Painted Ladies

Week Thirty-Six - Saint Stephen

6:30 Saturday evening mass. St. Stephen. When I initially embarked on this little "church project", I compiled what I thought was a fairly lengthy list of Catholic churches in Cincinnati, primarily churches I was at least vaguely familiar with, either in name or location. After a while, however, through a variety of sources (quite often in the daily obits), I would notice churches not on my list. Concerned that my list was obviously incomplete, I managed to identify via the internet the "deaneries" in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati with a list of the churches belonging to each one . . . which quickly blew my humble little list of churches completely out of the water. Okay, I always knew that Cincinnati had a lot of Catholic churches, but how could I have missed so many of them! Suffice it say that my list doubled (tripled?) in size, providing me with an overwhelming supply of new worship locales to choose from, including this week's treat, St. Stephen.

I had never heard of St. Stephen, but the timing was right, and in spite of a steady rainfall, My Husband the Heathen and I headed to the Columbia-Tusculum area. We arrived early enough to take a quick tour through the neighborhood, enjoying the delightfully, charming houses, aka the "painted ladies." Very hip. Very cool. A small parking lot next door to the church was ideal given the very wet weather - you couldn't have gotten any closer to the front door.

St. Stephen's is an old parish -1860's-old, and it was that piece of information that prefaced my high hopes for a classically beautiful old church. Well, the floors looked old, and the pews looked old, but this building was clearly not the original church of more than a century and a half ago. Somewhere along the line, it was obvious that the church had undergone major renovations. I haven't been able to locate a history of St. Stephen's parish, but a quick glance at the clean lines of the ceiling left me a little disappointed - my hopes for "old" had been replaced, at least half-way, with "new."

This mixture of old and new wasn't really bad, more just kind of . . . bland. A huge mural spanning the width of the wall behind the altar was a good effort by someone. Unfortunately, though, that someone was no Michaelangelo. Something more along the lines of a pastel panorama, this painting included the whole hierarchy - random folk, disciples, Jesus, angels, and the big man himself, God. I wanted to see a kind, gentle God, but I couldn't help but find the God in this painting to be rather scary and angry looking, with a halo looking oddly similar to the symbol for radioactivity . . . or Mickey Mouse ears. Sorry, but it's true. It seemed as if two individuals might have collaborated on the mural as there were all of two trees in the painting - one on the left and one on the right - but each was a different species. The variety was nice, but I wondered if someone hadn't gotten the memo about which tree was going to be used in the final draft.

The celebrating priest was a black gentleman from Ghana. I loved his vestment - a glittery silver lined with pink. To die for. Anyhoo, his presence reaffirmed my enchantment with the idea of a truly universal Catholic church. Here was a man from half-way around the world, saying the same mass, the same words, that we here in Cincinnati hear every week, that every Catholic, everywhere hears. I love that. It definitely took me a while to get the hang of his accent, and I'm not sure I ever got there. For future reference, "peas" = "peace," "ship" = "sheep," "fata" = "father." It really was difficult, but at the same time, it was exotic . . . and lovely.

The music group was quite good. Five adults with a man and a woman leading the vocals. They sang a lot of my favorites, so bonus points for that. A short a capella verse sung after the elevation of the bread and wine was something new that I totally didn't expect. Not sure what that was all about or where it came from. Might have to look into that.

The congregation this particular evening numbered less than 100. There were no children in attendance, but among the older couples, there was also a large number of individual adults. An upper-middle class crowd.

According to their bulletin, St. Stephen Church is a "laity-led Catholic parish with a canonical pastor." I have no idea what that means, but I liked it. Convenient parking. A pew all to myself. Good tunes. Sigh. Why must the good churches always be so far away?

ATTENDANCE: One-fourth full

DURATION: 55 minutes