3211 Sacred Heart Way NW
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Columbia Heights is a neighborhood on the edge of gentrification, so there's a fusion of young professionals, gays, and students with people of African, Latin-American, and East Asian descent. Sacred Heart is the neighborhood's only Catholic church, and it reflects this diversity. How do I know this after only one Mass, you ask? Easy: there are nine Masses at Sacred Heart each weekend. Saturday at 4 is in English and at 6, in Spanish. Then on Sunday there are four Spanish Masses, one in English (the 10:00, when I went), and two more in the evening, one in Vietnamese (!) and one in Haitian (!). This alone is a far cry from the churches I have visited since I moved here, but you will soon see more reasons to put this particular church in a category of its own.
Location: To get to Sagrado Corazón, as I will call it from here on out, given that it has more Spanish-language Masses in a single day than most churches have in any and all languages in an entire weekend, I simply hopped onto the Green line half a block from home and rode it north to the station in Columbia Heights. Then I walked two blocks, first past the gentrified banks and department stores, then - after turning a corner - past taquerias, little grocery stores, and the sort of grungy little shops you see in National Geographic or world news pictures from the wire. Soon the austere majesty of Sagrado Corazón's dome reared up from behind the narrow apartment buildings; give it a 4 for Location.
Aesthetics: Inside, Sagrado Corazón reminds me more of than anything else of London's Westminster Cathedral (that's the Catholic one - the Abbey is Church of England. Go Google it for some pictures). The basis for both churches is a spartan stone (or, in S.C.'s case, maybe concrete?) space topped with a large dome, neo-Byzantine with a hint of Romanesque. But while Westminster Cathedral's most impressive feature is its cavernous interior (unless you count the gaudy facade - go on, Google it), Sagrado Corazón is a Hispanic church, and it shows. Gloriously.
There's tile and fresco (or something like it), statues, candles, hanging lamps; colors, metals, stone, wood, concrete, marble, tile, glass, and light. Visually it is a riot of different stimuli, which is something I like - in a religious building especially, I think of it as a fitting metaphor for the complexity of the world around us. I found, before the Mass started, that I could easily linger over small details in the decoration, and if I had had time I would have savored every little bit - but I had a lunch to get to and suffice it to say that on Aesthetics, a 5 is well-deserved.Music: I was disheartened to see modern hymnals in the pews and a piano in the front of the church, but the music was from immediately post-Vatican II, rather than the sloppy 80s and 90s feel-good mush. The dozen-person choir did a very good job, given their material, and although the music was modern, I hadn't heard some of the pieces before. There is an organ in the choir loft, and I intend to go the Saturday English Mass to see if they use it, but altogether, pretty good for modern music. I'll be charitable: 4.
Liturgy: But the real distinguishing characteristic was definitely the sermon. What a change from last week! Remember that St. Patrick is an old church in the downtown with a very traditional style. Sagrado Corazón is a young[er] church in a diverse neighborhood with a much more diverse congregation and a distinctly more modern style. Furthermore, the church is staffed by Capuchins, a sub-group of the Franciscans, who are second only to the Jesuits in their tolerance and open-mindedness, at least among the major orders. And today's readings were about lepers, which are a fantastic device for anybody writing a sermon, because they can be used as a metaphor for practically anything (well, I exaggerate, but not much). The little Salvadoran concelebrant who gave the sermon did exactly that. Who, he asked, are the lepers, the people that our society ignores? We allow ourselves, he said, the be divided by race, class, gender, sexual orientation (!) and so on, but the people who get no attention in the public sphere whatsoever are the victims of domestic abuse. Good start. Next: the church must recognize, he said, that it has sinned by enabling domestic violence to continue because it has counseled women to forgive and forget and to preserve marriages at all costs, even if they must endure abuse. The church, he added, has not spoken out against domestic violence at all. Of the two-hundred-twenty some diocese in this country, only a handful have domestic abuse programs, and nothing has been said the the US Council of Catholic Bishops. 1 in 4 women will be victims of domestic abuse at some point in their lives. You can bet that if that were 1 in 4 men, he said, the hierarchy would be up in arms! But women are the victims, and the church says nothing. We as Church, he said, have sinned against our sisters who suffer at the hands of their husbands, we have sinned against the victims of domestic violence who are the lepers of our society.He stepped down from the podium and the church erupted in applause. I applauded too - a 5, without a doubt.
Location: 4
Aesthetics: 5
Music: 4
Liturgy: 5
18/20 (4.5)
In sum, I like this place quite a bit. If I can just find a Mass - preferably in English, since my Spanish is a bit weak - where they use the organ, I will have found my DC version of my old church in Hyde Park, Chicago, St. Thomas the Apostle. I'll keep sampling churches in any case, because it's fun (yeah, I'm weird), but this one is definitely a keeper
James,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to tell you that the organ does not work and absent a major benefactor, cannot be repa. :(
I see your point about Westminster Cathedral. The building was modeled after the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy.
Tonight (Good Froday) wil be the neighborhood procession from the church through Mt. Pleasent, about 4,000 people. Its also known as "Catholics tieing up traffic."