Father John McNulty Interview, 2011

Abstract

This interview is with Father John McNulty, Pastor of St. Ann Parish, Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The first part of the interview details the history of St. Ann and how it was a spin-off of St. Thomas Aquinas. There is also discussion of the founding pastor, Father John Mary Powers and how he pushed for a new church including his presentation of several plans. Powers also obtained materials for the church and had a great deal of influence on the design and layout of the Parish including St. Ann elementary. Discussion continues with structural details about the church and the elementary school St. Ann. The later part of the interview includes information regarding particulars of the parish community and social efforts.

Interviewee

McNulty, John (interviewee)

Interviewer

Valore, Kenneth (interviewer); Lanese, James (interviewer)

Project

Sacred Landmarks

Date

8-10-2011

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

43 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Father John McNulty Interview, 2011" (2011). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 127011.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/374

Related Resources

Sacred Landmarks @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Ken Valore [00:00:00] Start again. Okay. My name is Ken Valore. I’m joined by Father John McNulty to conduct an interview for the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities to document the history of St. Ann’s Church. The interview is being held at St. Ann’s located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. And Father, could you state your name and basically your background?

John McNulty [00:00:25] My name is Father John McNulty. I’m an ordained priest for the Diocese of Cleveland since 1973, having served in parishes as an associate, also doing education at Catholic high schools. And I’ve been a pastor of two parishes at Holy Cross in Euclid for 20 years, and here now at Communion of Saints, St. Ann’s Church, since January of 2010.

Ken Valore [00:00:53] So how long has the congregation been in Cleveland?

John McNulty [00:00:56] This congregation was established in 1915 by the then Bishop John Farrelly, who was bishop here until 1921. Bishop Farrelly felt that there was an outgrowth of Catholics coming from the city of Cleveland, mainly in the area. Area of what we would call Glenville today, St. Thomas Aquinas, specifically, who are moving out to the Heights. And he chose John Mary Powers, who was at that time an assistant at St. Thomas’s to establish this parish. So it goes back to 1915.

Ken Valore [00:01:37] Okay, can you tell us the story about the church building, basically, the facility?

John McNulty [00:01:49] When Father Powers came here, he wanted the site to be prominent. So the diocese had purchased this property, which is on this corner of Coventry and Cedar Road. It would have been mainly area that was just beginning to develop. And he was a man who had a vision. And so his vision was to. At that time, this would have been very common in our diocese, that one of the priorities would have been to have a Catholic grade school for kids, for students. It would have been a place where, generally speaking, you would. Wanted to have a place of worship as soon as possible. So what John Mary Powers did was he built his first church. The church is presently called Powers Hall. After the present building was built, it was turned into a gym. But it was the first stone building on the property, along with a grade school, that they made great sacrifices to build this institution. The former church probably seated about 300 people. It was a stone building, very, very simple, not much to it. There was a choir loft. If you are to go and examine the building itself, you can figure out sort of like the outline of the church itself. What he intended to do was he wanted to build this grand church, and he wanted it to be so prominent that he intended it to sit on the corner of Coventry and Cedar, that it would be seen by everyone. And he had this vision that he would build a tower that would be higher than anything in order for people to know exactly where it was. He began to start visioning this building early on, after Farrelly died, Bishop Shrembs came, who was bishop here until the mid-’40s. And there were several times that Powers submitted drawings for his church, and they were always rejected by the bishop. He felt that they were too grandiose. They did not fit into the architecture, what a Catholic church should look like. And so they were always rejected after. In the meantime, Father Powers kept trying to do this building. So he started to purchase items. And what he would do is, during the Depression, he went and bought items, literally pillars and chandeliers and fixtures that were in banks that were going under. And he took this material and literally stored it underneath the former church, which is now our school cafeteria, with the intent that eventually he would build this church. When Bishop Hoban came to this diocese, he again submitted his plans, and again they were rejected. And he did come up with a schematic of what his church was going to look like. Well, the present building doesn’t really quite look like what he. But I think was probably his way of trying to get around it. So he was finally given permission in 1947 to start building this church. They did a big campaign, and he literally came up with this idea. It was almost like a Greek church, Greek temple. And one of his first obstacles was the house he was living in. The stone house, which we are presently in, was in the way. So he literally moved this building to another place, which was probably unheard of at the time. And he attached the church with this grand tower that is one of the highest points in Cuyahoga county, on the east side of Cleveland. So if you go to the top of the tower today, I did last year watch fireworks from seven different communities so that I could enjoy July 4th. So his intent was to build this wonderful building. It was pretty pristine in the sense that it did not have a lot of religious art in it when he established it. He did intend it to be a classic building, and that’s what it is today. So we get lots of people. Many people, visitors come here because they are enthralled by the building. It does not have an architectural statement to it. It’s not a Neo-Gothic and not Baroque or anything like that. It has its own feeling to it. Unique is the word. That’s very good word, yes. Yeah. So I think that’s how it’s established the building with the present building that people refer to as St. Ann’s Church was probably finished in 1952, and it was probably the last building to be built on the property after the original church, after the school, and after the rectory, parish house. He did intend to build a high school and he would like to have had a college. At one time there was more property owned by the parish. It was across the street and there were tennis courts. And that was sold in the, I believe the 1960s, ’60s, by the pastor at that time for money.

Ken Valore [00:07:29] How much? What’s the area?

John McNulty [00:07:32] I mean, acreage?

Ken Valore [00:07:34] Acreage.

John McNulty [00:07:34] Probably about nine acres of land, I would say.

Ken Valore [00:07:37] Yeah. And I think you made a comment about the school, right?

John McNulty [00:07:48] You mean about how it’s built? Yes, yes. Father Powers, as I said previously, was very much involved in the politics of Cleveland Heights. He was very much involved with the development of housing. And he wanted a large school. And the council or the administration of Cleveland Heights would not let him build a building higher than two stories because of their zoning laws. And so he had a way of getting around it. He sort of like built this two story building. And on top of this two story building, he had this walkway, like a porch. It’s a stone walkway, but he literally built another floor behind it. So when you look at the school building itself, it looks like it has two floors. But when you go to behind the school building, you realize there really are three floors. And actually they put classrooms up there. And at one time when this school was probably over a thousand students, they needed every bit of room that they had. But the city would never have given him permission. But Father Powers had a way of just finding his way around the law, which probably was rather clever.

Ken Valore [00:09:07] How many students do you have in.

John McNulty [00:09:08] This country right now? We have 260 students. It’s a pretty small school.

Ken Valore [00:09:15] Any idea about consolidating?

John McNulty [00:09:17] I mean, there has been talk. One of the issues is at one time in this area there were four Catholic grade schools. There was a Catholic grade School at St. Philomena and at Christ the King in East Cleveland, at St. Louis and St. Ann’s at one time, St. Ann’s probably was a good sized building. All the other three schools closed. And even when they started to talk about consolidation, it probably was too late for some of those building schools to consolidate. Many people choose to go to the private schools like Hathaway, Brown University, Lawrence School, instead of sending them into a Catholic school. Now, less than two miles away from us, you have Gesu, which is a huge school, University Heights, and about a mile Away from us is St. Dominic’s which is a very small school. Personally, that I would think that eventually there has to be, like, either an area school or one of the schools will close. And that’s very hard for. This parish prides itself on its school, but it’s a very small school. It really is.

Ken Valore [00:10:51] Can you comment on the stained glass windows?

John McNulty [00:10:56] The stained glass windows were put into the church in the 1919, probably 1970s. They’re probably 1970s. Father Jim Kenny was the pastor. This is an aside. Father Powers was pastor here for 51 years and had a tremendous impact on this parish even to this day. His name is raised at many times about what Father Powers wants, what Father Powers doesn’t, even though he has been deceased for all these years. One of the real challenges that pastors have had in this parish prior to my coming, I would suppose, is they lived in the shadow of Father Powers. So he made. He was such a strong personality that he made an indelible mark on how this parish should be. So the second pastor was Monsignor Walsh, who had been rector of the cathedral downtown. And it probably was given to him as an award, a reward for his faithful service. Well, in all the time he was here, he struggled with trying to get the people to do some things, and they just refused to do it. He was followed by Father Jim Kenny. Father Kenny was here for about seven years, and in that time he decided that it would be nice if they brought some color into the church. And he put in the stained glass windows as they exist today, with a big project for the parish. It was also big controversy with the parish because the older parishioners were saying, that’s not what Father Powers wants. So the story goes that once Father Kenny was done putting in the stained glass windows, he decided he needed a change because it was. It was such a contentious situation. It’s an interesting aside. The only man who ever was here longer, the second longest pastor in the history of this parish is Father Jim Singler. And he was here for 13 years, which is really unheard of. My previous assignment, I was there for over 20 years, but I was one of those short list. Most of the pastors were there for 24, 25 years. It was sort of like unheard of that you would move after 13 years, especially in a prominent parish. But it was a. There was. There’s always been a little tension with the pastors here and the parishioners. Not all the parishioners fault either, I may add. But anyway.

Ken Valore [00:13:37] Well, you mentioned that when Powers had the Windows. They were just kind of tinted.

John McNulty [00:13:43] They were a tinted window. He felt that the beauty of the church was centered on the sanctuary area. He wanted everything focused there. He did not want to draw any attention other than to the sanctuary of the church. So they were like a tinted window. They were not meant to. Maybe more frosted than anything else. You couldn’t see out, but you could bring a lot of light in. That was his. He felt by bringing lots of light into the space, it would enhance the beauty of the building. And there might be some truth to that.

Ken Valore [00:14:17] You also mentioned that there’s no statues in the church.

John McNulty [00:14:20] There are no statues. Whether or not he intended statues or not, I do not know. One of the problems with this building is it was never totally completed. There are some drawings that are found in the archives of the diocese that have renderings of statues that would go into the church and a big crucifix that would be on. In the back of the sanctuary. None of that is found here at all. There are no. Instead he has paintings, has a painting of Mary, has a painting of Joseph. He has a painting of the crucifixion, but he never had actual statues. The only statues that are found in this building are in the vestibule of the building. There’s a statue of St. Ann and St. Joachim, the parents of Mary, St. Ann’s the church. And there’s a. There’s this. That’s basically it. You do not have, like. If a lot of churches built around the time of St. Ann’s would have had statues of different saints. You do not have that in this building ever. And that might have been because of his desire for everything to be focused. It’s also an indication that he never was able to finish everything he wanted. So as I said to you earlier, the church is meant to be air conditioned. There’s vents in the building. He just never put in the air conditioning.

Ken Valore [00:15:44] You also mentioned the original heat.

John McNulty [00:15:46] The original heat was in the floor of the building because he wanted radiant heat so that he would not have to have registers or anything like that that would impede the church. Actually, it was a good system. Unfortunately, they had some problems with it, so they had to put in a different system in the. I believe in the 80s, the late ’80s, early ’90s. In the original property here, all the boiler systems were underneath the garage and everything went out from there to take care of all the building. Probably with a great expense, of great waste of money. We were going all over the property. But it all came from the garage.

Ken Valore [00:16:31] I noticed there was a sign, Walsh Hall.

John McNulty [00:16:34] Walsh Hall is named after the second pastor. It’s the basement of the church. It would be the place where we have gatherings. That’s named after Monsignor Richard Walsh, who was the second pastor of the parish.

Ken Valore [00:16:50] And what kind of part. How is the church integrated in the community? What kind of services do you provide for your parishioners, etc.

John McNulty [00:17:07] Well, we have a grade school. This parish is very involved ecumenically in the Interfaith Council of Cleveland Heights. Okay. That’s always been. We are also involved in the Heights Hunger center, which distributes food. We are part of an educational program that is sponsored by the Catholic Church and by the major denominations of the Protestant church. It’s called the Heights Ecumenical Education System. I can give you a program flyer on our way out. So we are very much involved in that, in education. This city prides itself on its diversity. Okay. Because of the new clustering of parishes, this parish is very involved in a hunger center sponsored by the Diocese of Cleveland and St. Vincent Paul, called the Father Mike Whitman, Father Michael Whitman Osmond Center. And it distributes food and clothing to people in East Cleveland and in Cleveland Heights. But it’s located actually in East Cleveland in itself, as the other church, we oversee St Philomena’s so we are very much involved in that. We also have people very much involved in tutoring of children in the East Cleveland school system. We have a program we call Safe Saturday working with disadvantaged kids. So we are very much involved in the community that way. As a parish. This parish has sponsored concerts. There have been concerts held here in the church. There’s a very interesting thing about before this church was opened as a church, before its first Mass was ever said, the Cleveland Orchestra used it for a concert. And they held a concert here in this church. And when they celebrated, I believe, their 85th anniversary, part of the Cleveland Orchestra came back to do a concert in the building. In my last two years, my time here, we’ve had three concerts since I’ve been here that we have sponsored. And the fourth concert we had was the dedication of the organ here. We brought in a very famous organist who did a concert on a Sunday afternoon. So in a sense, it’s the arts and all that involvement. It’s very much. We also have activities, of course, for kids and athletic programs and a youth ministry program that reaches out to kids in the neighborhood. Wasn’t there a.

James Lanese [00:19:54] Strong program, Powers Players?

John McNulty [00:19:56] There was. That probably went on until the. I guess, the late ’80s. They had a Theatrical group, same vein. They would put on programs and musicals and plays in Powers Hall. John Mary Powers. Father Powers was very interested in the arts and very interested in culture. And so much of that would have come as a result of his own vision.

Ken Valore [00:20:23] Can you give us some more history about the tower?

John McNulty [00:20:27] The Tower. Rationale, rationale for the tower. The tower is what connects the present rectory, parish offices to the church. The tower was built for two reasons. The first reason was Father Powers intended to have a high school here staffed by a religious community of brothers or priests. He built a tower which is eight floors with two rooms on each floor above. The second. And the brothers would live there in the tower, and it would be like their religious house. The main floor of the tower would have a living room, a community room, we would call it a dining room and a kitchen, and then there would be these bedrooms. And so he intended for them to live there. He intended to have an elevator put in so they could go from one floor to the other. It never was completed. The rooms exist. Okay. The second reason for why probably there are three reasons from how the tower was ending up being used. The second reason for why he instituted it. He had a very good friend, Father Cardinal Mooney, who was a very good friend, who would come to visit in order to give him privacy. Cardinal Mooney would live in the tower on the main floor. There is a very large bedroom there, which I think intended it to be probably their kitchen area, but they turn it into a bedroom. There are two bedrooms and there’s like a living room. So he lived in a study. There’s like a library. He would come and visit and he. On the base of the tower was a chapel. The chapel was never used by the parish. The chapel was intended for Father, for Cardinal Mooney for his own personal use. The other reason for why they ended up using the tower was because at one time there were a number of priests who lived here. There are rooms in this house for five priests, and at one time, probably five priests lived here. And so the main room of the tower was used, like, as a common room for the priests to gather in the evening. It was more of their private space away from the offices. But that’s why he built the tower. And you can still climb the tower every once in a while. We run our little tours, and people running up and down the. Takes a little bit of energy to get up to the top because the. Not in the best of shape, but you can see all over Cuyahoga County. You can see why it was called Forest City at one time, because it looks like you’re in the midst of a forest.

Ken Valore [00:23:20] I notice there’s a bell in there. When’s the last time that bell was rung?

John McNulty [00:23:28] There’s a carillon system in there now. I want to say the carillon system was probably put in there in the 90s, maybe. Maybe a little before that. Maybe the ’80s. The bell was used up until ’90, I believe. The carillon there was a mechanism that controlled the bells that could get them to ring. They’re beautiful bells, and I would love to see them reworked. At one time they were going to sell the bells. This is in the late ’90s, when evidently they put in the last carillon system and there was a purchaser of the bells. The problem is they didn’t know how to get the bells out. Yes. They didn’t have a high enough crane, which is really, in one sense, a blessing for us. So I would love to see us, if we ever were to be able to accomplish it, to rework the bells. It would be beautiful in the area because there is not just one bell. There’s three bells up there.

Ken Valore [00:24:26] Okay.

John McNulty [00:24:27] And one of them is absolutely huge. I don’t know how they would. I don’t know how they got them up there. That’s another question we don’t want to. There’s some things we don’t know. But somehow we got the bells up there and they. They can ring, but the mechanism is all shot.

Ken Valore [00:24:44] Okay. It’s kind of my understanding a lot of churches that had bells quit using them because neighbors start complaining.

John McNulty [00:24:54] Well, and that happens. In my previous parish, we put in a bell system and people would complain, but after a while they got used to them. But actually having bells is. A number of the churches around Here have bells. St. Paul’s Episcopal has a bell, I believe. I believe the Our Church of Savior, which is a Methodist church, has bells. So I don’t think that would be our issue as well, much as getting them to work. They do not seem to complain about the bills. Does carillon system. But you are correct, people.

Ken Valore [00:25:28] You know, the church is, I would say, vast inside. How many people does it seat?

John McNulty [00:25:37] I would say 750. It looks bigger than it really is because you have those side transepts. But I would say about 750. We have another church that we take care of, St. Philomena’s which is older than this church. It goes back to 1902. Now, the building and part of the present church is original. Part of it’s not that space Is smaller but larger capacity, seating wise. But this is sort of like. I think it was his intention to be, you know, like grand. And you’re lots of space. So when you do walk in, you tend to think. I had a visitor here last week, said, oh, what does this seat, 1200? Well, not really, you know, because it’s such a sort of overwhelming more than anything else.

Ken Valore [00:26:37] Yeah, I noticed. I was walking to the front of the building where you have the.

John McNulty [00:26:43] The pillars.

Ken Valore [00:26:44] Pillars. And then are those eagles on top?

John McNulty [00:26:49] They’re probably from some bank somewhere. It’s like the Griffins on the old altar. You know, you would never use find griffins in a Christian church. And here they are. They all have to. This is all this. These artifacts that he got from these banks, and he just found places to put them.

Ken Valore [00:27:09] Interesting. How has the community changed around you? And also how was your number of parishioners? Makeup of the parishioners changed over the years?

John McNulty [00:27:30] Well, in the 19 in the night, I would say in 1990, St. Ann’s parish had about 1100 households. That’s all it had. It then had a resurgence and it came to about 1500 when we. This cluster was formed. We have about 2800 households. Where other denominations figure their population individually, we declare it by households. So the parish is strong. You see, in this area, there is a change. There’s a change in demographics racially, economically. And you see some people who have moved out, and yet you see young families who have come in to buy these big homes. I’m not certain how they’re able to afford them, but. Or even to fill them. But we also have an interesting connection with University Circle and Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve with a number of graduate students and those in medical school who come here to worship. So we have a very interesting population of young adults in their 20s and 30s who come here. They’re not necessarily registered as parishioners, but they find this place while they’re in school as a place where they worship on a regular basis. So that’s one of the challenges we have as a parish. Now, how do we bring them and include them in the parish? This is an older parish. There are two ways about it. There is a significant population of older people, but we have a significant number of young people who are in this area. And it’s shown by our rather morbid way of saying, putting it by the number of baptisms we have a year as opposed to the number of funerals we have a year. Our baptisms outnumber the number of funerals we have. So that said that you have a process of growth. So there may be a resurgence in this area of young families. But it’s again Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland were runs the whole gamut from the very poor to the very wealthy. People who are Jewish, people who are Christian. [ We have a number of. Number of people of the Islamic faith. We also have a number of Filipinos, some Hispanics, not a lot. Definitely a strong number of African Americans whom are not usually Catholic. So there’s a real question about how do you welcome them to your. To your community, even into your grade school. So it is a real cross section. You wouldn’t. This parish doesn’t necessarily have an ethnic contingency to it though. They would declare themselves Irish as Father Powers was Irish, therefore they must be Irish anyway. But it was an Irish community at one time. No truth about it. And I’m. My parents are from Ireland, so I will declare it Irish anyway.

Ken Valore [00:31:08] Did you. Did the church ever have a credit union or anything?

John McNulty [00:31:12] Not that I know of. They had their floral industry. They had the greenhouse. He was running his greenhouse for a long time. Father Powers decided that this greenhouse, which one of them still exists on top of the church, would supply all the flowers for the church. But it also became a source of income because those who would have weddings at St. Ann’s would also buy their flowers from Father Powers or from the greenhouse. He had a man who lived in a home down the street that ran the greenhouse. And it was going fine until the floral industry sort of like had a problem with doing competition with St. Ann’s because you couldn’t get in here. But it also leads to the fact of his involvement in the development of housing in this area. There was a group called the Meadowbrook Housing Authority. They had a little realty office that you- When they were developing this area, it worked through the Meadowbrook. And he had a lot to do with the planning of this area and what was going to be allowed in commercially. As I said before, within a half mile of St. Ann’s Church there was an ordinance that no commercial business could be found. And to this day it is very true, they do not. There are no commercial build businesses in this area. The one exception was the reality office that he established to for the housing. But that was sold a number of years ago and it’s gone. So now we’re in compliance with the building law.

Ken Valore [00:32:54] When he was involved with the housing, was it, you know, like based on, you know, sizes?

John McNulty [00:33:02] No, I don’t think that was it. I think he helped people, people find places. I think you had young families coming in and I’m sure it was a strong Catholic area at the time, at least around the church. So he Knew people from St. Thomas Aquinas who were moving up to the Heights. And I’m sure he probably helped them find a place that they built these homes. And if you wander through, the one nice thing about living in this area is homes are not the same. So you, you know, you don’t. It’s not like going to some parts of county and they’re all like, look like they were all cut out of the same mold. Here you have some phenomenal homes. They’re older homes and they go back many years. A lot of them are from the ’20s and ’30s and 40s, but some of them are, you know, these beautiful homes. So.

Ken Valore [00:34:03] Jim, do you have any-

James Lanese [00:34:08] I guess my question, you had mentioned that literally since 1990, over the past 20 years that your numbers have increased from 800 to almost 2800 families.

John McNulty [00:34:24] In the clustered parish and so forth.

James Lanese [00:34:28] Has that manifested itself with church attendance?

John McNulty [00:34:33] And that’s hard to say in general, church attendance is down all over the place because of issues in the church, scandals in church and things like that have affected us. You have also a generation of young people who have children who do not are not necessarily as connected to the church. What the causes are, I’m not really certain. So you have a different. My parents’ generation would have been much stronger in the sense of their presence. This generation, they look at the church as a place that provides Catholic education. They want a Catholic education. What that means, I’m not certain. Sometimes for them it is, you get a good education, get into a good high school, good college, you know, so their involvement in the parish is not as strong as probably the generation two generations ahead of them. You also have people who themselves were not necessarily raised in any type of religious denomination, whether it be Methodist or Lutheran or Catholic or even being Jewish. They’re not that strong since. So you have sometimes you have people who themselves are trying to find out what they believe. And so it’s a different type of experience than I would have grown up with as a kid.

Ken Valore [00:36:09] You think part of it is because when the school was booming, yeah, people were more involved.

John McNulty [00:36:18] That is correct. The tendency in a lot of parish, and I’m sure this is true of St. Rayfields, parents of kids in school tend to be a little more involved than others. Because why? They have a stake. Their kids have a stake in place. I also think that you have people who. There’s much greater movement of people than there would have been 50 years ago. People, when they moved into a neighborhood, they stayed there most of their lives. They weren’t going to go anywhere. We have much greater movement and people. You have the economic question. Part of our territory. Our territory presently includes East Cleveland, Cleveland Heights and a little bit of Cleveland. We have a huge territory. But if you were to say what is the denominate major denomination in that area? It may not be Catholic. The African Americans do not tend to be. We have a very small number in East Cleveland. The statistic that was given to us is that 3% of East Cleveland is Catholic. In Cleveland Heights, probably the statistic would be 20% of the people would be Catholic. That’s a far cry. So you’re dealing with a big territory and with the clustering issue. Some people were unhappy with the clustering. So therefore there’s that difficulty for people, and that may keep them distant from the church and distant from their practice. Or they may choose to go elsewhere, although they live in our area.

Ken Valore [00:37:52] Do you have any people that live…

John McNulty [00:37:56] Who used to live here and moved out and come back? Oh, yes, yes. There is a great. Both of those places. We have both St. Philomena’s and St. Ann’s there’s a great emotional attachment to the place of older people who do tend to come back. My guess would be most of the people who worship at St. Philomena’s on a weekend are coming from outside the neighborhood. Okay. We have a good number of people who come from elsewhere to worship here. Shaker Heights is not part of our parish, and yet we have a number of parishioners from Shaker Heights. University Heights is not part of our parish. You know, Mayfield Heights is not part of. But we have people who come in from their Lyndhurst, Gates Mills. They still come in. You know, they have a connection to the place. So.

Ken Valore [00:38:52] Right. Yeah. Shaker Heights has St. Dominic.

John McNulty [00:38:57] You have St. Dominic’s and you also have Our Lady Peace, which technically serves both places, Cleveland and Shaker.

Ken Valore [00:39:03] Chris, that’s a difference from the old.

John McNulty [00:39:06] Days where you never-

Ken Valore [00:39:07] You couldn’t- You-

John McNulty [00:39:08] You went to where you were.

Ken Valore [00:39:10] You had to get permission.

John McNulty [00:39:11] That is correct.

Ken Valore [00:39:12] Go into a different-

John McNulty [00:39:13] Right.

Ken Valore [00:39:13] Parish.

John McNulty [00:39:14] That is correct. Right. We still use that system for schools because sometimes someone will say, well, I want to go to your school, but I really belong to Jesu. We’ll say, well, you need permission. From Gesu, because that- That’s a- That becomes a funding issue. And you don’t want to be starting to say to Gesu, now you have to fund this kid who’s in school. They’re going to say, why we have our own school.

Ken Valore [00:39:41] Well, I think some parents. I mean, some places say, well, you want the kid?

John McNulty [00:39:47] Yeah, you can just go join there. Yeah.

Ken Valore [00:39:49] You belong to this parish, right?

John McNulty [00:39:53] That’s not our-

Ken Valore [00:39:54] Our rule.

John McNulty [00:39:55] We have a couple of families who belong to another Catholic church who choose to send their kids to school here. And that’s fine.

Ken Valore [00:40:03] Of course, there’s a lot of Catholic churches that don’t make school.

John McNulty [00:40:06] That is correct. That is correct. Right? That is correct.

James Lanese [00:40:13] You had also mentioned cooperation with the Heights Ecumenical Education program.

John McNulty [00:40:20] Right.

James Lanese [00:40:23] Do you, on any other forum or front, interact with fellow churches, Protestant churches, Jewish synagogues?

John McNulty [00:40:34] We do an ecumenical service every year for Thanksgiving. We are involved in what they call the Interfaith Council, which is basically ministers and pastors and priests in the area who meet once a month. And then we get involved in projects, working together. We’re the only Catholic parish in the area, so we’re the sort of like the odd people out. But yes. So they meet once a month. There is a. Sometimes we do programs together. Sometimes it’s like working on a project. That’s really how the Heights Hunger center started. It really started not because city of Cleveland Heights started it. It was started because the ecumenical group did it. And then eventually the city got involved in it after their. At one time, the interfaith council or the interfaith. The ministerial group had tremendous clout in Cleveland Heights. So, for instance, when they had the issue of the kids who sort of like upset the Coventry Street Fair, okay. The city officials came and talked to us. So there is that connection with the city. We have a very good. I would say we have a very good rapport with the city in the sense of issues that would face the city. The city is very willing to come and have a dialogue as to get inputs of the ministerial and people of congregations. So that’s a pretty good. It may be one of the strongest groups that I’ve ever come across.

Ken Valore [00:42:23] It’s a group that lends stability to the area.

John McNulty [00:42:26] Yes, right. So in that sense of social action things, there’s also. It’s not as formal, but many of the Protestant denominations and ourselves have met regarding youth ministry and involvement of kids. But it would not have been a formal thing. But there is sort of like this sharing of ideas that takes place. So in that sense, and that’s just begun this last year. And it extends itself beyond Cleveland Heights to, like, some of the churches in, like, Mayfield Heights. And even in dealing with Case Western Reserve Newman center and that involvement.

Ken Valore [00:43:20] Okay, Jim. Anything else, Father? Anything else you’d like?

John McNulty [00:43:26] No, that’s all right.

Ken Valore [00:43:28] All right. Well, then we thank you very much.

John McNulty [00:43:30] Oh, you’re welcome. Happy to do it for you.

Ken Valore [00:43:33] At some point, you will be getting a CD.

John McNulty [00:43:35] Okay.

Ken Valore [00:43:38] We’ll also let you know when this becomes-

John McNulty [00:43:44] A reality.

Ken Valore [00:43:45] Yes.

James Lanese [00:43:47] History, so to speak.

Ken Valore [00:43:48] Right.

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