Columbus Seven Church Tour

Columbus Jubilee Museum:

  

So Saturday was the big ol' seven churches tour (“Sevenchurchtour.com” as Fr. W plugged early and often).  Off to big bus at St. Brendan's, which rolled towards our first stop at Holy Cross. Our priest-tour guide was quite a card, wearing a goofy hat with large bear ears.

I think he removed his hat for the Rosary we said on the way down, the Sorrowful mysteries for Lent. The tour was roughly in chronological order and so we started at the 1833 church Holy Cross. He gave an interesting history and we said a relevant prayer at this and all the subsequent churches.
The church was not overly impressive as far as art or architecture but explained this was an immigrant generation without much money and that you could see how much more ornate the second generation churches became. Second generation immigrants are among the wealthiest generation, he said, because they are bilingual.

He also talked about the Irish and German splitting, the Irish from Holy Cross heading off to St. Patrick's. He handled that intriguing subject of Irish/German relations straightforwardly, explaining people simply like to be with people similar to them. He illustrated this by saying in Rome, where he lived for four years, he could immediately tell the Americans from their clothes, shoes, and cockiness. He said he naturally fell in with fellow Americans even though he thinks he probably wouldn't have been chums if they'd been in the U.S.

Fr. W is a good self-promoter and not shy about expounding on his language skills (speaks fluent Italian) or time management skills. Definitely has some Bill O'Reilly in him, which my father noticed as well.

After Holy Cross we headed into a driving chill rain towards St. Patrick's, a rain that would accompany us everywhere in various manifestations of intensity and windiness.   Later churches toured included St. Mary's in German Village, St. Joseph's Cathedral, Holy Family, St. John the Baptist in Italian Village and then St. John the Evangelist – where a smashed vodka bottle rested by the side of the road and our bus driver helpfully kicked the glass out of the way. Rough part of town where “you don't want to be skipping at midnight” as Fr. W put it.

We had lunch near Holy Family, in the archdiocese Jubilee Museum where they “feed the body downstairs in the soup kitchen and the soul upstairs in the museum”. We arrived late to the auditorium since we had sat in the back of the bus and it looked like standing room but for a collection of ornate leather chairs around an oval glass table. It looked off-limit-y, but a lady who looked in charge said we could sit there and so we did and so we ended up with quick access to the box lunches and later the best tour guide, an opinionated and self-assured padre wearing old-style traditional clerical attire. Lunches were tasty if low on protein: ceasar chicken sandwiches, heavy on the bread, with potato chips, an apple and a cookie; later someone would end up with low glucose. Fr. W sat next to me; he wasn't overly talkative but I asked him why he didn't become a Dominican and he said he only briefly considered them and then added that he considered more seriously the Jesuit order due to liking St. Ignatius.

The tour of the museum was fabulous. I'd looked around at the dumpy auditorium where we ate and it looked like a forlorn junk store saddled with Catholic kitsch. I thought the museum would be similar, or at the very least small, but it was capacious as the day is long and filled with striking rooms full of books and art. (One was a “nun room”!?) The priest guide was entertaining and well-spoken and gave a spicy defense of Catholicism against Jewish and Protestant naysayers. He also mentioned something I should've realized: that there is no such thing as a “traditional Gaelic Mass” as the Irishfest advertises given that the Mass was in Latin for practically a millennium.

In the beginning he made a plea for funds that was off-putting and overly pushy, going so far as to make fun of a guy who placed a ten dollar bill in his hands as if he was doing the good padre a favor. But the museum itself won me over, as well as his enthusiastic tour talk. He spoke surprisingly emotionally about St. Peter's, a church on Fifth Avenue that had met its demise around 1970 when a lot of parishioner houses were swept away by the installation of Interstate 71. His long defense against those who said the church was demolished due to I-70 seemed curiously eccentric and overkill, yet he had gigantic visual aids showing the church property before and after I-71.

Much too soon that part was over and we headed into the cruel rain towards an Italian church I'd never seen before. Very colorful, with a bright blue-sky ceiling. Then off to Fr. W's home church, St. John the Evangelist, a handsome one modeled after many a church in Germany. Fr. W then said Mass for our group using the homily to tell us about the church and his role in it but also inspirational in how the destruction of the main stained glass window in the back led to the church's eventual restoration and how God does similarly with our souls.

On the way home we picked up Outback and then a generous happy hour followed by downer of a movie starring Matthew McCaughney titled “The Dallas Buyer's Club”. The 94% favorable rating swayed me too much. As someone wrote in a major publication, we are living in the golden age of television, not movies, and I for one would much rather see Justify or Nashville than anything at the local movie joint.

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Was buoyed by the surprising news that my wife's niece is becoming a Catholic this Easter. Am reminded of the Flannery O'Connor's words about a voluntary conversion being a miracle and indeed with all the gloom and doom of the state of the world it's just always an amazing thing to see anybody converting. I'm curious at what brought her to this point, especially given that you can't convert without “supreme effort”, i.e. going to RCIA classes for a long, long time. That would seem to make converting to the Catholic Church a far more impressive thing than, say, getting married, since you can do that on a whim, in Vegas, in ten minutes. No barrier to entry to marriage and I wonder if the Catholic Church is the only non-educational institution that requires a barrier to entry with no financial reward. My workplace, for example, has a barrier to entry - usually a college degree of some sort - but they pay you. Clubs and organizations offer free or very cheap membership dues.

My wife was invited to the Easter Vigil; she doesn't want to stay for the whole thing but I do; the Easter Vigil is a bit long and brutal unless someone you know is being initiated into the Church (such as my sister-in-law a year or two ago) and then it's inspiring.

I wonder what impact, if any, my own wedding had on my wife's niece. Was it her first Catholic Mass? She would've been maybe 16 then. I think she might've been the one who received Communion illicitly but I can't recall. I wonder if Fr. G had planted a tiny, tiny seed in his dramatic, idiosyncratic narration of the Words of Institution. Stranger things have happened!

Later went for the obligatory run even though legs and lungs were DOA. A forced march, as it were. Went so slow that confused dogs were unsure, for barking purposes, whether I was running or walking....

A Two-Hour Tour

Yesterday I headed, if a bit tensely, towards German Village for my annual afternoon there. Wasn't sure it would be worth it since I didn't much feel like fighting the traffic and figuring out where to park, no small task in a place blanketed with permit-only parking. Eventually I found a legal spot - or so I hoped - set off on bike southward.

Oh what a genteel and comely place is German Village on a sunny fall day! The beautiful old red brick, the winsome gardens, the European flavor. Even a whimsical statue (a life-sized lass bent over tending a garden). It was tourism on the cheap and it makes me wonder why I don't go there more than once a year. Hassle factor I'm sure, despite it being only five minutes from work. It's the sort of place one could spend a day there, and there was a tour bus in evidence - which only drives home the fact that we least often tour our own nests. I could imagine a day spent walking the tree-lined cobblestone streets, going to St. Mary's ever-open church, eating at one of the many fine German restaurants, and finding a joint to sip a beer. I had to laugh that even the laundromat for heaven's sake, was a sight to behold with tasteful art on the wall, tall ceilings and a European feel. Real cities have a way of making the mundane seem special, although admittedly the most mundane part of NYC, the subway, is perfectly uninspiring.

I rode past Schiller Park, past a young Germanic-looking gal with a child, and ended up eventually reaching a dead end at Bruck Street (only highway-like Parsons Avenue and High Street continue south). Serendipitously, I stumbled on “Guinness on Innis”, the new headquarters of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The neighborhood looks iffy at best and there are a lot of vacant lots around. A big sign on the door announcing the place is alarmed, which seems a good plan in this neighborhood. How far the once proud club has fallen from those heady late '90s days when all the young and hip gathered at St. Patrick's social hall and drank in honor of the church's namesake! A more sober pastor put a stop to it, leider, even as club membership nosedived in favor of the Shamrock Club.

Felt more relaxed after the ride and even better when I entered Heaven on earth, St. Mary's Church. Spent a half-hour there praying belated morning lit of hours and then a needful rosary. Built in 1865, the church still retains charms that soothe, such as the large and beautiful script “Ave Maria - Gratia Plena” over the altar. Beautiful art and a wonderful message and the only other time I'd witnessed words in a church design that had such impact was in St. Peter's in Rome where the Latin for Peter's designation as the rock and foundation rings so memorably. On the ceiling here at St. Mary's there are all those “bitte fur uns”'s, aided by somewhat cryptic pictographs. I'd thought the “pray for us” would apply to different saints, but all the pictographs turned out to be symbols of Mary, such as Mystical Rose, Morningstar, Ark of the Covenant, House of Gold. There is something otherworldly about that place of worship; I think it's made even more special by the fact that I'm only there when it's quiet and I'm alone (more or less - there were ladies from the tour group making the rounds).  I picked up a flyer with information about the church even though I'm wondering if ignorance might've been better. I kind of liked the mystery of those strange pictograph paintings and wondering what a golden house had to do with praying for us. It made it more “other”.

"Bitte fur uns"

Craftsman restoring altar

After that golden half-hour I headed to the famous bookshop with “32 rooms of books”. The downside to that bookstore is that every room has it's only song playing over individual stereo speakers. I don't like music in a bookstore - it's distracting. One room had Irish drinking songs playing and I lingered in there even though I didn't like the books. Another room had unappealing music but I liked the books.

Didn't buy anything though I was tempted by a couple tasty morsels: the new biography of J.D. Salinger (there's nothing more charismatic than a recluse in an age that worships celebrity), and a book called “The Novel Cure” which rather ingeniously devotes a page or two to classic novels for any need.

Kentucky Basilica & Book Haunt

On Sunday we and made our way on a sunny but chilly morning to the breathtaking St. Mary Basilica in Covington, KY. We arrived a good half hour before services and I anticipated exploring the near empty cathedral but that was not to be. Surprisingly for a Catholic Church, there were a lot of people there that early and so it was hard to tour while people were trying to pray. The brightness of this gothic cathedral was created by the jillion stained glassed windows. Built around 1895, the Stations of the Cross were huge mosaics. But the most stunning vista for me was a gigantic floor-to-ceiling stained glass window to the left of the altar.

On the web, one commenter said:

One of the few Cathedral Basilica Minors outside of Rome, it has the largest stain glass window in a church in the world. The inside of it is absolutely breathtaking and I find myself staring at the different stain glass windows or mosaics while attending service there.

Another writes:

Cathedral Basilica is home to some of the most beautiful architecture in the tri-state. Located in the heart of Covington, the grand church can be seen from highrises in Cincinnati. Once inside, the view becomes even more breathtaking.

Cathedral Basilica is home to the World's Largest Stained Glass Window, measuring 67 x 24 feet. The facility was erected in 1894 and ended in 1915, unfinished. Near the front door, you can notice some empty pedestals which were meant to house statues. The church ran out of money, and never added them in. The Cathedral is also lacking a steeple because it would be too heavy for the foundation to support.

Some notable architecture:

• 26 gargoyles on the building exterior
• murals by 1903 Covington artist, Frank Duveneck
• two beautiful, stained glass rose windows
• ornate statues of religious figures
• marble flooring, sanctuary, and Baptismal
• two gigantic organs, one dating back to 1859
• 82 stained glass windows made in Munich, Germany
• mosaics of the stations of the cross, made out of 80,000 tiles

Outside, one can find a lush garden, complete with path, benches and fountain. It's an enjoyable piece of serenity for Downtown Covington.

The inside of the church is modeled almost exactly after St. Denis just north of Paris, where the remains of Marie Antoinette reside in the crypts.  St. Denis in Paris was very dark, moody and medieval. It was a gorgeous church, but was in a sad state. It's replica in Covington, KY is more beautiful in my opinion. After a recent renovation, they moved the altar and added some of the most beautiful woodwork I've seen. The stained glass and the rosary are astounding! This is a place not to be missed. 

As if the beauty of the church wasn't enough, the liturgy itself was wonderful, a true high mass featuring the bishop, the successor to the apostles, and all the “smells and bells.” The music was extraordinary as well and I wouldn't have minded owning a recording of their choir's Ave Maria.

Hard gospel truth in John 16: “you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.” Jesus goes on to compare it to a woman giving labor - we'll forget the pain afterward. Lino Rulli brought up the movie Dogma in which one character said something that struck him as so true way back when he first saw in over a decade ago. The character said, “Catholics don't celebrate their faith, they mourn it.” Which is sad and not right but then I thought, “hmmm….In light of today's gospel that's kind of interesting.” Rulli praised evangelicals for being so much happier about the faith but then I recalled the priest at mass today saying how disturbed he was by a big billboard of a smiling “wealth gospel” preacher, dressed to the nines in front of a Lexus. 

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Later went bookshop explorin' and found a 1940 volume called The Oxford Book of Verse with poetry from 1290 to 1918. Pretty much covers the gaumet.  Editor was a fellow named Quiller-Couch. Also picked up another poetry book by Ashley Shelby called Appalachian Studies. I love Eastern Kentucky stuff, especially in the wake of the History Channel's Hatfields & McCoys as well as the TV series Justified. It was very pleasant thoroughly exploring the local interest section and the leather-bounds. Happened across a history of early New England by Fiske from the late 1800s. There's something about that early Puritan period in the MA area that appeals, or rather interests, me. Would never have wanted to live there in those times.

Via podcast, listened to the great Brian Lamb interview the producer of a film documentary about the decay of Detroit and then one with Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institute of Health, star of the genome project, and atheist-turned-Christian. Collins mentioned how he had his DNA tested and found out his risk for Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancers, etc… Makes me want to drop $150 and get the test done as well.