It only seems fitting that having started this project by going to Mass at the church of St Rita of Cascia on the South Side of Chicago, that I’d finish at the shrine church a few miles away on the grounds of St Rita of Cascia High School.
I didn’t know back then that St Rita of Cascia was an Augustine nun and thus the church bearing her name (as well as the high school) were run by the Augustinians. Frankly, not being one of the big four orders,¹ I don’t know most Catholics (let alone non-Catholics) would have been able to identify the Augustinians as a real order until somewhat over a year ago when a little known Augustinian Cardinal serving in Peru, but born in Chicago became Pope Leo XIV, so perhaps there was a bit of providence leading me to finally get around to starting this project on the 22nd of May last year.
Traffic conspired to my arriving late to Mass with not one, but two, car accidents creating backups on my route so I arrived during the homily. The shrine was far less full than the church was, and the congregation was considerably different, almost entirely non-Hispanic white as opposed to the Latino congregation at the Mass celebrated in Spanish at the other church. I don’t know, but I would guess that most of those present were alumni of St Rita of Cascia High School or their families from the era when the school’s student body was mostly white ethnic Catholics instead of its primarily Black student body today.
It’s been an interesting year, attending Mass at sixty-nine churches over the course of the year (including two in Paris and one in London), less than I aspired to go to, but more than I might have otherwise. I’ve been to wealthy parishes, poor parishes, what I believe were the oldest and newest churches in the archdiocese along with one parish which doesn’t actually have a church building at all, but instead holds Mass in what was once the parish community center before the church building burnt down. I’ve attended Mass in English, Spanish, Polish and Latin, getting a broad sense of Catholicism in the archdiocese of Chicago. It really deserves a better write-up than this first-draft blog post written when I should already be asleep, but there it is.
I think I may do this again, but if I do, it will likely be (a) while living in a different city and (2) during a time when I won’t have to skip churches due to other obligations.
- Those being the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Jesuits, which, if I were to try to list orders would be the first that came to mind² and, not surprisingly, these are the four largest orders in the Catholic church.
- And many of those that might come later, such as the Trappists, would turn out to be offshoots of the big four.
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