Church evolution??

Tonight Ryan went to his first Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral. It turned out to be an unexpectedly eventful evening.

The Sunday evening Masses are never my favorite at most churches. The cathedral always uses it as an excuse to do a low Mass with a contemporary choir and dreadful, modern, post-Vatican II, sappy, bad Catholic music. Tonight was no exception. They were cruel to me, putting the service bulletin for the morning Masses (when they did decent music) on the same sheet of paper as the bulletin for the evening Mass (with the music that sucks).

All of the hymns came from the Gather hymnal (the green one). The entrance song was the unremarkable "We gather in worship," for the preparation song they did a responsorial psalm, communion was the annoying "Eat this bread" and the rececssional song was the ghastly "How can I keep from singing" (the answer to which is for the bass not to be in sync with the piano and to sing it at a dirge-like tempo).

For the Mass setting, they did that fussy Guimont Gloria setting, the Mass of Remembrance for the consecration, and the Celtic Mass setting of the Agnus Dei (and gospel alleluia).

The monsignor rector was the celebrant and homilist today. His homily was interesting, starting with the proper way to hold a dinner party and evolving into a rather Mormon discussion of everyone being their own Christ.

After Mass Ryan took a bunch of pictures of the nave and some of the side chapels, then we went to the unexpected event announced both during the pre-offertory announcements and with a post-communion booster announcement by Monsignor: a reception for gay and lesbian people.

This is a particularly interesting development given the fact they just installed a new archbishop of Washington the end of June and the reception was being held *in* the cathedral with the rector making an appearance and giving remarks. Having the reception in the cathedral is something that the archbishop would have had to approve, so that's a major sign of His Excellency's support. It turns out they are forming a group called AOC—"Always Our Children"—that will be a regular social and support group for gay and lesbian Catholics with a big support outreach to the parents and families of homosexuals. Tonight was basically a cookies and punch kind of thing, though I noticed Ryan managed to eat about a dozen little cream puffs in between pointing out to me the cute boys at the reception.