Ugly Buildings, Beautiful 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. Men’s Devotional... Bailey, Jamie Check Amazon for Pricing.

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. How the Catholic Churc... Thomas E. Woods Best Price: $8.00 Buy New $9.06 (as of 05:30 UTC - Details)

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.

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