Sunday we had a great morning raking piles of leaves for AJ to jump in. Then AJ�s grandmother, uncle and three cousins came over for lunch and entertained him for a couple of hours while I got a much needed break.

After they left, I read stories to AJ to get him down for his nap, only they worked in reverse. I didn�t know it was possible, but I actually fell asleep while reading to him. He had to poke me a couple of times so I could finish the story. So after I put him down, I crawled under my comforter and turned on the second half of Sister Act. Now this is not a movie I ever would have picked out, but it was slightly more interesting to me than football, which was on nearly every other channel, so that was what I chose. I have to say, as a former choir director (albeit, not one on the run from Vegas hitmen, although perhaps if I had been my choristers would have been on time for rehearsals more frequently), I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Although most of my choral directing work has been secular, for a year I was the choir director in a tiny schismatic Catholic church. And it is this job that made me enjoy Sister Act, in part because of the normally insipid and hopelessly swingless �Hail Holy Queen from Heaven Above (Salve Regina),� which was a parish favorite (I�m sure that if we had performed the Sister Act version, half the congregation would have had heart attacks on the spot). The church was part of a group called the Old Roman Catholic Church, a testament to the fact that they did not observe the reforms imposed by Vatican II. Old Roman Catholics are not under the aegis of the Pope, but they are considered a viable alternative to mainline Roman Catholicism, as they have demonstrated apostolic succession and they are most related to the French Catholics who splintered off in the 14th century and installed their own Pope. (Anyone remember this from history class? Anyone? Bueller?) They are not to be confused with the Old Catholic Church, which seems to have a similar mission, but is more evangelical.

The liturgy at the Old Roman Catholic Church was like a time warp of Catholicism. Everything except the sermon was in Latin, including a full sung Latin Mass weekly. It was a great education for a music history scholar, for the Mass took the format of a Medieval Mass. My time there definitely served me well when it came down to taking the Medieval and Renaissance portions of my comprehensive exams � I had a living example. As music director, I had free rein in the programming department, as long as most of it was in Latin (we could use English for anthems) and liturgically appropriate and could be sung by a quartet or octet of voices. The programming was a lot of fun, although eventually some of the ritual gave me the creeps, so I didn�t return for a second year. Things like kissing the bishop�s ring (The bishop, incidentally, was a former investment banker).

I got the job after my next-door neighbor, a Catholic organist, hired me and the choir I was conducting at the time to perform for the ordination of his (male) partner. This sounds paradoxical, as the more archaic forms of Catholicism were, if possible, even less permissive of homosexuality. But C. was ordained a priest, despite the fact that he was, as far as I know, openly gay. The ordination service was four hours long, and for most of it C. lay face down in front of the altar with his hands tied behind his back (as a result, one of my choir members still refers to it as the �S and M church�). The choir and congregation all received cards stating that we had received indulgences � kind of like a get out of Purgatory free card. Apparently, I get some time off for good behavior. Not bad for a Presbyterian. [FYI, although the practice of granting indulgences is widely believed to have been abolished by Vatican II in the mid 1960s, that does not seem to be the case. I won�t bore you with the details, but if you want more info, look here or here. Or do your own Google search for a bunch more.]

The small congregation on a typical Sunday was an odd mix of the displaced, disenfranchised and alienated. More than half were older than my grandparents � old enough to have grown up under the Latin Mass. Many were immigrants, mostly from Poland and Central and South America. Latin was the common language for them. A few were gay. And most Sundays there were some tourists in search of a Latin Mass. The one thing all had in common was Latin. As a former student of Latin. I really liked this idea. Kind of like Esperanto in practice.

I myself have had a pretty checkered religious history. My mom�s family was Epsicopalian. My dad�s was hard-core German Lutheran. But reacted negatively to the overly structured services and general meddling in everyday life. When I was growing up, my parents took us to all kinds of religious situations to check them out. I went to just about every Protestant denomination, Catholic Mass, synagogue, a mosque, a Quaker meeting. By the time my family had settled into Presbyterianism (after a brief stint with the Unitarians), I felt like I had the right to pick and choose what made sense to me. It�s all about philosophy and ethics to me. However, as a singer and conductor I probably spend more time in church than most of the Catholic family I married into.

But despite this, I am extremely attracted by the ritual and structure and especially the music of the Catholic Church (and we�re talking historical music here, not guitar mass), even as I am opposed by much of what the it teaches. Chicago is full of astounding buildings devoted to the practice of religion (Fr. George Lane, head of Loyola University Press, has a great coffee-table book on Chicago churches). They are beautiful, acoustically exhilarating, and I have performed or attended performances in many of them. Such performances appeal to all the senses (probably the same reason I like opera too). Blasphemous in a way, I am certain

I am going absolutely nowhere with this, except perhaps on a trip down memory lane. I think I might, however, add an exhortation to engage in some church tourism, should you be in a place, like Chicago, that encourages that sort of thing. In Chicago, don�t miss Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica, in a terrible neighborhood west of the South Loop, but astounding for its sheer size (it�s featured in The Untouchables). The outdoor Grotto at St. Hedwig�s in Bucktown is one of my favorites, although Notre Dame near UIC has an incredibly campy indoor grotto, and also the best acoustics in the city of Chicago. St. Michael�s in Old Town is one of the most impressive architecturally. Church of the Ascension on LaSalle is beautiful in a smaller, simpler way, modeled after Ste. Chapelle in Paris. The most beautiful, in my opinion, is St. John Cantius in -- I�m not sure what you call that neighborhood. East Bucktown? If you go there, don�t forget to look down. The floors are remarkable. And incidentally, Cantius features a Tridentine (Latin) Mass every Sunday, and you won�t even have to kiss anyone�s ring or get a note from your priest.

Clearly there are others who are fanatic religious tourists like me. Check out Ship of Fools, particularly the Mystery Worshipper section. Bizarre and entertaining.

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