American Martyrs' Roman Catholic Church, Queens NY

Great and friendly staff and the pianist & organist makes beautiful music! I will dearly miss this place

I had been a parishioner at American Martyrs for over 13 years, and I used to love going to mass, helping the sacristan, altar serving, and decorating among many other things. I used to always recall how fabulous the parish was. The church is a quite wonderful mid century building with wonderful paintings of the saints and Mary, and had been restored beautifully a few years ago by the previous pastor. I had Mrs Asche for second grade CCD, and recall great memories. I wrote a raving review of the parish about 3 years ago, but I feel I need to change that. Ever since 2020, a rift of fear seemed to set in at the parish, and American Martyrs, atleast from my point of view, changed greatly. Because of this, I had attended mass there less and less, and through my discovery of the Traditional Latin Mass, became more orthodox in general. Such mindset has stayed with me, whether it be in the Ordinary or Extraordinary form of the Latin rite, and American Martyrs has always celebrated the prior. But I started to notice a lot of things happen, or not happen, after 2020. The corporal never came off the altar, and the Eucharist would be left on it after masses. Less and less was the organ used, and more was introduced songs sourced from Jesus Christ Superstar and the like for Mass. I didn’t like such things, especially the lack of reverence concerning the Eucharist. However, in keeping an open mind, I decided to pay a visit for mass this morning, on the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, because I had slept in a bit too late and still wanted to go to mass. The liturgy was good- Jesus was there. However, when I went up to receive Him, I was denied. Simply because I decided to receive kneeling and on the tongue. Knowing that in the Ordinary Form, I canonically am allowed to, I thought it wouldn’t be an issue, but it was. So I went back to my seat and prayed after communion as normal… but it is severely disheartening that one would be denied our Lord on the feast day of his name, because they wanted to receive Him in a different manner than others. For the sake of prudence, I will not say more reverently, but differently. Pray for the parish and for its clergy, it really needs it. Saint Jude and the American Martyrs, pray for us.

Beautiful church great priests and miss Theresa's excellent with my kids in Sunday school