186/365 St. Marge

It's the neighbor to the north. The prettier older sister. We were there for the rehearsal and everything about it grated on my nerves. Maybe it was just the underdog in me coming out and creating a chip on my shoulder. But it just isn't all that.

It's both plainer and fussier than our church. The pews, I can't tell if they are original, but they are a blond wood and have a modern feel. It's a boxy room, very wide and short. On the other hand, it has a ton of marble, some of which I coveted and some just seemed over the top.

The stained glass got me. Tiny dots of color with these skimpy depictions of the ministry of Christ. You couldn't tell what they were from a distance. By comparison, ours are striking and obvious, but with hidden depths. I had to put the camera on zoom to photograph these and decipher back at home.

And it was a tad grungy--not dirty, I mean, the place was clean--but it had that old stale Catholic church from TV shows thing going on. The candle stands caked in decades of soot, with mix and match colored glass candle holders, half of them empty, in front of the St. Anthony and St. Ann statues. A back vestibule where a pieta and several other statues were stored (sounds vaguely familiar...), with a pew blocking your entry and another grungy candle stand facing them, like they were in some kind of devotional museum. A faded, yellowed Latin pronouncement in a cheap frame hung on a back pillar. Those sorts of things.

At one point I made myself sit and find things I liked. I liked the multicolored marble statues--the kind with Jesus' cloak in a different kind of marble kind of thing. The stained glass, as abstract art, had powerful reds and blues. The altar, still with its original marble, was definitely enviable. And the staircase to the basement was narrow, but made of lovely wood.

Our neighbor has always seen itself as better--not architecturally, but as a parish. It's in a self-important neighborhood. It "still has a school" which is an infuriating statement because we still have a school, too. Yes, we share it with several other parishes, but we are the majority at the school and it is integral to our parish. Some folks actually argue, "but ours is attached to our parish" which isn't even true because it is several blocks away on its own campus. This school is another that is bleeding middle school families as they bail on the traditional, stale curriculum for better pastures. But nobody is talking about that. No. It's living on a reputation that is no longer deserved.

Not that I'm bitter.