Mary, Star of the Sea Church

A few weeks ago when we were in Baltimore we went to the Mary, Star of the Sea church for mass on Saturday. It was the choice because you could walk to it from the Inner Harbor and we could get down in time to go to the baseball game. The church is planning on celebrating its 150th anniversary. If you want to find old Catholic churches in the United States, one place to find them is in Baltimore.

The church was definitely an antique. It smelled like several old wooden cabinet antiques that I have.



You can see Mary, Star of the Sea (Stella Maris) at the top of the window.



The red haired woman at the foot of the cross below must be St. Mary Magdalene.

Liturgical referree - 10 yards for bad mass

I have had many a discussion with my Catholic friends on fine points of theology and structure of the mass, often whether it was performed correctly since these days you find a lot of "creativity" in church. I am a radical centrist, too liberal is bad but so is too conservative (conservative and liberal serve in the absence of better labels). You could say I know too much, but I do enjoy the intellectual side of the church.

The new Liturgical Referee described by the Curt Jester (I assume it is a joke) is a position right up my alley. This person could jump out during the mass to stop liturgical abuses and generally bad masses, such as when the priest adds their own words to the liturgy or just skips steps, or when they ring the bell at the elevation or slip back into Latin in the middle of the mass. Sometimes they could stop parishioners from adding their own craziness to the mix. Two signals that are my favorites are:

Liturgical Dance detected

The "What the heck am my hearing" signal is one of the most common signals and indicates syrupy banal liturgical music or the inappropriate use of secular music such as show tunes and popular music (especially from the seventies).

As an example, These would both be violated in the Polka Mass that we heard about in Munising, but did not go to when we were on vacation in Michigan. It is a mass where the music is polka with the lyrics replaced by the part of the mass. These are apparently still popular in the northern midwest, as you might guess, but may not be strictly appropriate or correct. Try - "Strike up the band the mass has begun, clap, clap, clap, clap, the Crucifixion Polka" or - "Roll out the wine barrel, we'll have a Holy Communion".

The "rulebook" for the mass is the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (abbreviated GIRM and said like germ, which is a cool acronym in its own right). I happen to own a copy of the GIRM and some ancillary documents. I guess I am a nerd about things both sacred and profane.

(via Neatorama)

Epiphany at Epiphany

The church that I grew up in, Epiphany of Our Lord, in Plymouth Meeting, PA began the celebration of its 50th Jubilee with a mass yesterday presided over by Justin Cardinal Regali of Philaldelphia. It was concelebrated by many priests, some of whom had been members of the parish and then became priests. It was a homecoming of sorts.

The church has been updated in anticipation of the jubilee, but they did retain the stained glass window in the back. The window is in that blocky modernist style with which many Catholics from the 70's will be familiar. With the Star above, three Kings pay homage to Jesus and Mary in the center of the window. If you look closely you can find some sheep and Joseph too.

Epiphany is the feast when the three (or maybe twelve, see Baudolino) Wise Men, Kings or Magi follow the star to find Jesus in the manger. Some trivia - the three kings are Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, and their gifts are - gold, frankincense and myrrh. There is a lot of good music, such as, We Three Kings, that comes from this feats. It is the end of the 12 days of Christmas. But for Catholics, Christmas isn't over yet until Feb 2nd, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.

I would have had many more and better pictures of the action if those pesky Knights of Columbus didn't keep getting in the way with their plumes and swords.




The head honcho of this crew got to where a purple (or maybe fuchsia) plume.






We did get to meet and have a pictures taken with His Eminence.