The Biggest Catholic Church In America
Where ever we go, especially on weekends, we still like to attend Catholic mass. Since we were planning on arriving in Washington D.C. on Sunday but turned out to be Saturday, I had looked around online for a church and found that the largest Catholic church in the United States was in Washington D.C. So it seemed like a no brainer to attend the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception after our tour of the Whitehouse for Saturday anticipated mass.
As one might expect from a church so large, it was quite ornate and after mass, we stuck around for a special choir presentation from some private school from Indiana and then walked around looking at the various alcoves and taking pictures of the spectacular sights. I won't bore you with all those photos but if you are ever in the area, even as a non-Catholic, they were worthy of a stop to see.
My research had led me to know that traffic in Washington D.C. was horrible and finding parking spots a nightmare. Thus I had been careful to look at train maps ahead of time and selected our VRBO to be close to one where we could park our 15 passenger van outside in a parking lot instead of a height restricted parking ramp and take the train to our destination. This worked out extremely well and I'm glad we went this route. All three days of our stay, we used the train to get close to where we needed to go and never worried about traffic, which was horrible, or parking spots, which were impossible to find.
With your interest in Genealogy, I had wondered if you were Mormon.
ReplyDeleteI am not though I have found a few ancestors that may have been Mormon.
DeleteThe church is beautiful! If I ever make it back to DC, I want to go to the National Cathedral.
ReplyDeleteIt is well worth a stop. I could have spent twice as much time there as I did just looking around.
DeleteLove places with subways; they are so fast and convenient. Although not Catholic, I love churches and cathedrals, the more ornate the better!
ReplyDeleteI have competing thoughts on the matter. On one hand, I love ornate cathedrals for viewing and taking pictures. On the other hand, I think the money could have spent a lot better on their message instead of their building.
DeleteReally pretty inside! Somehow I presumed National Cathedral was the biggest, but it's not technically Catholic either. Thanks for the tour. Yep, I was wondering about those eyes, like they were looking at you from the past. Linda in Kansas
ReplyDeleteIn terms of square footage, the National Cathedral is second to the Cathedral of St John the Devine here in the U.S. and both of those are Episcopalian. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception ranks third on the wiki list that I got that information from.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_church_buildings
You've done a good job planning this trip.
DeleteThank you. I enjoy the challenge of planning something like this, if I can do so during the colder months which is when I mostly planned this trip. I don't like is so much during summer when my time could be better spent doing other things.
DeleteGreat pics and the church is beautiful. Last time I was in DC, which was a year ago, we went to the National Cathedral, which was having a self-guided day. It was perfect, and there were docents there to answers questions. Really enjoyed it. I would like to visit this one as well.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to go to the National Cathedral just because it is bigger than this one but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to earn brownie points by taking my mother-in-law to mass in the largest Catholic church in the U.S.
DeleteYou are such a wise man, Ed. I would have winged it and been miserable trying to places to park. Those manhole covers are amazing and that rainwater makes them look creepy but cool.
ReplyDeleteI saw lots of people winging it and lots of cops writing tickets.
DeleteThe church is quite impressive. The subway looks good too. A good rail system is a fantastic resource
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, it was fairly clean and a nice experience. We did get hit up twice by someone preaching to us (what I do not know as she spoke too fast and too soft for me to understand anything but the occasional 'Jesus') and once saw a man probably suffering from some sort of drug withdrawal. But I never felt endangered and I suspect these sorts of things are quite common for those who ride subways everyday.
DeleteDC subways are terrific. I drove in DC once. Never again. The worst part is streets that change name a half dozen times without warning. Also the one way streets are killer.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I used the walking feature of Google Maps to get me headed where I needed to go so I wasn't paying attention to the street names. But I can attest, everywhere we went, there were cars double parked with blinkers on and cops writing tickets as fast as they could.
DeleteWhy were the eyes of Dubois and Ovington filled in/distorted? And who were they and where was this memorial to them? It almost looks like it is on the ground but that would be rather disrespectful to have it where people would walk on their images.
ReplyDeleteIt might be refraction and the viewing angle at play here. There were many that were quite recognizable to me but when I finally made the decision to get a picture of their eyes full of water, which all of them were that way, this was the next one I saw like that and they happened to be unfamiliar people to me. If I recall correctly, they weren't directly in the main path of foot traffic so perhaps that spares them some longevity.
DeleteWow! That is very impressive, indeed! I've been to D.C. several times and have never been to that amazing cathedral. The train is definitely the way to travel.
ReplyDeleteIf I ever go again, I would ride the train and bus system again. My only complaint was that the Mall Circulator bus route wasn't clearly marked where to get on near Union Station. It took us a half hour of walking and asking several bus drivers (of other circulator routes) before I finally just stumbled upon it. But after that, all was good.
DeleteGood job using the Metro. Definitely the way to get around DC! My grandmother lived in Hyattsville right off Queen's Chapel Road, and that turns into Michigan Avenue NE and leads directly to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I've seen it many times from the outside but oddly I never went in!
ReplyDeleteSome of those street names sound familiar but I pretty much lived with my Google Maps app and just went where it told me without really paying attention to street names or where I was in the grand scheme of things. That is one of the drawbacks of being dependent on apps/technology instead of paper maps.
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