Roamin' Catholics: Body and Soul

We're back to the HIS and HER versions of Roamin' Catholics: Body & Soul. First HIS... The inspiration for our choice of this week’s church was a discussion with our Uncle Ed following mass last week.  We told him that the week before we had gone to St Mary’s and that we had just attended mass at St. Louis.  He suggested that we should go to St Ed’s the following week (this week.)  None of us had ever heard of a church named St Ed, Edward, Edmund, Eddie or any other variation.  This presented me with the challenge to find a St “E” Catholic church.  Truth be told it really wasn’t that hard.  I found two.  One in Baltimore and one in Bowie, MD.  Unfortunately, it appeared that the one in Baltimore was closed permanently (last things posted on their web page were from 2015.)  Fortunately, St Edward The Confessor was alive and kicking in Bowie, MD.  So off we went. The church building looked to be of 1960’s vintage.  I can...

We're mixing things up a bit this week. We want to keep our audience on its toes. Last week we gave you separate HER PERSPECTIVE and HIS PERSPECTIVE. This week we are co-mingling. My comments (HERS) will be in this lovely royal blue and HIS will be in black. In the interest of equal time (last week we went to my namesake, St. Mary's) , this week brought us to St. Louis in Clarksville, MD. We were about 24 miles from home base.   This is a vibrant, large parish which is part of the Baltimore Archdiocese.  The parish is apparently so large that they actually have two Saturday evening masses.  Somewhat unusual for our area. I've only experienced the "more than one Saturday evening mass" in Ft. Myers, FL.  This week’s church was also designed in the “modern” vain.  Built in 1980, the church contained a good mix of modern elements along with the traditional.  The stained glass windows featured in the church were massive and seemed to come straight out of...

This week's Roamin' Catholics: Body and Soul ventured ten miles from home base to the 5:00 Saturday evening mass at  St. Mary's Catholic Church in Rockville, MD. After a quick read on their website, I learned the Parish was established in 1813, the first mass in their new church was held in 1817 and in the 1960's a new church was built (presumably because the Church was growing and a larger building was needed). There was debate as to whether to tear down the old church or not... the decision was made to keep it and restore it. HER OBSERVATIONS: Quite frankly, I love the look of the old church, but I am not a huge fan of the newer one where mass is held. It has a sort of "church in the round" structure to it, so seating is 180 degrees around the altar. I found that when we walked it (on the side) I immediately had to establish connection to the pews directly facing the altar. I think this is just a personal preference. As an interior designer, there was o...

Sunday, January 7, 2018 Welcome to the very first blog post of Roamin' Catholics: Body and Soul . A few years back, we made an unofficial habit (insert favorite nun joke here) of attending a Saturday evening mass and then going out to dinner afterwards. We often casually mentioned our outings in Facebook. The new year prompted us to become more official. We decided to blog about our adventures. Yeah, we both grew up hearing that it was wrong to "church shop". Well, we're really not shopping. And so what if we are.. at least we're going to church. And that becomes the lead in to this week. We are fans of the Saturday night mass or the early Sunday morning mass. The Saturday night mass lends itself to a dinner for two afterwards. The early Sunday morning mass lends itself to no singing in church. We're not fans of singing - unless it is the variety that we both grew up learning and singing. That's been pretty hard to find lately. So I've digressed....