Encomium Anglicanae

Call it a midlife crisis, call it a dark night of the soul, or call it whatever you like; the last few years have not been kind to me. Failures and regrets have abounded. Severe health crises, several lost pregnancies mid-term, job insecurities, bad investments, and familial stresses have all taken their toll to severely tempt this author to curse God and die. As a former seminarian and professional Church worker, my greatest spiritual gifting is the subtle and vibrant art of cynicism. I could find the shadow of the devil in the cold light of day; and, if left to my worst angels, I could proverbially complain about the menu at the Last Supper.

All of this is simply to say that my heart was not fertile soil when my family and I landed on the door step of Mount Calvary Catholic Church toward the end of the Covid chaos in the middle of 2021. I was not in a good space physically, mentally, or (most importantly) spiritually to make such a dramatic shift in my parochial life; and I felt it in every fiber of my being. I have come since to realize in gratitude that if not for Mount Calvary, I might have lost my faith completely.

Mount Calvary is situated in downtown Baltimore, surrounded by government buildings, hospital complexes, homeless encampments, and marijuana dispensaries. I have, on a number of occasions, invited friends to Mass but been bluntly turned down due to the perceived notion of danger that inner-city Baltimore evokes. I don’t deny the reality or hold it against them. Since our time attending, there has been no threat of violence; but a number of the area’s vagrants have joined us for Masses and brunches. One of the homeless regulars who passed away is now even entombed in the church’s crypt. But the threat of violence persists and is a distinct possibility in the future, as it is everywhere.

G.K. Chesterton once quipped that it is very easy to be flippant to those who are so incredibly ignorant of the Faith that the very questions they ask are almost unanswerable in their idiocy. “Why do you fast so much when you have all goodness right in front you?” “Too right you are,” he says, “we should stop trying to control ourselves.” “Why can’t you simply find God in the trees and mountains and caves like everyone else?” “Ah yes, good point, old chap,” he might reply. 

But to answer questions like these gives justification and credence to an inquiry that defies its own logic in the first place. Chesterton had a similar intuition about why Christian Orthodoxy was true as to the inanity of asking, “Why do you prefer modern life as to that of the cave man?” Our good friend Gilbert felt he could not answer the ridiculous query directly but could only point around at the door knob, the electric light, and other such modern conveniences in as much as they represented the whole of man’s progress in civilization. No doubt, today he would add air conditioning, ibuprofen, and the water heater to his updated list.

In the same spirit, when people ask why I prefer Mount Calvary over “normal” Catholic parishes today, I am almost as flummoxed and baffled by the sheer ignorance of such a question. I am tempted to be flippant and aloof and disregard the person asking, “Isn’t it such a long Mass?” “Yes, nearly two hours every Sunday…God help us if there is a baptism…” “Isn’t all that organ and chant music so dreadful?” “Yes, they do tend to drone on…” “How do you concentrate with all the children making noise?” “Yes, children can be quite bothersome…” “Don’t you hate the old English?” “Too true, let’s say an Our Father instead…” 

When the question is asked directly, “What do you like so much about Mount Calvary?” It’s then that I also become a little lost for words, like being asked why I prefer a furnace in my basement to almost certain death alone in the woods in northern Canada in January. The answer would seem so plain, but all I can do is point around to the incense, families, altar-servers guild, artistry, colors, stained glass, order, organ, and so on.  

If you will please excuse my previous flippancy toward the corrosive cancer of cynicism in my soul, I am aware of its destructive yet all too common occurrence among the professional church class, ordained or otherwise. It is a dark and dangerous sin feeding at once my pride and arrogance as well as nourishing my despair and starving my hope. I mean this in no curt way. My faith was on a knife’s edge. And God, in His wisdom, transplanted me to a place where I could be protected from the flood waters of this world and the tepid, beige Catholicism that is slowly drowning within it.

I am, in truth, no liturgist or traditionalist. I have never been to a Tridentine liturgy, though I have studied it from afar. I have attended several of the Eastern Catholic liturgies over the years but more as an academic exercise. How strange that it was easier 20 years ago to find a Byzantine or Ruthenian Rite parish than a TLM parish. 

I cut my teeth within a campus ministry dedicated to the Springtime of the New Evangelization in which modern, mostly Protestant praise and worship songs were the standard norm. Charismatic gifts of the Spirit were emphasized, though not required, by the group of brothers who ran the university’s campus ministry; and, by all accounts, the ministry is still thriving today. Many of my confreres discerned religious vocations, and hundreds of faithful, orthodox marriages have been produced as a direct result of encouraging students toward what has been called “intentional discipleship.”

Parallel to this and other movements of the Holy Spirit ran the common heterodox practices that we all know and hate. The sister who ran the Religious Education program promoted women priests while mandating felt banners as a quasi-sacramental species that must be constructed by a child prior to First Communion. The deacon assigned to the ministry chastised me for bowing or kneeling whenever I crossed the front of the altar or entered the sanctuary. The priest assigned as chaplain to the campus ministry denied the sinful and selfish nature of masturbation—something I’m sure he had many the opportunity to deny, surrounded by the debauched public university to which he ministered. 

However, the culture and life of the campus ministry was so vibrant that all of these affronts to God seemed small in comparison. Leaving that place of rest and fire, the story then continues like so many. As sufferings, struggles, and stresses accumulated over the years, along with an inverse decline in the protection of friends and community, faith waned—like the ember moved too far from the heart of the flame. As sufferings, struggles, and stresses accumulated over the years, along with an inverse decline in the protection of friends and community, faith waned—like the ember moved too far from the heart of the flame.Tweet This

Mount Calvary Catholic Church is sired directly from the Oxford Movement of St. John Henry Newman and is a member of the Anglican Ordinariate. Through the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, issued by Pope Benedict in November of 2009, Anglican parishes and priests who took advantage of this opened window could not so much swim but take a ferry across the Tiber River. Whole parishes, along with their married clergy, came into the Church. And, by some genius machination, they were allowed to meld many of the traditional Anglican Liturgical practices with the Novus Ordo, therefore insulating the fledgling movement from the politics surrounding the Tridentine Rite.

The Anglican Ordinariate is, in essence, its own diocese—similar to that of the Military Archdiocese of the United States. Its own bishop, Steven Lopes, was just named head of the liturgical committee for the USCCB. Described by a still-Anglican priest as a “nose bleed” high liturgy, Mount Calvary has barely got its boots on by the time a Novus Ordo Mass is shaking hands with the pastor on the way to the parking lot. This, juxtaposed with sitting behind the pastor’s wife and kids every Sunday, is a dichotomy that still amuses me. 

The point I wish to make is that, try as I might in my weary, saddened, and despaired soul, I could not find a foothold for cynicism in the edifice of Mount Calvary. The music, long a source of pride in my own ability and a source of dismay in others lack thereof, was organ-led and chant-based and exquisite. Our very own Medici-like benefactor has insisted that all hymns be performed by professionals and students from the Peabody Institute, a renowned school of music in Baltimore. 

I confess, I led music for decades in churches all around the country with my beat-up old Martin 6-String. I cannot help but critique another guitarist when I hear one, be it in Mass or a concert. I do not dismay against guitar music in church. In my mind, there are only two types of music: good and bad. 

We must be honest, however, in the assessment that the grand majority of what gets played in churches today is bad on every conceivable level: melody, structure, and lyric. The push toward “contemporary” music in the aftermath of Vatican II is a grand illustration of what is wrong with the Church today. Those liberalizers never thought that what was contemporary and popular in their own day would quickly be replaced by new sounds and new music. 

Instead, we are left with songs that sound like bad off-Broadway shows from the ’70s, replete with major 7th chords and folk song lyrical robbery more appropriate for cruising down Ventura Highway. Growing up in the ’90s, the oldies station would play the Beatles.  Today, the oldies station would play Nirvana, Oasis, and Boyz II Men.

Protestant churches, by and large, have not had this issue. The pop songs they emulate in their worship are only about 10-15 years behind the times, sounding like U2, Coldplay, and other pop-rock driven bands. We, however, are locked into the opinions and tastes of those people who control the hymn books and still desire overly saccharine melodies and self-help lyrics. 

By turning to more modern praise and worship songs proliferated through the music factory that is the modern non-denominational church, the melodies and music become more contemporary and popular but face the opposite problem of only being “relevant” for a year at most until the next jingle makes its way onto the radio. You are out of luck if you are trying to plan music for a Solemn Feast like the Immaculate Conception. Has Chris Tomlin written on the unstained soul and body of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Glorious Assumption into Heaven yet? Must be on the next album…

In the end, I believe it is simply that Mount Calvary takes seriously what happens on the altar to the bread and wine and, consequently, believes what surrounds said actions should be of the highest quality and attention that we can provide. If the Eucharist truly is what we think it is, then yes, let’s spend time here praying and preparing to receive. Let’s make our music represent the beauty and timelessness of the Word made flesh. Let our priest, in persona Christi, feed us from his very hands as we kneel in adoration. 

Let our altar servers, those who might desire this priesthood, be male only of all ages and personalities—to draw them more abundantly into vocations. Let’s pay qualified people to sing and play the songs that have been filtered down through the ages and stand above the drivel. Michelangelo was no saint, but he still created art to the glory of God. Let’s be bold about the family and creating places where children are seen and welcomed. The average age of a parishioner at Mount Calvery is just 8 years old! 8! The church is the cry room! Just take a moment to estimate what the average age is in your parish.  

Try as I might, when the sloth of avoiding spiritual things has, God have mercy, overtaken me, I have not renounced Mount Calvary. It is my source of consolation; and she beckons me. She is beauty when my soul is sick with ugliness. She is heavenly when my spirit is hell.  

I don’t even notice when the priest is not facing me because we are both turned the same way, toward the same God—both men not able to stand in the glory of the Father apart from the grace of the Son. When illness or travel or some other occasion has necessitated attending Mass at a local parish, the old cynicism arises, stirred by horrendous music; silent congregations; aged crowds; absent children; banal homilies; bannered, white-washed walls with little décor or statuary—in short, a modern, decaying Catholic parish. 

With all of the other troubles that have plagued my heart in the last few years, either midlife crisis or dark night, I am infinitely grateful for the grace of having been invited to Mount Calvary. True, it is set within the war zone of inner-city Baltimore. We have had vagrants enter, use the bathroom, and treat the walls like a Jackson Pollock with their excrement. The threat of drug and gang violence is and will always be a distinct possibility for me and my family. But it is worth it.