Author: Daniel

A few years back, I had a brief fling with a blog I found called McMansion Hell. The site is designed and maintained by a young woman, Kate Wagner, who was a writer who studied architectural acoustics from Johns Hopkins University‘s Peabody Conservatory.^[4] That’s noteworthy for two reasons: my son is a soon-to-be-graduate of Hopkins, and Peabody is the name of the Hopkins library that is one of the most gorgeous libraries in the universe.

I have never been a student of good architecture. But I am a glutton for good writing, and Wagner absolutely qualifies. Thus, I followed her blog for awhile as she torched the all-so-common McMansions, not for their ostentatious displays of wealth (though there was some of that), but more because of how they badly they often strayed from good architectural design. Traits such as balance, proportion and symmetry help define a well-designed building.

The faux pas that seemed to be the most common among designers of these suburban palaces is mixing design styles, most notably reflected in windows of varying shapes and sizes. That is an architectural no-no.

Which brings me to St. Cecilia, a mostly rural church located in Northern Kentucky, just outside the larger towns of Florence, Covington and Newport. I think Kate Wagner would have been quite pleased with the design work here. The church is beautiful inside and out. The arch is the overarching design trend, with series of three arches on display all over the church — at the altar, above the entrance to the church and with the windows. To my still-novice eye, it all flows together in a wonderful way.

As a father of three children ranging in ages from 16 to 23, I have spent a considerable amount of time on college visits over the past six years. That’s absolutely not a complaint.

But Monday, April 26^th was a bit of a rarity. For only the second time, I was visiting a Catholic school, Cincinnati’s Xavier University. I was on the tour with Cormac, the youngest of my three children, currently a junior in high school.

In a lot of  ways, the visit was just like any other. The information session informed us about Xavier’s strong record of post-graduate placement, its wide range of clubs and activities and the school’s engaged and accessible faculty. The tour took us to the active campus center, the major athletic arena and the typical dorm room.

Yet, in two other ways, this tour was entirely new to me. First, our tour guide, the engaging San Diegan Nico, led us into Dr. E. Paul Colella’s classroom, where the professor was leading his class of 20 or so freshman in a conversation on Adam Smith’s ideas on the division of labor. In none of my previous college trips was I ever taken inside a classroom as class was in session. And when we were led out a few minutes later, I half-whined to one of the other parents, “But I don’t want to leave,” and she responded. “Me neither. This is so interesting.” Thanks Nico and Doc Colella.

The other way the trip differed from previous college visits related to its existence as a Catholic school. The information session guide discussed how Xavier follow the Jesuit traditions valuing both education and a commitment to social justice, which appealed to me immensely. And our tour stopped at Bellarmine Chapel, which you’ll see photos of below. It was refreshing to hear how the Catholic faith played such a strong part of campus life.

Though Cormac liked the school, I don’t know if Xavier will be where he winds up. But I do know this: I’ve decided conclusively I’d like to go there.

“It is a summons to stop, to focus on what is essential, to fast from the unnecessary things that distract us. It is a wake-up call for the soul.” Pope Francis

The past week brought me to Nashville for a work trip, with Ash Wednesday falling right in the middle of the three-day metals conference I was attending. Fortunately, I had no problem finding a parish for, as Father John Hammond noted in his homily, one of the most-attended Masses of the year.

The parish I found, St. Patrick in South Nashville, seems particularly fitting in retrospect. One of the older Catholic churches in the city, St. Patrick was founded as the home of Nashville’s Irish population in the late 1880s. It also became a popular spot for the country’s nomadic Irish Travelers. Members of that itinerant group of Irish-Americans would return annually for weddings and funerals, and have even contributed gifts to the parish through the years. So here I was, an Irish-American traveling to the small church for an evening service.

The Lenten season is upon us. May we heed Pope Francis’s words to use this time to return to the Lord. “The Lord is the goal of our journey in this world. The direction must lead to him.”

For the past 13 years, I’ve been working in Oak Brook, Illinois. But other than my office and the occasional trip out to eat, I’ve done virtually nothing in the town or its surroundings.

With the launch of this project, I figured it was time to change that. So on a recent trip into the neighboring town of Hinsdale to stop at the local hardware store, I rerouted to St. Isaac Jogues Parish before returning to my office.

For those who don’t know, which is probably a scant few of you, Jogues was a native Frenchman who served as a missionary with the Native American population in North America in the 1600s. Originally considered a “living martyr” by Pope Urban VIII following a long period of captivity and torture by a Mohawk Indian tribe in 1846, Jogues nonetheless returned to the continent in 1842 to continue his work. He died a martyr later that year.

Today’s stop takes us to the town of New Buffalo, Michigan, quite possibly the favorite place in the world of both my wife and me. New Buffalo is tucked just inside the southwest corner of Michigan, not too far from my home in Northwest Indiana. We usually go there at least twice a year for dinner, often, but not always, for burgers at the world famous Redamak’s.

But this time wasn’t a pleasure trip. I was heading back to my son’s school following another failed attempt to give blood (the Red Cross and I just haven’t been on the same page lately). With a little time on my hands and a full supply of hemoglobin coursing through my circulatory system, I stopped in at St. Mary of the Lake, just a few miles north of the Indiana line.

I stayed and prayed a little while, though my opportunities to wander and shoot some images were somewhat self-limited, as a fellow church-goer was sitting quietly in prayer at the front of the church, and I didn’t want to intrude. Still, I got a few shots of the church, sitting right on U.S. 12 in this wonderful lakeside town.

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