Clouds

Today I went to church alone whilst Ryan slept in, and I went back to that St. Paul's K Street, which is just a short three block walk from here. Today was essentially an "ordinary" Sunday, but they still had a solemn high Mass with clouds of incense. The choir did William Mathias' Missa Brevis for the Mass setting, and it was typically atonal as are most of Mathias's works. Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer who's the current "fad" contemporary sacred choral works composer. He does a lot of twelve-tone work and other strange things. Today, the organist played his "Pari Intervallo" as the prelude and the choir sang his 1990 "The Beatitudes" for the offertory. It was very interesting, and not as weird as I expected. Their communion anthem was Mendelssohn's "Verleih' uns Friden gnädiglich" which was vaguely familiar to me.....I may have sung it years and years ago with Canterbury Choral Society in Oklahoma City.

The Evangelical Scouts of America

Today's news has a headline that the FBI is investigating the Boy Scouts. According to a copyright AP story, the FBI is investigating the Greater Alabama Council headquartered in Birmingham to see if they fraudulently padded their membership roles to secure larger funding amounts from the United Way and other donors. The story also mentions an independent audit going on in Atlanta to see if they inflated their black Scout enrollment by 20,000, just to get more donations.

This makes me sad. I was an Eagle Scout. I was picked as the National Boy Scout of the Year when I was a senior in high school. And I always thought that the first point of the Scout Law was "A Scout is Trustworthy."

What has happened?

Well, I can tell you that corporate Scouting has changed. Since the LDS church adopted their own flavor of Scouting as a mandatory church youth program, they have gained more and more influence on council, region, and national boards. The councils cater to the Mormons, cause they have a lot of boys in the program. The other two biggest sponsors of Scout troops are the Roman Catholic and United Methodist churches. Back when the BSA had its most recent U.S. Supreme Court "victory" allowing it to discriminate against and exclude gay boys and adult leaders, pursuing that case to "victory" had been a big goal of the Mormons, Catholics, and Methodists on the national board. Did they need to do that? No. One of the interesting things about Scouting is that the units—packs, troops, teams, posts, etc.—are not controlled by the central organization, but they are "owned" if you will by the sponsoring institution. That means that if a Mormon church sponsors a troop, they can select their own adult leaders and excommunicate any of the boys they think are too gay to keep.

As a result of that supreme court "victory," all kinds of sponsoring institutions with anti-discrimination policies, from PTAs to mainstream liberal protestant churches like the Episcopalians and Unitarians to city police departments, began to cancel their sponsorship and involvement with the Boy Scouts. United Way contributions in some communities went down, cause they fund the Scouts—a "bigotted institution." Many intelligent, highly educated, open-minded parents began to think that the institutionalized homophobia of the Boy Scouts was just not the kind of thing to which they wanted to expose their sons. And the membership rolls began to dive.

Of course, an organization like Scouting has to have members, and it has to have growth. The more kids the council serves, the more money it can request from donors. And, as the liberals began to leave, the Mormons, Catholics, and Methodists went from being major blocks of Scouting to the vast majority of Scouting. They couldn't deal with looking bad, with looking like they'd ruined an esteemed, century-old, civic institution, with looking like their bigotted evangelical Christian perspective was no longer mainstream America. Atlanta and Birmingham are in the heart of the Bible Belt, so I'm not surprised the forces and pressures there caused them to fall into this level of hamartia, this "missing the mark," this sin. And all because the evangelical church leaders can't bring themselves to love their homosexual neighbors.

Softly falls the light of day,
As our Scout troop fades away.......

The neighborhood church

Just in from church. Went to a little neighborhood parish just down the street a block called St. Mary's. Only fifteen people at the service, with lots of people claiming snow issues were keeping them from church. I was going to go pop in again on a "normal" day to give them a better chance, but after the service concluded, the priest had another couple and me introduce ourselves, and I was aghast. It's bad enough having to "pass the peace", but introduce myself?!? What does he think I am, a Baptist or something? Maybe I'll head back to that snooty St. Paul's K Street, which is only about three blocks away. If I get motivated enough, I might go to Christ Church Georgetown tonight for Evensong.

Bells and smells

Tonight is the Feast of the Epiphany. This is the traditional deadline for having the Christmas tree down. We'll push the deadline next year....this year, I hated having to take down my tree to pack on the day after Christmas like some Baptist! Anyway, I observed the day by going to St. Paul's K Street for a Procession and Solemn Mass.

St. Paul's is an old and surprisingly small parish church in that segment of Washington between Foggy Bottom and Georgetown. They have a national reputation for having very fine choral/organ programs, including a choir of men and boys that sings Evensong every Sunday evening, so I went with great expectations. It was hard to see the traditional stained glass windows inside the nighttime church, but there were evergreen and candle arrangements in each window well, and I thought it interesting that they made extensive use of whole, fresh pineapples in their displays. There were also tall three-branched candle stands on the outer aisles of the nave. Elaborate gold reredos adorn the high altar in front. I could see a four-manual organ off to one side, differently arranged so the organist was all the way up against the major pillar separating the chancel from the nave, facing the altar and almost able to see all the choir. The mainly older congregation seemed to have a lot of older homosexuals.

This was the first time I'd been to a proper Anglican Mass in ages, so I kept having to remind myself when to do all the appropriate reverential gestures, crossings, bowings, etc. They sang pretty much everything singable, including the Nicene Creed, and the whole parish genuflects during the Incarnatus. I found their liturgy to be interesting, in that it seemed to have Rite Two (contemporary) wordings with some Roman Catholic insertions, yet it was all translated into Rite One (Elizabethan) language. This was also the first time since the '70s I'd seen the clergy following the old tradition of ceremonial, with the priest-celebrant assisted by a deacon and sub-deacon, both dressed in dalmantic and tunicle, and as they processed in (and later around the church for the solemn processions), the deacon and sub-deacon held up the corners of the priest's cope. Later during the eucharistic prayers, they stood on different steps, sometimes in a row, sometimes separated, in the tradition most modern priests never learned. The festal vestments and church hangings were all gorgeous matching sets of gold-hued cream damask with burgundy and metallic gold orpheys and ornamentations. I do think the church looked ever so much more elegant in burgundy, rather than the garish red used in so many secular Christmas decorations, and the altar guild was very good in matching colors, even in the evergreen sprays and the Christmas tree back in the narthex.

I don't know if it was normal for the parish, or just because of the special service, but all of the altar boys were adult men, and I think all of them were older than me! Actually, I only saw one family with two extremely well behaved children—of course, it was a night time service, so perhaps parents didn't bring their kids out at night. Nevertheless, the altar boys were all very efficient, although I wish the thurifer had led the solemn processions with normal steps, instead of the tiny, baby steps he took! It did, though, give him an opportunity to very thoroughly smoke the entire church and the entire congregation with his incense. In fact, they used so much incense, that when I left the church after the service, I smelled incense a block away on the street!

Tonight's choir was a mixed ensemble of men and women, about sixteen in number, with the organist joining on some a capella pieces. The mass setting was Palestrina's Missa Brevis, a capella of course, and there were a lot of supplemental plainsong antiphons at various portions of the service. The offertory anthem was "Now, there lightens upon us a holy daybreak" by Leo Sowerby (d. 1968). The Sowerby was accompanied by soft organ and was exquisitely done. They sang a communion anthem in Latin which sounded "period" to the Palestrina Mass, but which was not listed in the program. On the whole, the choir was excellent, and they certainly had a very ambitious repertoire for this service. I was a bit annoyed, though, that on high note entrances, the sopranos seemed almost always to enter a full quarter-tone flat and then pull up to the pitch, and the rather elderly men's section had a lot of unblended voices which stuck out from time to time. I also found the organist to interpolate too many and too long improvisations between hymn verses, and on several occasions, the already long (100 minutes!!) service had to pause to wait for the music to finish before moving on.

It will be interesting to see what this church does on a Sunday morning for a "normal" service. If I go back, it will be interesting to see if anybody talks to me. As is typical of Episcopal churches, the only ones who talked to me tonight were the usher who said "good evening" as she handed me my program and the priest who shook my hand and said "happy Epiphany" as we left.

Cathedral again

This morning I went back to St. Matthew's for church this morning. I'm not really sure which choir it was....I think it was the Schola Cantorum.....but there were a dozen singers plus the conductor, all dressed in magenta choir albs. It appears from the service leaflet that the woman who cantored yesterday's and this morning's Masses is the director of music. She, as well as the organist, joined the Schola for some of their a capella anthems. I got there in the middle of a choral prelude not mentioned in the leaflet....wasn't really sure what it was, but it sounded churchy. ;-)

His Eminence the Pointy Hat of Washington was there today, so there was lots of extra ceremonial, loads of incense, and tons of clergy in procession. He chants very well, and stays on pitch, too! He actually gave an interesting homily, and also talked about his trip tomorrow to go to the Indian Ocean region where so many people perished in the tsunami. After Mass, he gave out chocolate gold coins in honor of the Feast of the Epiphany and the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of the Magi. The college-aged altar boy who was the thurifer was just adorable. I did think it a bit peculiar, though, that his boat boy was older and taller than him.

The choral anthems today were "Videntes stellam" by Francis Poulenc for the offertory, and "Here Is the Little Door" by Herbert Howells for communion. Both, along with the prelude, were a capella. The postlude was the choral and organ arrangement of "The Shepherds' Farewell" by Hector Berlioz.

Touristing

Happy New Year! What a glorious day today! The weather is warm and sunny and everyone is walking around in their shirtsleeves. One would never know it's January. I got out this morning and walked to the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. I could have taken the subway, but by the time I walked to my subway stop and then walked from the stop nearest the cathedral, the distance was nearly the same.

St. Matthew's is a gorgeous basilica structure filled with elaborate mosaics. Today was the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary, but for some reason having to do with the new calendar, it was not a Holy Day of Obligation this year. A lot of people were at Mass, though. The cathedral has a lot of interesting traditions. The lectors were all robed in light grey albs with a white choir overlay (the thingies the Protestants developed to take the place of the English academic hood). The cantor was in a magenta alb, but with no choir overlay. They had a signer for the deaf who was a very attractive, slender, young woman in an all-black suit with a very short skirt. They process their eucharistic ministers, all wearing rose boutonnieres, with the altar party and seat them in rows in the back corner of the sanctuary.

The organist played a very contemporary arrangement of "Silent Night" for a prelude. They used the Proulx A Community Mass setting for the service, except for the Gloria, where they used a "Christmas Gloria" by Paul Gibson, which was an arrangement of the carol "Angels We Have Heard on High." For the offertory, the cantor sang an "Ave Maria" by Marcel Dupré which was not familiar to me, and for communion, she sang "The Virgin's Slumber Song" by Max Reger. Tomorrow morning, I was thinking about going to St. Paul's K Street (high church Episcopalian with a supposedly fabulous choir), but at St. Matthew's, the cardinal archbishop of Washington will be celebrating, and both their Schola Cantorum and Gregorian Scholars are slated to sing the Mass, so I may pop back in there just for grins and jollies. Catholics transfer Epiphany to tomorrow morning and the Episcopalians do it on the proper Twelfth Night, so I can always catch St. Pauls and the National Cathedral later.