Sin v. The Monsignor

MORALITY

To Monsignor Joseph A. McCaffrey, it often seemed as if the devil himself had been the architect of his parish. At night, the streets teem with vagrants, homosexuals and brazen hookers. Bookstores flaunt their pornographic wares, and nudie movie houses flicker a mix of erotica and violence almost until dawn. As pastor of New York's Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church on 42nd Street, only two blocks off Broadway, McCaffrey spent 36 years crusading against the seamy side of the Great White Way. Acting like a one-man Legion of Decency, he won the newspaper title "Bishop of Times Square."

A pugnacious faith in the old virtues came naturally to McCaffrey. He was born of Irish immigrant stock and reared in the melting-pot atmosphere of The Bronx. Later he was awarded the Silver Star and Croix de guerre for his heroism in the trenches of France as a U.S. Army chaplain during World War I. Even before he came to Holy Cross in 1932, succeeding the late Father Francis P. Duffy (who won fame with the "Fighting 69th" Regiment back when that was an honorable number), McCaffrey honed his appreciation of law enforcement as chaplain to New York's Roman Catholic policemen.

"Awful Changes." McCaffrey indeed patrolled his parish like a cop on the beat. He upbraided the vendors of filthy books, copied down objectionable movie billboards, sent his spotters ("often bums who came to me looking for a job") into the old burlesque houses. His ringing voice assailed vice at hearings held by the New York City Commissioner of Licenses as well as from the pulpit of his red brick church. He helped prod New York's Mayor Fiorello La Guardia into closing down the strip joints and driving their operators out of town. For his campaign against "coddlers" of crime, he won plaudits from FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover. His activities brought fame to his church (which sometimes attracted as many as 25,000 worshipers in a day) and celebrity status to its pastor. One day, emerging from a "skin-movie" house, where he had gone to administer last rites to a stricken Roman Catholic, he was scolded by a fellow New Yorker: "Father, you're the fellow trying to close these theaters, and here you are coming out of a dirty show."

Now 78, McCaffrey has lately been losing his running battle against vice as well as his advancing years. Pornography and prostitution, both female and male, are flourishing in Times Square as never before. His night patrols have become far less frequent. "Once the policeman was respected," laments McCaffrey. "Now, if he tells a fellow to move on, the fellow asks, 'Why should I?' " McCaffrey also decries "the awful changes in the church--young priests leading civil disobedience, going to jail, burning draft cards." Last week, weary and dismayed, he packed his bags and headed for clean suburban retirement in New Jersey. Taking a final, fretful look at his garish parish, Father McCaffrey sighed: "I suppose I'm an old-fashioned guy with old-fashioned ideas, and the world has passed me by."

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