Visitation not just property

To the editor:

(re: “Visitation remains empty while neighbors wait,” Dec. 13)

I couldn’t help but smile at the unremarked irony contained in your recent lead story concerning the Visitation “property.”

I recall an unfortunate time years ago when the education department could not cross the threshold of Visitation School in order to provide certain mandated “needs” instruction. Rather, a bus utilized as a mobile instruction vehicle was parked curbside through the school day with its diesel singing away in obeisance to an absurd and strident remedy dealing with the separation issue.

Now years later, we see those political heirs circling the Visitation property like ravenous vultures, circling without even a thought given to the sense of loss still felt by the parishioners of Visitation and the graduates of its great school. We still mourn and we hold the betrayal of the Archdiocese as deep as we ever have held it.

Still that betrayal notwithstanding, and the reality of our fate understood, we at least should expect from our elected as well as appointed representatives the respect and the true understanding of this holy ground as our place of faith, memory and Communion table. And not as “property” to be bartered and to be developed in the manner that the article reported.

Canonical pronouncements, commercial acquisitions and political machinations aside, our Visitation will never be desacralized from that which resides inside each of its parishioners. As this inevitable process goes forward, we just ask the community and those involved directly to understand this as well as the void that exists in our community.

It was never property to us.

James Dalton