Ugly Buildings, Beautiful Priests

My Diocese is blessed with many beautiful Churches (except for our Cathedral!) as well as solid, orthodox Priests. But better a good Priest in an ugly Church than a modernist heretic in a beautiful old Church.

From Crisis

By Austin Ruse

While our local diocese is full of horrible-looking churches, it is also full of faithful priests.

We have a lot of spaceship churches in these parts, here in Northern Virginia, lots of churches in the round. If they look like churches, which most of them really don’t, they look like they may have been Protestant of a certain vintage. 

The three local churches we attend on Sunday or daily are perfect examples. Our parish, St. Catherine of Siena, is set on a marvelous piece of pricey ground in Great Falls. What a wonderful setting for something beautiful. Instead, they put up a low-slung bunker-type thing, no shape to it from the outside, flat roof. 

We sometimes attend Christ the Redeemer, which can only be described as a massive barn. From the outside, along Route 7, you see the old portion of the church that looks somewhat monastic. Still, though, it is a barn on the order of 50,000 square feet. 

Not far from there is St. Thomas à Becket. When we first moved here in 2013, we went to Mass there. It was in the church hall, and there were no kneelers. They renovated the sanctuary, and it can only be described as a ski lodge. 

Drive over to Falls Church and you find St. John the Beloved, an authentic church in the round. You really can sit anywhere around the altar. Driving past it along Old Dominion Drive, you can’t really tell what the building is for. 

You can drive around the Diocese of Arlington and find a dozen or more—many more?—churches like these that are products of a certain time in the Church. The Diocese of Arlington is 50 years old this year. It was split from the Diocese of Richmond and is, therefore, almost brand new in Church years. I would guess most of these church buildings date from roughly that time, what was a terrible time for church architecture. Though Virginia was the oldest part of America, perhaps it was not terribly Catholic until recent years. 

A faithful Catholic will also notice the plethora of quite remarkably faithful priests in all these ugly buildings.
At St. Catherine of Siena, our pastor is Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, a former accountant at, get this, the Central Intelligence Agency. (Given that the CIA is nearby, you can hardly swing a dead cat around here without hitting a spook.)

When he got the call, Pokorsky was in the diocese of crazy Milwaukee and was advised to come to Arlington. Among his other remarkable achievements, Pokorsky was on the team of priests and laymen who saved the translation of the new Mass. He sits in the confession box every single morning. 

The barn-like Christ the Redeemer used to be run by a congregation of Franciscans who were a tad wacky. We went there a few times. They had this weird thing where you processed for Communion from the back pews first and then on down to the front pews. That was supposed to mean something, something groovy. It was mostly annoying. And then, a few years back, our good Bishop Michael Burbidge handed the church to Fr. J.D. Jaffe and Fr. Mark Moretti, and the place is now a powerhouse of orthodoxy. 

Jaffe used to run the Courage chapter in the diocese. Moretti was, at 36, a late vocation from the security services of the State Department (see previous note about swinging dead cats). He guarded various Secretaries of State. During Easter, they bring in upward of a hundred new Catholics. They started a hybrid school—part homeschool, part classical academy. They hear confessions every morning for an hour. 

Over at St. Thomas à Becket is Fr. Richard Dyer, a late vocation who came from the energy field. He just celebrated ten years as a priest. STAB, as it is affectionately called, was run by an older left-of-center priest who had clearly run out of gas and orthodoxy. Dyer has lit a fire there. He regularly hosts marriage prep conferences where upward of a hundred couples attend. Dyer just started a hybrid school. He sits in the confession box every day for an hour. 

The quite remarkable Fr. Christopher Pollard runs St. John the Beloved, totally orthodox and greatly beloved by the faithful Catholics who go there. He also has a simply outstanding school run by Jeffrey Presberg. They hold swing dancing events for the high schoolers. Pollard says the Traditional Latin Mass every Sunday. 

It is nearly impossible to find anything but solid priests in this diocese, no matter the ugly building we may have to contend with. 

A significant presence of Opus Dei in this area assists them. There is a center of the Work for men in Reston, one just down the road in Washington, D.C., and one for women there, too. We have the Opus Dei school for girls a few miles away and other powerhouse Catholic high schools. The homeschoolers are a massive presence in this area. There are pockets of faithful Catholic initiatives everywhere in the Diocese of Arlington. 

I think, however, that all these initiatives found a home here because of these beautiful priests. And these beautiful priests are here because the longtime vocations director, Fr. James Gould, was not afraid of making clear to young men interested in the priesthood that there is no monkey business here, especially no gay monkey business. I am told, though I cannot be sure, that among his first questions to prospective seminarians was about that specific question. He drew an orthodox line in the sand. Many of these young men were sent to the very orthodox seminary just up the road in Maryland, affectionately called The Mount, near the Shrine of Elizabeth Ann Seton.

And we have been blessed by solid bishops from the very beginning. They have been solid men of the Church, starting with Bishop Welsh 50 years ago, followed by John Keating, Paul Loverde, and now Michael Burbidge. We didn’t even have female altar boys until recent years; and even then, it has been left up to the pastor. Many, maybe most, have said no. 

Undoubtedly, there are those who will have had beefs with the bishop. That is par for the course. In recent days, our dear traditionalist friends have been unhappy that Bishop Burbidge, under orders from the pope, has scaled back the Traditional Latin Mass. But it is still here. Moreover, I think he deliberately kept it close to Washington, D.C., where Cardinal Gregory banned it altogether. What’s more, Burbidge is one of the only bishops in the country to issue a teaching letter on transgenderism. And the orthodox seminarians keep on coming. There are 41 now in formation out of 446,000 parishioners in the diocese. 

The good news is that good church architecture is on the way, some already here. All the new churches built in recent years—and yes, we are building new churches—are classical in design. They are quite stunning. Drive along Highway 66 out toward Front Royal and you see the “chapel” at Christendom College. Some chapel. It looks like a medieval cathedral. 

St. Mary of Sorrows in Fairfax is an excellent example of the new traditional trend in church architecture. Standing in the church hall for a wake, I was told it used to be the church sanctuary. It looks nothing like a church. Simply horrible. About 400 yards down the way stands the new church, a masterpiece in church design. It screams orthodoxy. It is pastored by Fr. Thomas Vander Woude, whose father drowned in a cistern, literally holding up his Down syndrome son who had fallen in. This is the soil from which orthodoxy blossoms. 

I know what it is like around the country. The buildings might be pretty, might be stunning, but what you find there might be ugly. While visiting my Missouri hometown a few years ago, the pastor said everyone should walk around the Church during the sign of peace and shake hands with everyone. Fr. Johnny Carson does not inspire anyone. Roughly at that time, he had to close down the parish school. No wonder. 

But if you come to Virginia, especially Northern Virginia, prepare for some ugly buildings but nothing but beautiful, orthodox priests. And the buildings are getting better, too.