{"id":752,"date":"2008-07-29T00:22:46","date_gmt":"2008-07-29T00:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/07\/mass-in-the-gym-revisited.html"},"modified":"2008-07-29T00:22:46","modified_gmt":"2008-07-29T00:22:46","slug":"mass-in-the-gym-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/07\/mass-in-the-gym-revisited.html","title":{"rendered":"Mass in the gym, revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, yeah, we made it to the first ever Irish festival in Knoxville – it was okay, but let’s hope future years expands the Irish-related vendors and booths. There just wasn’t a lot to it. Which is too bad, considering the history of the Irish in the area, briefly outlined here<\/a> – something that speaks to me as I remember all the Clancy’s and O’Connor’s with whom I went to school and who were all related to each other, it seemed.
\nThere were, be assured, wooden swords, crossbows and shields, which intrigued several of our party. I’ll let you guess who.
\nAfter that, it was back to the zoo for a bit for a dip in the cleverly named “Kid’s Cove”\u00a0 (a la Cades Cove – get it?), which is the very neat little children’s play area <\/a>that features a bit of a faux mountain stream, a cabin-like play structure and a sand area plopped down amid the farm animals – and a pretty interesting beaver exhibit.
\nOn the way out of town on Sunday, I did what several hereabouts (“here” being “Blog Land”) have been nagging me to do for several years now – Go to St. John Neumann.<\/a> It’s amazing what they’re doing.<\/em>
\nPlease understand that St. John Neumann would not be on my regular route while visiting Knoxville, it being on the far west <\/em>side of town and my family manse being on the far east. <\/em>But since we were leaving, it made sense to arrange our Mass-going at St. John’s en route.
\nWell.
\nI’ve linked to news about their new church construction before, but seeing it all in person leaves quite an impression.
\nHere you go:
\n\"P1030839\"<\/a>
\nYes, that is a newly-constructed church and yes, it was taken in 2008. Promise.
\nThey’re moving in later this fall, and from what I see from the bulletin, they wouldn’t mind donations from anyone with the means who’d like to support this bit of Romanesque in East Tennessee. <\/a>
\nSince the church isn’t open yet, Mass is being celebrated in the school gym. So once again, as I have so many times in Knoxville, I went to Mass in the gym. But this one was different. There was no James Taylor or Simon and Garfunkel. And not even any Weston Priory monk-sounds, God bless them.
\nFirst, they’ve constructed a sanctuary that sort of juts back from the gymn wall – the walls of the area are brick, and it is clearly set apart (perhaps there is a portable divider that closes it off when Mass isn’t going on. I don’t know.) That helps.
\nSecondly, and most importantly, was the music. Undaunted by the environment, there was a choir of about 25 persons, an organist (portable electronic with a good sound) and 2 violinists.
\nI’m not going to give you a list of what they sang, because I don’t remember titles, but here was what was so impressive to me:
\n1) The music was complex, multi-faceted, but did not overwhelm or\u00a0call attention to itself. It was rich but subdued and served God through the liturgy.
\n2) Latin and chant were in evidence. Sanctus <\/em>and Agnus Dei<\/em>. A beautiful\u00a0piece\u00a0 sung by two women, at Communion. (I know I have blog readers who were there, and if you can provide a list, feel free! Please also tell me what the second Communion piece was –\u00a0centered on Jesus’ words about going to Galilee\u00a0– I’d like to post it.) \u00a0
\n(Update: <\/span>Thanks to\u00a0 Mary Weaver who posts in the comments:\u00a0
\nThe chant at Communion was the Communio, the proper antiphon from the Graduale Romanum. It changes each Sunday and feast day, and the Latin text of the antiphon is typically a quotation from the Gospel reading. Gail-Marie Walter and I chant the Communio each Sunday. <\/em>
\nThe second song, chanted by Karen Balo, was plainsong from By Flowing Waters, an excellent English version of the Graduale Simplex by Paul Ford. )<\/em>
\n3) The propers flowed seemlessly in and out of the spoken words. No gaudy, prolonged introductions.
\n4) The Responsorial was done in a way that I’d not heard, but that Michael tells me is an option that more are becoming aware of, particularly since it evokes some elements of the Liturgy of the Hours: the response was chanted twice at the beginning, the soloist chanted the entire Psalm through, and then the response was chanted again. I thought it was very conducive to prayer.
\nMad, mad props to Mr. Noel Jones, who is the music director at St. John’s – they have a good website for their music ministry here<\/a>, and if you are in East Tennesse wanting to sing some good music – I’m sure they’d love to have you.
\nAfter Mass, I spoke a bit to Mr. Jones, as well as long-time blog reader and correspondent Toni Pacitti, who is now blogging at Living Al Dente: Food for Thought on Faith, Family, Friends, Food and Fitness. <\/em><\/a>It was great to meet her, even though when she approached me, I really did think she was someone I went to high school with…and said as much, idiotically. But no! It was great to finally meet Toni. I was also glad to finally meet the pastor, Fr. John Dowling.
\nUnfortunately, just a few minutes later, as we were eating lunch, darkness descended as news broke of the shooting at the Unitarian church back in town<\/a>. Horrific and heartbreaking and, like all such evil, impossible to understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, yeah, we made it to the first ever Irish festival in Knoxville – it was okay, but let’s hope future years expands the Irish-related vendors and booths. There just wasn’t a lot to it. Which is too bad, considering the history of the Irish in the area, briefly outlined here – something that speaks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMass in the gym, revisited - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/07\/mass-in-the-gym-revisited.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mass in the gym, revisited - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So, yeah, we made it to the first ever Irish festival in Knoxville – it was okay, but let’s hope future years expands the Irish-related vendors and booths. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}