Introducing Church Reviews

 One of the most exciting things about moving to a new city for someone like me is the opportunity to try out new churches.  When I say that, I means "parishes within a given religion" (papistry, in my case), not different religions.  In Chicago I would have had to try different religions in order to sample different churches since there was only one Catholic church within any sort of reasonable distance from my apartment - a church, I feel bound to add, with which I was quite satisfied.  But now that I'm in Washington, I get to start over, looking for a new church.  This time, thanks to functioning public transportation and the far higher degree of walkability (new word) Washington possesses, I've got lots of options.  Just go to Google Maps and put in "Catholic churches near Washington DC" and quite a few pop up.  For someone who grew up in a city with a Catholic church count in the single digits, all those possibilities are tantalizing in ways you non-practicing people probably can't imagine.

What's also interesting is that, given Washington's age, many of these churches have had time to develop coherent identities.  For example, St. Patrick's (where Teddy Kennedy used to go to Mass) is the Irish church, Holy Rosary serves the Italian community, St. Mary Mother of God has a Tridentine Mass (Latin) at 9 on Sunday mornings and a Mass in Cantonese at 11:30.  St. Stephen Martyr's 1:00pm Mass on Sunday afternoon is devoted to the Filipino community and, taking the cake for most diverse, is Sacred Heart (Sagrado Corazon) in Columbia Heights, which has nine Masses each weekend: two in English, five in Spanish, one in Vietnamese, and one in Haitian (which I presume means Haitian Creole, a variant of French).  And, of course, there's always the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle if you're feeling grandiose, or the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, if you're feeling even more grandiose (it's the largest Catholic church in the country, and also the tallest building in the District of Columbia - take that, National Cathedral!).  There are enough churches to keep me going for months!

I don't currently intend to visit every Catholic church in the District, although that might be a fun project for later, for the simple reason that I'm just looking for something I can go to on a weekly basis that I will enjoy (as much as one can enjoy church, anyhow); I'm not interested in trekking out to the far reaches of the district for the sake of visiting a church I don't intend to go to regularly (so Anacostia and the far northwest and northeast are out).  But there are at least half a dozen churches I could feasibly walk to, and quite a few more that I could easily get to with the aid of the Metro.  So I intend to do some exploring.  To supplement my own memory I intend to write up reviews of each church, so I can remember which one had the gorgeous interior, which the talented choir, and which the most convenient location (I'll also be able to remember which had the blowhard priest, the horrible modern/folksy music, or - God forbid - acoustic tile ceiling).  I'll score four different categories - Aesthetics, Music, Liturgy, and Location - on five-point scales, then add up the points.  To be fair, I'll probably go to each church a couple of times (that is, to a couple of different Masses) to give different musicians and priests a chance, unless the location or aesthetics rule the church out after the first try.  And I'll chronicle everything here so you, readers, can follow along with my rather odd adventures.