New church

Yesterday for Epiphany, Laurent and I went to the 10:45 Mass at a new church, St. Dominic's, which is over by Laurent's new apartment in the L'Enfant Plaza area. The parish dates back to the immediate post-Civil War era, and the present structure and pipe organ date to 1887.

While the exteriors are very different, I found the structural aspects of the interior worship space of the church to be very reminiscent of St. Patrick's Church downtown near Chinatown, which dates from the 1870s and may have been an inspiration to whoever designed St. Dominic's. Fortunately for St. Dominic's, they had a fairly tasteful renovation in the early 1960s, whereas St. Patrick's was attacked in the early 1990s with rather more contemporary elements. St. Dominic's remains a traditional and pretty church.

Of course, it's difficult to note these things with just one visit to a church, but the congregation appears to be older, smaller, and less affluent than some of the other parishes in town. I expected to see more ethnic diversity, but other than the altar party, the congregation seemed almost completely white. The pew book racks—usually filled with hymnals, breviaries, Bibles, tracts, etc.—were barren, and only a too-light distribution of the annual paperback temporary hymnal Breaking Bread could be found.

As we walked into the nave, I was encouraged to hear an organ and flute prelude featuring music from Messiah. The organist plays from the loft, and seemed to have a handful of instrumentalists up there helping him (at least I don't think that was a choir, since I never heard voices from up there). The minister of music, an older man with a music-theater technique, cantored from the music stand in the sanctuary.

Hymns for the morning were "Joy to the World" for the processional, "O Come All Ye Faithful" for the offertory, "We Three Kings of Orient Are" during communion, and something called "Sing a New Church" sung to Nettleton ("Come thou fount of every blessing") for the recessional.

The Mass setting was something called Mass of Glory by Bob Hurd and Ken Canedo. It's got a 1991 copyright date to it, but it has the syncopated rhythm sound of pop music from the late '60s and early '70s. They didn't use the Gloria from the Mass (I thumbed through the hymnal trying to find the Gloria setting without success), so the first thing I heard from the setting was the Sanctus; it reminded me of the song "Look at all my trials and tribulations" from the Lloyd-Webber musical Jesus Christ, Superstar.



The priests all seemed older, and I didn't get a chance to meet any of them. The liturgy was pretty standard, though virtually nothing was chanted. Ceremonial was at a minimum and they didn't use any incense. The one odd thing I noticed was after the epistle, they had the reader go to the altar to get the big missal book and walk it over to the ambo without any musical cover; then, they did the Gospel alleluia and the celebrant walked over to read. I didn't notice how the book got back to the altar.

Anyway, St. Dominic's seems to be an innocuous enough parish. It's just three blocks from Laurent's new place, so it makes more sense for him to go to Mass there than walk five blocks to the Metro stop and come all the way back to Foggy Bottom for Mass. We'll see what transpires, though, since he tends to like to go to Mass with someone, instead of alone.

I thought the stained glass windows inside the nave were particularly beautiful. They appear to be from the late 19th century. A lot of the stories were about the Dominican Order, and if you look closely, you'll see depictions of the pope wearing the old papal triple tiara.