Saturday, January 08, 2011

Post Church Tour Update

Yesterday was the Church tour, and it was a long day. Over 12 hours of riding buses and visiting churches. The snow was beautiful, but it did drag out the day a little bit. Unfortunately for me, I was foiled again from visiting St. Hedwig, and only got to see 1 new church. Fortunately, I did get some new information and over 100 photos. We will be revisiting Ste. Anne, St. Albertus and Holy Redeemer with photo posts. The new church was Holy Cross Hungarian so expect a post on that one shortly. I had been to Assumption Grotto, but not since the re-inception of this blog, so there will be a post for that as well.

I'd like to get to St. Hyacinth and/or St. Hedwig this week. We'll see.

Now enjoy my attempt at arsty photography from Sweetest Heart of Mary's courtyard.

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6 comments:

  1. Andy11:22 AM

    Hello Andrew,

    I was blessed to be able to go on the church tour too! I got a call from the coordinator last Friday and he got me signed up.

    Then on Saturday (yesterday) I visited 7 more churches by myself, after I realized Detroit isn't as bad as I was told it was by numerous people. I did just fine and I'm glad I went.

    The churches I visited by myself yesterday were:

    1) St. Florian (Hamtramck)
    2) outside of St. Ladislaus (Hamtramck)
    3) St. Paul on the Lake (Grosse Pointe Farms)
    4) Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (Wyandotte)
    5) outside of the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament (Detroit)
    6) St. Hedwig (Detroit)
    7) Most Holy Trinity (Detroit)
    8) outside of St. Aloysius (Detroit)
    9) Our Lady of the Rosary (Detroit)
    10) Old St. Mary's (Detroit)
    11) outside of Sts. Peter & Paul Jesuit (Detroit)
    12) outside of St. Josaphat (Detroit)

    I didn't make it over to St. Hyacinth so I can't say what that is like, but you HAVE to get over to St. Hedwig. In my opinion St. Hedwig (followed at a close second by OLMC, Wyandotte) and Holy Cross Hungarian are the two best churches I saw this weekend, counting both the churches on the tour and those I went to by myself.

    God bless,

    Andy

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  2. Unknown9:54 PM

    Cool! I'm glad you got to go and made your long drive worthwhile.

    I want to get to St. Hyacinth this week. I have plenty of photos to post from the tour, but I would try to bump that one up. I've heard really good things about this one.

    Were all those that you got into open on Saturday? I might spend a Saturday like you did. What time did you go?

    How did you like that buffet? What a logistical nightmare!

    Y'all come back now you hear? If I hear of any other tours, I will post.

    -Andrew

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  3. Andy8:58 PM

    All the churches were open on Saturday except Sts. Peter & Paul and St. Josaphat. I didn't get out of my car at the Cathedral, I just took a picture from my car window. St. Aloysius was open but they were having Mass, so I didn't get to photograph the inside of that.

    I went to St. Florian, St. Paul on the Lake, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Saturday morning because they all had morning Masses so I tried to get to them within a half hour of the end of Mass so that they would still be unlocked.

    Saturday afternoon I sat in Holy Redeemer's parking lot and mapped out the locations of the rest of the churches on a Detroit map and tried to figure out the best route to get to as many as possible. I had a list of each church's address and mass times. I was planning to visit each church within 45 minutes after their Saturday evening Mass, thereby assuring I could get to a whole bunch and they all would be unlocked.

    To my disappointment 9 of the 12 churches on my list all had mass at 4PM! That was just too many to try and get to all between 5:00 and 5:45, so I divided them in half and tried to get to half 45 minutes before Mass, the other half 45 minutes after Mass.

    As it turned out the time taken to drive between each church, and the fact that I took about 15 minutes in each church taking pictures (I took 575 pictures total this weekend)I was only able to get to 5 of the 12 while they were unlocked.

    I thought the buffet was pretty good, except I didn't eat too much since it was Friday and a lot of the dishes contained meat. I really liked the marshmallow salad back in the corner of the small salad bar as well as those deep-fried peppers. It seemed like it took forever for us to get up to eat too, but that was understandable since there were so many of us.

    I have pictures of all of those churches I visited on Saturday decked out for Christmas. If you would like me to send you some to post on this blog, please let me know.

    God bless,

    Andy

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  4. Unknown1:09 PM

    Wow Andy, you are on fire!

    Mexican is a bad choice for a Friday buffet, but I managed to eat too much vegetarian fare anyway. :D

    I went to Florian on Tuesday, and I will be pleased to a Mass and a Meal feature on them soon! First I am going to get more details on previous churches I visited. ( I don't have any good pictures of Ste Anne for example). Holy Cross should have a nice post for it too.

    If you have online sharing for your photos I would like to check them out, but the logistics of sending me a ton would be a nightmare. I'd prefer posts to be of my actual visits, but maybe a guest post would be cool.

    Out of your list I still need to go to Lad, SPaulLake, OLMC, MHT, OLR.

    I want to revisit your comment that Detroit isn't as bad as you had heard. It really isn't! Detroit has a bad rap, and perhaps rightfully so, but for visiting Churches, restaurants, theaters, and sporting events, Detroit has a lot to offer and is very safe.

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  5. Andy11:51 AM

    Our Lady of the Rosary unfortunately wasn’t anything special. It literally has barely any sanctuary to speak of and has chairs instead of pews. It does have a couple shrines in the side niches, but that’s about it. I hadn’t seen a picture of it before I visited, so I didn’t know what to expect.

    Most Holy Trinity is quite small and has several nice statues in the back. I met the organist there and he took me up to the choir loft to view the organ. He said the organ is the oldest in Detroit.

    St. Paul on the Lake’s sanctuary is almost completely white, but it is quite ornate and does merit a trip to see it. Overall it’s a fairly pretty church both on the interior and exterior. It also has a great view of Lake St. Clair.

    Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Wyandotte is GORGEOUS! I particularly liked its side altars and it has excellent stained glass windows. The high altar is not as ornate as many others in Detroit, but that is made up for by its large and beautiful painting of the crucifixion which is the centerpiece. The church looked especially nice when decorated for Christmas.

    St. Florian in Hamtramck is obviously spectacular as well.

    Do you know if St. Josaphat will keep its Christmas decorations up until February 2nd? The guy at Sweetest Heart of Mary said they leave its decorations up till February 2nd, so I thought St. Josaphat might too. St. Josaphat was the only church I really wanted to go to and didn’t. If they still have their decorations up until February I might make another trip down so I can go there, as well as Sts. Peter & Paul, St. Aloysius, St. Francis, St. Florian, and Nativity of Our Lord.

    Andy

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  6. Unknown2:49 PM

    I don't know offhand if Josaphat will keep the decorations up, but my guess would be yes, since they do celebrate the Extraordinary Form there. (Old Calendar Christmas is through Feb 2) They are also historically Polish like SHM, and we Poles are a stubborn and traditional lot. I can ask Fr. Czarnota to be sure.

    What you say about OLR isn't shocking; it sounds like it got wreck-ovated. I'll still have to see it though.

    If you come on a Sunday, I would recommend visiting Holy Family in Greektown. I posted on it a few weeks ago.

    Can you e-mail me so we can keep in touch in a way other than comments? 313churchblog (at) gmail.com

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