are doing something, if not simply using the Rosary like garlic is used against vampires.

The presence of these little group activities are so rare as to be noticed when they happen, and are deserving of Richard Attenborough telling us about the rare appearance of some reclusive creature that comes out for a rare and specific ritual.

“Here we have the reclusive monk who, rarely seen, will come out of his lair when it perceives the presence of Gay people exercising their rights as citizens.”

They appeared opposite the public library the morning it held “Drag Queen Story Hour”, holding signs condemning those attending to an eternity in hell, and yelling falsehoods about Gay people, lying in the name of Jesus. And there were the Rosary reciters.

Apparently a tax exempt entity decided it had the right to tell the taxpayer funded public library which taxpayers it should exclude from library usage.

Then they were gone.

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At the first film of the annual film festival organized by the LGBT Southcoast Network, there they were again. They had walked the three blocks from the monastery to the New Bedford Whaling Museum where the festival is held in the museum’s theater that is open to community use.

People, Gay and Straight, who wanted to attend had to pass by the monk’s group praying the Rosary either to imply those attending needed prayers to be saved, or to get personal brownie points with the Deity.

I lived for years in the Buckle of the Bible Belt getting yelled at by the Westboro Baptist Church and local fundamentalists so, rather than being the big thing the participants thought it was, in reality, it was sadly second string.

Since I live down town, I walk to many places I need to get to. Very often I have to pass the bus station with its passengers and regular denizens of the homeless, the addicted, and the mentally ill. If they aren’t actually hanging out at the bus station, they are at the post office across the street on one side sitting on the steps and retaining wall, or across the other street on the sidewalk in front of a closed bar. Although it is one block from the monastery, and although I have seen the Mother Teresa nuns, whose convent is five blocks away, at the bus station talking with people (They once stopped to talk non-judgmentally with me assuming I was homeless when I was just sitting on a small retention wall making a phone call while walking home, shabbily dressed, from the auto repair shop where I had just dropped of my car)  no matter what time of day I have passed the place, which I pass by often, unlike the nuns I have seen, I have never seen a monk there.

One block from the monastery/chapel there are people in need of housing, food, and hope, but the monks et al would rather bother film festival attendees, who just ignored them, three blocks away.

Matthew 25:35-40

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

“Then the righteous will answer him,

‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? We were too busy trying to keep a Drag Queen from reading a book to children in a public library and people from seeing a main stream movie.”

Meanwhile, another local priest has been accused of years of sexual abuse.