Local

Closed church lives on

Dave Borowski | Catholic Herald

Pat Brown holds her wedding album opened to the page picturing her and her husband Paul at their 1952 wedding at Sacred Heart Church in Vailsburg.

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The altar from Sacred Heart Church in Vailsburg, N.J., is now at St. John the Apostle Church in Leesburg.

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Several weeks ago Pat Brown, 82, was sitting in her Fairfax
Station home reading in the Catholic Herald about the
dedication of the new St. John the Apostle Church in
Leesburg.

“I looked at the first page and said, ‘Oh, a new church in
Leesburg.’ I turned the page and my eye hit that altar,” she
said. “I was flabbergasted. There can’t be two altars like
that. I read on. I was amazed.”

In 1952, Pat Killoran and Paul J. Brown were married at
Sacred Heart Church in Vailsburg, N.J. It was one of
thousands of ceremonies performed over the years in the
church built in 1929 in the parish founded in 1892.
Generations of parishioners were baptized there, educated at
the parish school, married and eventually buried in the
church cemetery.

Like many parishes in the Northeast, it was a living
community of Catholics with thousands of parishioners whose
lives revolved around their parish community.

“It was the center of everything in Vailsburg,” said Brown.

Central to Sacred Heart Church, of course, was the altar. It
was a witness to the sacraments and to the Brown wedding June
7, 1952.

Brown and her new husband, freshly graduated from the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., went back to Paul’s
home in Northern Virginia and then on to travel the world as
a military officer. They raised two daughters in places all
over the globe.

Brown continued to hold on to her roots in Vailsburg, going
back frequently to visit family and friends. Like most parish
children, Brown went to all eight grades of Sacred Heart
School, and after graduation she and her classmates remained
close.

About 10 years ago, fellow Sacred Heart graduate Bill Butler
began organizing reunions to celebrate their shared heritage
at the parish and school.

For the past decade the group of about 25, out of an original
class of 44, met annually, usually at the New Jersey shore
where most now live, but sometimes in Vailsburg. A classmate
of Brown’s, Father Henry Schreitmueller, sometimes celebrated
Mass for the group.

In 2010, the last year that Sacred Heart was a Catholic
church, Brown and her fellow grads marked the church’s end.
Brown said that that for years they could see that the parish
and the church were in decline, and they mourned the passing
of their beloved church and school.

At that last Mass, the church was being renovated, and the
new owners believed that the sanctuary was unsafe. So Mass
was celebrated by Father Schreitmueller in the sacristy
behind the altar. It was big enough to comfortably hold the
50 people in attendance. Chairs were brought in so people
could sit.

Soon after that Mass, Sacred Heart Church was deconsecrated,
and its sacred objects were removed and shared with other
parishes in dioceses around the country, including the
Arlington Diocese.

Brown sent copies of the Catholic Herald with the dedication
story to her reunion group. They told Brown that they want to
take a bus down to see the altar at its new home in Leesburg.

Brown, now a parishioner of St. Mary of Sorrows Church in
Fairfax Station, went to St. John the Apostle for Sunday Mass
recently. She sat in the second pew near the aisle, “where I
could take in that magnificent, memorable edifice of my
youth,” she said.

Brown walked through the new church and saw her old altar and
statues of Mary and Joseph from Sacred Heart’s side altars.

“I somehow was overcome by a tremendous feeling of joy,” said
Brown.

There were many memories “locked in those beautiful, graceful
pillars of another magical era.”

The old Sacred Heart Church is now the Positive Proof
Deliverance Church. It’s Baptist- far removed from the old
Irish, German and Italian Catholics who built the first
church and community.

Sacred Heart Church lives on in other Catholic churches
around the country and in the hearts of people like Brown and
her contemporaries, who remember what it was like so long
ago.

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