Ideas for contemporary Catholic services

My friend Linda, a retired organist, found this clip for me on YouTube. If they did this sort of music at Mass at "contemporary Catholic music" parishes, I might actually like it! Of course, this particular piece was written by a Lutheran, but at least it gets at the spirit of what we need. LOL. Do listen for at least 30 seconds.

Are this summer's movies anti-Catholic?

This month I actually got twice to the movie theaters to see new releases, in fact, the first and only movies I've seen in 2008. The lucky productions getting my theater going dollars were The X Files: I Want to Believe and Brideshead Revisited. It just so happens that I am intimately acquainted with the stories behind both of these movie plots, so I can see more in the scripts than many people.

In retrospect, what particularly struck me was the viciously nasty anti-Catholic tone of both movies.

It seems an eternity since The X Files was on television every Sunday night. I watched it religiously, even in its very first season. As the characters developed over the years, we knew that Agent Mulder was an agnostic Protestant and Agent Scully was a devout Catholic. Then we get to this movie, where we find neither as agents anymore, with Mulder in hiding and Scully working as a physician in a Catholic charity hospital. The movie, much like the shows, had two simultaneous plots, both dealing with the Catholic Church.

The major plotline for the movie involves the kidnapping of an FBI agent and what turns out to be a series of murders. A defrocked pedophile Catholic priest claims to have visions regarding the investigation, and appears quite unsympathetically throughout the movie. Dialogue from multiple characters snipes not only at the former priest but also at the Church (are we tired of pedophile priest jokes yet?), and Scully is particularly disrespectful. The secondary plot line involves a child patient of Scully's with some rare, most likely fatal disease, with no known cure. The hospital's administration, led by a particularly sour priest, wants to shuffle the boy off to a hospice-type facility for palliative care, but Scully somehow chooses to defy them and treat the boy with some highly experimental stem cell therapy (stem cell therapy, since it deals with cells from unborn fetuses, is vehemently opposed by the Catholic Church). There are a lot of unlikely scenarios in the plot and it just doesn't quite work when viewed as a free-standing work apart from the culture and tradition of the series.

Then we get to Brideshead Revisited, based on the 1944 novel by former popular British writer Evelyn Waugh. This happens to be one of the very very few novels I've ever read twice, I have seen multiple times the faithful 1981 BBC/Granada six-episode, twelve-hour mini-series, and I worked with many of my students to analyze the work in their papers on early 20th century British novelists. So, being so familiar with the twelve-hour treatment of the novel, I found myself spinning trying to keep up with the instant two-hour long movie. The screenplay writers took so many liberties with the story line, I took the novel with me to brunch today to reread it so I could refresh my memory.

In the "new" version, the entire story has been rewritten to focus on the Catholic faith of the family, giving it sinister and evil overtones, and having it ruin the lives and happiness of its adherents. Meanwhile, Teresa Marchmain (played by Emma Thompson) has become a vindictive and overbearing matriarch in the name of Catholicity, which is totally different from her character in the novel, and the narrator of the story, Charles Ryder, has become a staunch atheist who actively works against the family's Catholic superstitions and practices, again contrary to his novel character (in the novel, there's even a line where someone refers to him as an atheist, and he corrects them, saying he's agnostic, plus, he would have been way too polite to have acted in such ways).

So, what's the deal with all the negative treatment of the Church?

Anyway, let me give a brief analysis of the movies.

The X Files was both satisfying and disappointing. It was little more than a two-part TV episode, and an episode with a weak plot line, at that. Because of the length of time since the television show was in original release, the writers seemed compelled to use a whole lot of expository dialogue to explain the backstory, some of which was rather annoying (like when Skinner made his first appearance on screen, Scully says, "It's Assistant Director of the FBI Walter Skinner!" as if Mulder didn't know who he was). The writing was poor and plot elements weren't connected. The overall series story arc really isn't going in a good direction. The editing felt choppy (and as if much of the important plot development was left on the cutting room floor). The cinematography at times lacked focus while at other times it moved in a way that gave me a headache. The musical score was pretty hideous. But, at the same time, it was The X Files and Mulder and Scully were back together again. With a better storyline and writing staff, I'd be willing to go see another movie. Recommendation? If you're an X Files fan, go see it, you'll enjoy it well enough. If you're not already an established fan, it's okay, and it's certainly better than a lot of the trash movies out this summer.

Meanwhile, Brideshead is a beautiful movie, reminiscent of the Merchant-Ivory type movies. I've heard Emma Thompson has gotten some supporting actress Oscar buzz.

In the past, my alma mater Oxford University (where much of the novel is set) did not allow film crews at the university, so "Oxbridge"-type movies set at Oxford (Chariots of Fire, Oxford Blues, the Brideshead mini-series, et al.) were actually filmed at rival newcomer Cambridge University. I was very pleased to see this movie was actually filmed on location in Oxford, as it brought back many memories. I also thought it highly interesting that they chose to go to Castle Howard as the location site for the scenes of the fictional "Brideshead Castle," the same location where they shot the mini-series. Consequently, all the sets (as well as costumes) were beautiful.

Naturally, adapting a full-length novel to a modern two-hour movie time frame requires a lot of cutting and rearrangement. I realize this. This version, though, I found to take a few too many liberties not only with the plot but with the characters. I've mentioned Lady Marchmain; Rex Mottram's character was so changed, his now-minor character was a particularly nasty cad and opportunist; Anthony Blanche has become a cameo role with biting lines not in the novel.

Casting was also a bit of a problem. The novel spans twenty years, from the time Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) meet as 19-year-old undergraduates at Oxford, to a point about ten or twelve years after that for Charles and Julia's affair, to Charles' time as a 39-year-old Army officer in World War II. The movie appears to have shortened the intervals so the actors ultimately end up playing their real-life ages. Because of how so much of the story was truncated and compressed, more than half of the movie is devoted to the time when Charles and Sebastian are 19, yet the actors were much too old to convincingly play teenagers, with Goode at 30 and Whishaw at 28. I think I would have found younger actors, especially since—Goode's intensely clear and bright blue eyes notwithstanding—neither of these actors gave particularly memorable performances.

I've been looking for an intelligent, literary person who's never read this novel or seen the mini-series so I can have him or her watch this movie and then tell me how it works for them. If this description fits any of you, go see it and then write a comment. Meanwhile, for Waugh or Brideshead fans, you'll want to go see this movie just because it's Waugh and Oxford and Castle Howard and your unrepentant anglophilia.

Tombstone

Historic Oakcreek Cemetery in Georgetown

Diving into the den of liberal Protestantism

Do you have adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? If so, I've found the perfect church for you!

This morning I went to St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in the Mount Pleasant/Columbia Heights neighborhood. In some ways, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared it would be, but in others, I was shocked and confounded. As expected, they are a Rite 2 (contemporary English) parish, and I wasn't surprised that they use that awful inclusive language liturgy stuff (avoiding references to God as "He" or "Lord" or with masculine pronouns). I was, however, pleasantly surprised that the liturgy was basically standard and non-experimental (unlike the dreadful services at the National Cathedral), that much of the Mass was sung (even with a priestess who actually sang well and sounded good!), and that incense was used appropriately. Oddly, though, they have a lay member of the congregation "preside" over the service, with the priestess only doing those things that require sacerdotal participation. Only the priestess was vested, and all of the other service participants were very casually attired (lots of shorts!) and wearing earth tones and natural fibers.

I was also pleasantly surprised that, while their music was contemporary and heavy on the African themes (I always find that odd at 98% white parishes) and not exactly to my personal tastes, it was of higher than expected compositional quality and what they did they did well. That's a big plus in my book. They have their small choir sitting in the congregation in the middle of the nave amidst the people, and that seemed to encourage more congregational singing. They also did a lot of the service music a capella and in harmony. My one big complaint is that a lot of the service music was known to the choir and much of the congregation, but there was no indication of hymn numbers or melody lines in the printed service bulletin, and I was unable to participate in that part of the worship because they were very much non-standard musical settings (and, keep in mind that I know what's in the Hymnal 1982 so when it's not one of those, I flip through the Lift Every Voice and Sing book while they sing trying to find the settings).

Architecturally, the church isn't quite as successful. They've taken an old traditional church structure and gutted the interior. The remnants of the old Incarnation Church and its traditional stained glass windows, paintings, and furnishings are in a side chapel, while on the opposite side of the nave, the former St. Stephen's people have a starkly contemporary open space with merely geometric colored glass windows, lots of modern art on the walls (I understand that the art rotates, just like at an art gallery), and at the end, a small grouping of chairs around a coffee table that forms a modern meditation and worship space.
There is a less-than-adequate modern treatment of the nave and sanctuary itself that looks inexpensive and very much just plopped down in the midst of a former traditional worship space. Instead of the high altar being the focal point of the nave, they have installed a large podium/ambo right in the center of the crossing from which most of the service is conducted and the sermon preached.



There's an unused balcony in the back of the nave with large plain colored glass windows. No evidence of a pipe organ is apparent. Up in the front part of the nave, they have a grand piano and a three-manual electronic theater organ side by side. During the service, the organist went back and forth between the organ and piano, plus, as mentioned, several things were sung a capella.

Unusually for a D.C. church, they started their service early! I walked in at 10:31 a.m. (according to both my cell phone and my Naval Observatory atomic clock-synchronized watch), and they'd already finished the opening hymn and were in the midst of the Collect for Purity.

Hymns today were Lucerna Laudoniae for the processional, Barker and Ladd's "Give thanks to the Lord" for the sequence, Land of Rest for pre-consecration marching music (more on that later), General Seminary for post-communion ablutions, and St. Joan for the "dismissal hymn." A female soloist sang the hymn "Balm in Gilead" as the offertory anthem.

Service music was all unfamiliar to me. They did a Trisagion in lieu of Kyrie and Gloria that was printed in the bulletin but unattributed. The psalm was chanted by the congregation to pointed Gregorian chant. The Sanctus was from Betty Pulkingham's Freedom Mass, and was printed in the bulletin. The Memorial Acclamation, Great Amen, Lord's Prayer, and Agnus Dei were also sung (all a capella) and seemed familiar to the regulars, but were not printed, attributed, or otherwise noted or explained in the bulletin. I was lost.

A non-priest wearing an unbleached alb and an odd cap gave the sermon. He mentioned he was formerly a Methodist minister, which may account for his very, very long talk. While he preached on the Gospel reading (Matt. 15:21-28), somehow he got around to spending a lot of time talking about Original Sin. He said, "Original Sin is not about sex," despite the "voyeuristic interest of some of the Christian community." Meanwhile, sermon time was the opportunity for people to be up and down and up and down, presumably to go to the bathroom, stretch their legs, or go to the concessions stand or something.

Some of the service was rather eccentric. During the intercessions, the congregational response was an unusual "Lord, have pity on us." Then, after the presiding laywoman did the standard prayers, she took the wireless microphone and walked around the nave, offering the mike to anyone who wanted to offer up their own prayer request or special thanksgiving. We got everything from thanks for a safe return from a luxurious international vacation to praying to evict bad tenants to prayers for dead or needy people known by people not actually known by the prayer offerer. And, of course, a lot of women had to offer way, way too much back story for their prayer requests, with the standard feminist choking up with emotion for the last few verklempt words of their request. People got the attention of the microphone lady by jumping up and down in their pews waiving their arm in the air. Once we were finished enduring the prayers of the people, we got to a standard confession and absolution followed by the exchanging of the Peace.

Well, I don't suppose I'm surprised at this ADHD crowd, but they emptied out of their pews to bounce all around the nave shaking hands with everybody. I did my duty and shook hands with the four people in my immediate vicinity, but then I sat and tried to appear intent at looking down reading the prayer book in private meditation, hoping this dreadful period would be over soon. Yet, many of these people felt compelled to intrude upon my personal space and come up and thrust their hand out in front of my prayer book to chirp "Peace!" before trotting off to assail some other innocent.

During the announcements (led by the senior minister—they intentionally don't use the traditional title "rector"—who'd been sitting unvested out in the congregation), we had more overly excited women waiving their arm in the air for recognition so they could dash up to the podium to give an announcement (one of whom, clad in shorts and Birkenstocks, later turned out to be a priestess).

After the offertory anthem, they began singing a hymn, and then I was bewildered to observe the congregation emptying out of their pews and heading up to stand around the high altar. They all stood up there for the entire prayer of consecration and didn't return until after being communicated. Even up there during the holiest moments of the Mass, there was still a lot of wandering around and coming and going. I couldn't really tell, but it looked like they had slices of rye bread instead of communion wafers. Naturally, I did not go up, but remained in my pew to stand and kneel at the appropriate times. I didn't opt to go up later for communion, since there seemed to be no established procedure for communicating people who weren't already standing in the altar gaggle, and also because there weren't any male priest concelebrants to make the transsubstantiation valid (In my old parish back in Oklahoma, we were taught that women do not receive the Holy Spirit in ordination. Interestingly, some of those priests ended up in the Diocese of Ft. Worth, where I understand the bishop has been having talks this month with Rome about leaving Canterbury to become papists. Knowing the priests involved, I really don't see that successfully happening, since discipline and following the doctrinal authority of their superiors was never their strong suit.). What surprised me more about the communion business, though, is that no one sought to guide me up to the sanctuary or to explain to me what was going on.



At the end of the service, they did a "dismissal hymn" prior to the blessing and dismissal, and then once that was over with, there was no formal recessional or departure. People just sort of chatted amongst themselves and milled about. After an unexplained delay, the organist eventually began to play a postlude.

Meanwhile, I wandered about playing tourist and taking pictures. While I was in the contemporary space looking at the art, the usher who'd given me my service bulletin when I came in chatted with me briefly about the paintings. He was the only one who talked to me at this parish. Even when I left the church, there was no priest back there at the door to shake my hand, and I left, feeling as though at this parish—so noted for its support of all sorts of radical liberal causes and outreach—I had been merely invisible.

Churches on Capitol Hill

The church has a pretty big presence on Capitol Hill. The Presbyterians have a big place called Capitol Hill Presbyterians and the Episcopalians have St. Mark's, plus a couple of other parishes are nearby in Eastern Market.

The Catholics, though, really cover the Hill with a big parish on each side of the Capitol. St. Joseph's is on the Senate side and St. Peter's is on the House side. Both are major parishes, though I think St. Joseph's is a little larger. They are the more visible church, being over by Union Station and the Supreme Court, and this is where Senator Kennedy goes to church in D.C. (there's also a plaque in the narthex commemorating Sen. Robert Kennedy, who used to worship and serve at this parish). St. Peter's, though, seems a warmer church to me, and it's over by the House of Representatives and the Library of Congress. They're both pretty churches, so I snapped a few pictures earlier this month.

	This is the view of the high altar of St. Joseph's from the nave.
There's a big organ in the balcony organ loft, and the pipes and ceiling are all colorfully painted.
	Here is the altar at St. Peter's as seen from the nave. The nave is actually quite visually stunning, but a photograph can't quite communicate the 3D effect of the gold leaf lettering around the room.
Here's the organ, again, up in the loft. The cabinetry is all dark wood, so it doesn't show up well.

Key's church

This seems as if it's been Francis Scott Key month. You'll recall that Key is the author of the words to "The Star Spangled Banner," our national anthem, and he became a prominent lawyer who lived and worked in Georgetown in the years following his trip to Fort McHenry.

Well, on the Fourth of July, Robert and I watched the fireworks from the Key Bridge. The full, official name of the Key Bridge? The Francis Scott Key Bridge. And why was that bridge, spanning the Potomac River between the Rosslyn area of Arlington and Georgetown, named after him? Right there by where the Key Bridge intersects M Street in Georgetown is Francis Scott Key Park, the site of Key's former Georgetown home.

Well, yesterday, I had another Key contact. I was apartment sitting in Georgetown for Ian this weekend, so I decided to go to church Sunday morning at the Episcopal church that's about two and a half blocks from Ian's place.

The parish is called Christ Church Georgetown. It was founded in 1817 by the Corcoran family (of the art gallery fame) and their friends, including Francis Scott Key, who was to be a long-time member. The present building dates to 1886.



The architecture is quite interesting. The design is from the mid-Victorian period during the late Gothic revival era. The exterior is fairly plain, but the inside is quite ornate, with a colonnade of low columns lining each side of the nave and some unusual broad interior arches. There are gorgeous, priceless stained glass windows that seem to be in the German style popular in the 1880s. Small clerestory windows depict the disciples and apostles of the Church. Elaborately carved wood reredos back the high altar (which was pulled away from the wall in a late-20th century remodeling). Old style box pews fill the nave, all numbered, and many with brass family name plaques still attached. You can't quite tell from the photograph, but there are two columns of pews and an aisle on the far side of each colonnade, so the seating capacity is about twice what is readily visible.



Large, wide arches separate the nave from the chancel, and the chancel from the nave. You can't see it, but off to the left in the chancel is the organ console and a large pipe chamber. The organ is essentially an 85-rank Möller, but it has some Skinner revisions and some modern Allen electronics.

Up in the sanctuary, there's plenty of room on either side for the altar party to be spaciously accommodated, and they are far enough back the congregation can't see them.



The organist provided the prelude and postlude, doing first Bach's Alle Menschen müssen sterben, BWV 643, then Prelude and Fugue in G, BWV 557.

Hymns included Du Lebensbrot Herr Jesu Christ for the processional, a split O quanta qualia for the sequence and gradual, the Old 100th as the presentation doxology, and St. Michael for the recessional. The Mass setting was Healey Willan's, Missa de Sancta Maria Magdalena.

The choir sang the psalm in Anglican chant using a setting by Samuel Sebastian Wesley. For the offertory, they sang C. H. H. Parry's "Prevent us, O Lord." The choir was small (nine), but they had a nice sound and choral blend. The only times I noticed a problem was in some of the soft passages when the sopranos (unable to sing full voice) went a little flat on the high notes, but that's not unusual at all under such circumstances. One thing I noticed throughout the service was how much the choirmaster kept the sound reigned in for more responsiveness and nuance.

The rector served as celebrant for the Rite 1 service. There was a little bit of language mixing: they used modern words for the Credo ("We believe" instead of "I believe" and Holy Spirit instead of Holy Ghost). The program gave the traditional words for the Gloria tibi and Laus tibi, but a substantial number of the congregation said the modern versions. Otherwise, it was a nice, solid liturgy. The congregation was a bit reserved, but they seemed all to know their service, and sang and spoke along.

Speaking of the congregation, they were classically Episcopalian! Now, as I walked to church late on Sunday morning, the temperatures were already nearly 90º! Consequently, I made the executive decision to dress in cool, comfortable, casual summer clothes. Well, that's not the tradition at Christ Church. I saw two younger men in Polos and khakis and two or three older men in casual clothes, then I saw one middle-aged man in a blazer and dress shirt with no tie, but other than that, all of the other men were in suits and ties, even the little boys. There were, however, lots of nice bow ties, and I saw more than one man in seersucker and several pairs of white bucks.

The assisting priestess served as homilist. Her sermon-length homily talked about the lyrics to a couple of Bruce Springsteen songs. The pulpit, at least, was striking, and I particularly liked the large, brass, overhead light.

During the passing of the peace, people just quietly shook hands with the four or so people in their immediate vicinity and then sat down. How refreshing!

After the service, people headed to the parish hall for coffee and refreshments. Now, this wasn't a special Sunday or anything (like next week, when they'll be having a special reception to welcome a new staff member), so it was just a regular thing, but, my, how nice for a "regular" service! They had long tables set up, one with coffee and the other with tea punch, both with a seated lady pouring. The food included miniature crab cakes, bacon-wrapped scallops, fried shrimp, a shrimp salad with tiny shrimp, lots of deviled eggs, and tea sandwiches with cucumber, chicken salad, and egg salad. The tea punch—non-alcoholic, unfortunately—was a cold, satisfying mix of tea and ginger ale. The parishioners were surprisingly friendly, too, as I had two men engage me in conversation at the punchbowl.

What an absolutely lovely parish! This is the kind of place I could get used to going to every Sunday....and they even sing Evensong twice a month! Here are a few of their stained glass windows as a parting thought.

Sunday report

It's Sunday. I was going to go to church this morning and even plotted out Metro routes (it's a new place, far away), but I slept through it. Then, I was going to go to the 5:30 tonight, but I kept getting phone calls and just didn't get showered and cleaned up in time. I had a dinner meeting in Georgetown and I was going to go to the 10 p.m. Mass at the chapel on campus, but we got done with dinner at eight, and I didn't want to hang around the campus for two hours with nothing to do, so I just went home. Eh. Such have been my weekends of late.

Enduring another Mass

After my morning transportation adventures, I got back to Columbia Heights in time to walk over to Sacred Heart for their 10 a.m. Mass.

I don't know what it is about that church, but once again, they had long "extra" stuff to drag out Mass. This time, the priest was offering healing prayers and anointing those wishing Holy Unction. The problem was that he did this after the homily and before the creed, and I do believe that nearly the entire congregation is sick and ailing, as they flocked to stand in a long, long, single file line for their sacramental reception. It must have taken at least twenty minutes to get everyone through. They really should have put some of the other priests at the parish to work and had two or three anointing stations to move things along (though I would have preferred it had they done it after Mass). I got tired of hearing the praise band sing "There Is Balm in Gilead" over and over ad nauseam.

Meanwhile, sitting through that Mass, I thought I was going to die. There was a female singer someone needed to shoot to put out of her misery.

Things at this parish are still much the same as they were at my previous visit last month. The priest needs a liturgist. The congregation, especially the children, is undisciplined; it was like Romper Room in the south transept with all the babies crying and small children running around. The acolytes are untrained and the priest kept having to direct them. And the music....Holy Mary Mother of God.....the music! I try not to cringe when I hear amateur musicians offering their "gift" to God, I promise, I really do! I am but a weak mortal, though, and there is only so much I can do!

The service music today was a setting that sounded like it was based on the old American folk hymn Land of Rest ("Jerusalem, My Happy Home"). Richard Proulx wrote a similar setting called Land of Rest Acclamations; this may have been what they did, but there were several times I wasn't sure if they weren't doing the David Haas' Mass of Light instead. It was hard to know; the Land of Rest Acclamations setting is not in the Gather hymnal the parish uses at the Anglo services. The gospel alleluia, though, was an attempt at the Celtic Alleluia. The priest didn't chant the Sursum Corda or anything else. I have no idea what the psalm responsorial setting was, since music wasn't provided, and I wasn't able to grasp a tune well enough to sing along.

Hymns included Foundation (How firm a foundation) for the processional (played much slower than I ever do), "Be Not Afraid" for the offertory, Hymn to Joy (Joyful joyful we adore you) for the recessional (the congregation starts leaving before the altar party gets out of the sanctuary!!), and I forget what contemporary ditty it was they did for communion.

They have a woman pianist/singer I suspect is the parish music director who's actually pretty good, if you like pop church tunes. She occasionally sang and played filler music. After communion, there was a second collection, and she improvised a nice piece blending Hymn to Joy (the Beethoven theme) and the Quaker tune "Tis a Gift to Be Simple." Her instrumental ensemble today included a violin, flute, bass clarinet, and guitar; I think they all play by ear, rather than read written sheet music when they play. She kept fixing her hair in between music bits....I hope she got it the way she wanted!

As we left the church, the priest stood at the back door and greeted everyone with a robotic "good morning how are you? good morning how are you? good morning how are you? good morning how are you?" not ever engaging anyone in conversation, and keeping them moving out the door.

Outside, though, it was much more festive, as the usual Sunday morning street market lined the sidewalks around the church. If I ever get around to brushing up my Spanish, I'm going to start asking the vendors what some of those food things are they have piled up on their tables.

Meanwhile, the quest for a new parish home continues. I did happen to find an Episcopal parish that's a few blocks farther away than Sacred Heart. I almost visited them this morning, but I'd read about them on the internet, and I can already tell they won't be a good fit. This morning's celebrant was some lesbian priestess (with an online bio highlighting her civil union). She probably does inclusive language liturgy and refers to God as "She." The parish is very liberal and socially active in radical liberal causes, and they even let liberal protestors "camp" in their church for housing when they come to D.C. They've also got a weird parish layman self-governance thing, with a half-time "senior priest" instead of a full-time rector, and half a dozen stray volunteer assisting priests, all with liberal credentials in their bios. Nevertheless, I will visit the parish soon and go to Mass with an open mind. Maybe they'll have a good music program. I can ignore a liberal homily so long as the music is decent and they don't have liturgical dancers.

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.

Capital Pride Parade

Last night was the Pride Parade. And it rained!

No worry, though, because the parade went on and everyone was just as festive as ever. I was worried that the drag queen's makeup might run and their bouffant hairdos might droop, but they all came prepared, wearing probably half a can of Aqua-Net on their hair to keep things perfectly in place (and those umbrellas helped, too!).

I'm old enough that once the parade gets started and I see the mayor, police chief, and congressional delegate leading this big parade of happy, celebratory gay people, I still get a little emotional and slightly teary. Younger people don't realize how far things have come and how amazing it is that we can appear in public as gay citizens without fear of our jobs, livelihood, families, and personal safety, not to mention having all of these public officials joining in and marching in our parade! When I was in college, this sort of happy public celebration would have been just a daydream!

While churches are our next area to educate and inform, there were dozens of church groups marching in the parade from a wide variety of denominations, not just the gay churches. The Episcopal Bishop of Washington was even riding in the parade in his convertable (though the top was up due to the rain)!