Church #29 - St. Agatha, Woonsocket

I went to a noon Mass here a couple weeks ago. The daily Mass is held in a chapel in the rectory, which I unfortunately don't have any good pictures of. I remember the priest being phenomenal - during the homily, I remember thinking that I could listen to him for hours.

I would describe the interior of the church as simple, but pleasant. The place is very clean and well taken care of. The layout is straightforward, and the decorations are few but very nice. I'm guessing the statue in the above picture is St. Agatha, but I didn't think to check.

St. Agatha doesn't seem to get a lot of "traffic" as a patroness, but she gets a shout out in the Canon of the Mass. She is a martyr, murdered during a persecution of the Roman emperor Decius in the 3rd century for refusing to recant her faith. Decius didn't last long as emperor, was killed in battle, and is mostly notable for his persecutions of innocent people, so I think she came out on top in this one.

I always love seeing media stands like this in churches. Education in the faith is so important, for adults as well as for kids. I wish every church had one.

Church #28 - St. Maria Goretti, Pawtucket

When I saw how cool the weather was going to be yesterday morning, I knew that I had to walk somewhere to take advantage. I chose this church, which is about an hour away on foot from where I live. To get there I walked through a lovely area directly on the border of Providence and Pawtucket that I never would've seen otherwise, a huge hill that gives some awesome views of Providence.

I had heard of Bishop Keough high school, but I had no idea that this is where it is, and I also didn't know it was an all girls' school. According to Wikipedia their sports team name is the koalas, which is awesome. The school must be pretty small based on the size of its building. Anyways, the Mass at Maria Goretti is in an air-conditioned side chapel within the normal church sanctuary area.

I thought the Mass was kind of out there, in a sixties sort of way. The congregation said a couple of the prayers together that the priest normally says by himself during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. They did "self-serve" communion, where the priest leaves the ciborium on the altar and people walk up and take the Eucharist from it by hand. I went along with it at the time because I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but after talking to a few people, I've come to learn that they definitely should not be doing this. Well intentioned as this congregation might think they're being, this is an abuse of the liturgy, and I'm very disappointed that I was part of it. They also played a song on a boom box during communion that I found almost unbearably cheesy, and which I don't think mentioned God or Jesus in any way.

The parish appears to have a truly epic Mass band. I'd love to see it in action one day.

I don't want to go through the whole story of St. Maria Goretti here, but if you don't know it, definitely look it up as soon as you can. It's an amazing story of forgiveness and redemption.

Church #27 - St. Catherine, Warwick

I went to Mass here with a friend on Friday morning. The church is small and simple inside except for the stained glass windows, which are large and beautiful. I wish I knew more about the different saints - there's a different one on each window, but I can't immediately identify most of them. The stations of the cross on the wall look very familiar - I think I've seen the same ones at a different church. If you think about it, the fact that that doesn't happen more often is kind of amazing, given the sheer number of churches there are.

There's a big rose window depicting Christ the King in the place where the huge crucifix normally is. There's still a crucifix, but it's small, and sits on a stand off to one side of the altar.

There's a great statue of St. Catherine of Siena in the front of the church. It shows her holding a lantern and a basket of bread. This would be when Catherine was a teenager - she was extremely rebellious, refusing to get married the way her parents wanted her to and becoming a third order Dominican instead. Awkwardly enough, she still lived with her parents, despite their disapproval of each other's lifestyles. She cost her parents a lot of money by giving away their clothes and food without their permission, hence the scene in the statue.

Church #26 - St. Patrick, Cumberland

This is a big, old school church. Unfortunately, it was pretty dark inside the church when I took these pictures. As you walk around, you can hear the floors creaking, and there's a strong but pleasant smell of wood. I'm lucky that I was able to get into the church, since Mass at a lot of the bigger, older churches is usually in a separate building. 

There are a few interesting things inside the church. There's a couple of huge quotes on the front walls, and the biggest collection of free reading material I've seen in any church. For some reason, there's also still a Christmas tree (undecorated) tucked away in a corner. Maybe there's nowhere big enough to move or store it? The stations of the cross in the church are also fantastic - they're huge, detailed paintings, and they really jump out at you compared to the stations in a lot of churches.

Unfortunately, the priest wasn't feeling well when I came here for Mass, so the laity had a communion service instead. I wasn't aware this was a thing; I've been to a communion service before given by a deacon, but I didn't know that we were allowed to conduct it. I'm assuming they wouldn't have been doing it if it wasn't allowed. I'm disappointed that I didn't get the full Mass, but I'm still counting this because I still got the Eucharist.

Church #25 - Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, Woonsocket

"Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs" is definitely one of Mary's coolest and most underrated titles. It's fitting that I happened to go to Mass here on the feast of St. John the Baptist. The priest was an enthusiastic preacher, and he spent most of his homily talking about John the Baptist specifically, and martyrdom more generally.

Brown is easily the most dominant color in the interior of the church; there's wood everywhere you look. Sadly, there's no balcony. I found it impossible to tell how old the church is; it doesn't feel that new, but it also doesn't have the old school rectangular layout (something which is kind of hard to tell from the pictures I took).

One thing that jumped out at me is the statue of Jesus behind the altar. As you can see below, it's not a crucifix, but rather appears to be the risen Jesus. I'm trying to remember if I've seen this before. Apparently depicting Christ crucified isn't a requirement? And if it isn't, why is it that virtually every parish chooses the crucifix?

Church #24 - St. John Paul II, Pawtucket

Depending on how you look at it, St. JPII is a new parish - the result of a merger between Pawtucket's St. Leo the Great and St. Cecilia. Since St. Cecilia's address and school are still listed separately on the diocesan web site, I'm including St. Cecilia as a separate church in my 150 count, and I'll be visiting it at some other point.

The church building where I went to Mass is the former St. Leo. It doesn't strike me as particularly old or particularly new - I'm guessing that the old church wasn't rebuild or renovated, but there's been some work done on making the interior look newer and nicer.

The way the new parish works is that both church buildings remain open, and Mass is more or less alternated between the two. Presumable there is only one parish's worth of staff, which is where the merger would make sense from a financial standpoint. JPII makes perfect sense for the patron saint of a newly created parish, especially when people might be upset about the closing of their old one.

There are six St. Leos, but the old parish was dedicated to the first one, Pope Leo the Great. He lived in the 5th century, during the waning days of the Roman Empire (or after the Roman Empire had already ceased to exist, depending on how you look at it). Besides being a doctor of the church, he's best known for being awesome enough to face down Attila the Hun and convince him to turn back from invading Italy.

Sadly, the balcony was locked up. I feel lucky that this doesn't happen to me more. There appear to be two levels to the balcony - an upper one for the musicians, and a lower one without a door to it where people aren't meant to sit and stand. The lower one has statues, speakers, and flags for decoration.

Church #23 - St. John Vianney, Cumberland

I thought this was an extremely cool church. I came here on a rather gloomy Friday morning last week. On the way in, someone told me that there's a pair of hawks that likes to perch on the church steeple. I'm sad I missed them.

The interior of the church has been redone fairly recently. Apparently modern churches are growing on me, because I definitely thought it looked nice, both on the outside and the inside. They did a great job with it.

When the church was redone, the existing structure was left in place, switching from the typical vertical orientation to a horizontal one with the altar area at the center. You can tell this because the church still has its old balcony, though it's now oddly placed and not used for anything except storage.

Another highlight was an impressively large music area. I would love to go to Sunday Mass here sometime, because apparently the band is enormous. There are also a couple of screens suspended from the ceiling, megachurch-style, but I've been assured that it's not tacky and doesn't take anything away from the Mass. The idea is that everyone doesn't have to hold a missal and look downward while they're singing. For the other parts of the Mass, the stuff projected on the screens is prayerful and unobtrusive. They also have a large statue of St. John Vianney, which thankfully doesn't look creepy. This parish is clearly healthy and doing well.

The music area, featuring tons of places for different instruments and singers

There's also a prayer labyrinth outside.