Visiting St. Augustine's

Finally forced myself to go to Mass Sunday morning after a month of bad-church-music-avoidance syndrome when I discovered that St. Augustine's was actually within (sort-of) walking distance. It was a singularly unique experience.

St. Augustine's is the historically black Catholic parish in town, this year celebrating its sesquicentennial. This is the parish's third physical location, moved after the MLK riots into the former St. Paul's, an old German parish that dwindled away until the archdiocese merged what was left of St. Paul's into St. Augustine's. The St. Paul's building, though, was a beautiful edifice, probably from the Victorian era, with some stunning, traditional stained glass windows and a lot of elaborate carvings on the inside. The exterior design is rather unique to Washington, with those short, almost industrial-looking spires common to the German form of gothic architecture.



Over the years, something happened to one of the twelve big windows in the nave and it had to be replaced. Unfortunately, rather than duplicating the missing window or having something different made in a similar and harmonious style, they installed a really bright, contemporary, shockingly inconsistent window that sticks out in the church like a sore thumb with a strobe-light-on-a-mirror-ball homing beacon. It's probably by some famous African-American artist, but it's really in an artistic style that is totally not to my personal taste, especially in a liturgical setting. While there may be a place for that window somewhere, it isn't in the midst of those beautiful old traditional windows, and I have to fault the clergy in charge at the time for not insisting on something that maintained the artistic and architectural integrity of the nave.

They've made a couple of other changes to the building, too. Most immediately noticeable is in the narthex, where they've built a walk-in baptistry that looks like a tiled hot tub with the old, traditional font stuck up on a pedestal in the corner of the dunking tank. Then up in the sanctuary, they've installed a porta-altar in front of the beautiful carved white marble original high altar, and they've put a grand piano, choir seating, and microphones in between them. An organ console also sat over to the left of the "stage" area, and did not seem to be connected at all to the beautiful ranks of pipes in the organ loft in the balcony. I noticed the office lights (the six tall candles and candlesticks) from the high altar had been moved over to the side chapel where they were crowded in on top on that tiny altar. Otherwise, the interior space looks generally in need of some money and maintenance to fix peeling paint, water stains, etc., though they seem to be engaged in a capital campaign right now.

Anyway, let's talk about Mass. On Sunday mornings, they have two main services. According to their Web site, the 10 a.m. Mass features "classical, traditional, Catholic choral music and hymns," while the 12:30 p.m. Mass uses "traditional African American spirituals and hymns as well as contemporary gospel music." I went to the 10 a.m. Mass.

Lead Me, Guide Me, the black Catholic hymnal published by GIA, is the only book in the pews (and literally in the pews, not in a book rack on the back of the pew). This is the first time I've ever used or seen the hymnal, so it was a bit of an adventure trying to find things. No service leaflet or parish bulletin was provided. Three of the four hymns (processional, offertory, communion) were totally unfamiliar. The offertory hymn, alas, was a four part hymn that required all four of the parts to be sung for the words of the chorus to make sense; the all-female choir sang the soprano and alto lines with the choir member cantoring (and miked!) singing soprano, but some key words in the chorus were in the bass line. The communion hymn was one of those insipid contemporary Catholic music songs of the ilk often seen in the Gather hymnal, but not one I knew. The fourth hymn (recessional) was a sort of faster, jazzed-up version of the old summer camp song tune I know as "Kum-ba-yah."

The service music was impossible. I flipped through all the Mass settings in the hymnal as they were singing, and I couldn't find the Kyrie, psalm setting, alleluia, or Agnus Dei (the Gloria was spoken!). I presume these were all from the African-American genre from their rhythms and tunes, but I don't know for sure, but they weren't in the hymnal. The Sanctus/Benedictus and memorial acclamation were from the very familiar Proulx A Community Mass, but played at a pace slower than funereal (the unfamiliar settings were all pretty fast and peppy; was this an attempt to draw a distinction between black music as fun and white music as boring?)

Here was the problem with the music Sunday: the choir only had eight singers, all older females, and all but two were white. There is something inherently wrong with white people trying to sing gospel. In fact, by great coincidence, there was a feature story in Sunday's Washington Post about a Lutheran church in the Maryland suburbs that is sponsoring a community gospel choir where the black choir director talks about his frustrations trying to teach white people to sing gospel. Having already read the story, I had to laugh as I listened to the white choir at Mass as they did all the bad things that director talked about. Then, there was a lady in the choir probably in her 60s with white hair, bright pink skin, glasses, that no-nonsense, take charge attitude about her, a sense that it was her duty to show us the path, and she was doing it The Right Way.....there's something about her that just screams "Irish nun," don't you think?.....who in the closing hymn started people clapping their hands in time with the music—on the first and third beats, just like the Lutheran musician says white people do instead of the second and fourth beat like black people do.

Anyway, I always evaluate a parish's music by the total enhancement it offers to the process of worship. There are some parishes with highly trained and proficient choirs that offer beautiful concert performances of anthems and Mass settings that inspire the congregation to think of the glory and beauty of God as they listen. There are other parishes where the choir leads the congregation in singing and participating in all of the hymns and service music in such a way that the people can lift up their voices in praise and worship to the Lord. Either of these approaches can be highly effective as enhancements to worship. What really bothers me in worship is when the music is distracting, poorly done, or inappropriate.....in fact, there are some parishes I don't ever want to go back to because the music at Mass was so bad.

The biggest problem I noticed at St. Augustine is that the congregation is not fully accommodated and encouraged to sing. The service music isn't provided, and the congregation isn't engaged in the hymns, and, since the choir wasn't one of those "concert" type choirs, they needed to be leading and engaging the people. Perhaps some of the problem is cultural, with the parish self-identifying as a "black Catholic parish," but at the Mass I attended, only about 40% of the congregation was black. Some of those black parishioners seemed to know some of the hymns and service music, but many of them were singing along without using the hymnals. Then when I looked at the white and Latino people in the congregation, I saw a total lack of musical participation, even with many of the men standing there with their arms crossed across their chests. And, further, even though the church was doing presumptively black music, I just didn't have the impression that they were doing it well.

I think I'll have to go to a 12:30 Mass to hear the actual gospel choir and see how that Mass is sung. The 10:00 certainly didn't impress me as either "classical" or "traditional."

The rest of the Mass was pretty standard. They started right on time. The pews weren't really that full, maybe about 60%. The congregation stood during the offertory when the oblations (bread and wine) were brought forward instead of waiting for the alms (money) to be brought up. During the Our Father (Lord's Prayer), they almost all held hands, snaking across the aisles to make big chains, and engaging some of the clearly uncomfortable white worshippers (fortunately, I didn't get caught up into having to hold hands). Then, during the peace, they were wandering all over the place, passing the peace to everyone instead of just their immediate neighbors. It took so long, the pianist was able to play "Let There Be Peace on Earth" as they wandered about.

After Mass, I didn't get a chance to shake hands with the priest since I had walked around a bit to take some pictures of the inside of the church and he was already gone when I left. It's really a pretty little church (other than that one stained glass window), and if we threw some money at it, it could be gorgeous. I'm curious about their organ, too, since there are a lot of pipes up there. I hope they aren't one of those places that let their organ fall completely into ruin and disrepair. Anyway, here are some pictures. I'll probably be back.....at least once.....to try them out again, since I was so disheartened and uninspired at Sacred Heart (the Hispanic/Vietnamese/Haitian place in Columbia Heights just a few blocks' closer walk from my house), but next Sunday I'll have to try Sacred Heart again....then maybe back to St. Augustine.