Even then, I should have known things were taking a nose dive as we made the drive south on Covington's Madison Avenue - behind a TANK bus the whole way. There sure are a lot of bus stops on Madison. A few zigs and a zag later, however, we did manage to find Holy Cross Church. I purposely picked Holy Cross in an effort to keep My Husband the Heathen interested in any architectural details that might come with an old church as well as to spare him from another weekend of suburban piety. You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. Suffice it to say, I ended up apologizing to one very patient husband.
Holy Cross has an innocuous parish website listing only the bare-bones details, i.e., no church history. (I do love the comment on said website, however: "Holy Cross ministers do not accept email." Ouch.) Luckily, the Kenton County Public Library came to my rescue. Holy Cross Parish was founded and a church built in 1890 when the German Catholic residents of Latonia found St. Augustine's Church to be too far away and too hard to reach in bad weather. (Hold on. These were the German Catholics?) In 1908, with a rapidly growing population, an even newer church - the existing church - was built. Okay. Cool. Sounds good, and things did, in fact, look pretty good as we parked outside of the church. And then we went inside.
I still don't know what's happening at Holy Cross Church. A large random swatch of blue with decorative detailing occupies an equally random section of the high ceiling. I'm not sure if it was going up or coming down. One side of the church sports bright blue walls. What the . . .? Are they renovating? Are they "trying things out" to see if they like it? I'm confused. Large stained glass windows are nice, but I'm not sure if all of them even matched. Maybe it was just the lighting. An area marred by what appeared to be smoke damage could possibly be explained by the library article's mention of a fire that did significant damage to the church . . . in 1990. Maybe not. Truthfully, I can't say I remember much more about the interior of Holy Cross because, in spite of its potential, it was just so . . . so . . . blah. Unfortunately, the same was true of the mass.
A visiting priest - a notably tall drink of water - seemed like a nice man. Unfortunately, this nice man took his homily to a whole-nutha-level. He first covered commonly-asked questions about Lent for a good ten minutes and then moved on to a second topic, the subject of which I can't recall - or ever did know, for another ten or fifteen minutes. At this point, the troops were already growing restless, but when he said, "Now let's talk about today's gospel," I swear I heard a collective groan go up from the congregation. Oh lord. After yet another fifteen minutes of straining to make out the monotonal, hard-to-understand-because-of-the-echo-in-the-church words of this nice man (to be read with gritted teeth), we finally, mercifully stood for the creed. Am I being too harsh? Ask the several people who left mid-homily.
It was all so melancholy at Holy Cross. Each of the hymns was even sung like a dirge. Oh, I know, it's Lent and everything, but this was just so . . . sad. The only good thing about attending mass at Holy Cross? Coming home and crossing it off The List.
ATTENDANCE: Less than half
DURATION: One hour and five minutes
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