By Father James Maciejewski

Time magazine called it "the last harrumph."

It referred to the announcement from the New York archdiocese that terms of pastors would henceforth be limited to six years, with the possibility of one extension for another six-year term. Presumably, no New York City pastor will any longer serve one parish for more than 12 years.

I assume that what New York has done will soon become normative for many other dioceses. And then an era will have passed by, one in which the identity of a parish coincided so closely with the personality of its pastor. The face of the parish was his face.

My thoughts go back to boyhood years in Buffalo when Monsignor Joseph Glapinski was our pastor at Saint John Kanty Church. I was well up in teenage years before we knew any other pastor than Msgr. Glapinski. I guess he "reigned" for about 20 years, but it seemed he had been pastor forever. He could be tough on errant altar boys, but he was the man to see when a parishioner needed help of any kind. In a neighborhood with few educated people, he was attorney and accountant and real estate agent as well as priest.

He appeared indestructible, but he wasn't of course, and in the course of time the Lord took him and he was succeeded by Monsignor Francis Radziszewski. (Every pastor was a "monsignor" in those days.) We called him Monsignor "Radish," but not to his face.

So many of the Polish pastors acquired nicknames like that. There was, for example, Monsignor Biniszkiewicz who was called Monsignor "Beans-and-Cabbage" and Monsignor Wojciehowski who was known as Monsignor "Watch-your-Coat-and-Hat." Much of the time they were just familiarly addressed as Monsignor Bill or Monsignor Stan.

Monsignor Radziszewski was a very endearing person who was still pastor at the time I celebrated my first solemn Mass in Saint John Kanty Church. He was too old and feeble to take an active role in the ceremonies that day, but how vividly I remember him sitting in the sacristy, slowly praying the rosary beads as his own special way of "liturgical participation."

To their eternal credit, men like that have carried the Catholic faith to millions. Indeed, to many they WERE the faith. They have left their stamp upon the Church as we know and love it today.