An impressive mass

Sometimes being stubborn pays off. I've been trying to find a Catholic parish to attend for quite some time now. Today I drove all the way to Camberwell to Our Lady of Victories. The first thing I noticed was the beauty of the interior, including the altar, the stained glass windows and the stations of the cross. The mass itself was done about as well as it could be: the early part of it was sung exceptionally well by a young man in a red robe (a priest?); the priest chanted (or perhaps it's better to say sang?) his part of the mass very ably; both the choir and the selection of hymns were very good; and the priest's homily, on the theme of mercy and forgiveness, was well spoken and avoided the usual "cause" based politics.

Our Lady of Victories, Camberwell

The only departures from tradition were the altar girl and two brightly lit screens jutting in toward the altar.

An authentically Catholic culture is alive and well at Our Lady and it was well worth the drive to attend.

On a less positive note, the parish suffers one problem found elsewhere, namely an ageing congregation. There were over 100 people there, but 80% would have been over 60. The small number of younger people were of Asian background, reflecting the changing demographics of the surrounding suburb. I have a theory regarding the problems of the mainstream churches in attracting younger people, but I'll leave that for a later post.

The statue standing on top of the dome

This year is the centenary of the building of the church: the foundation stone was laid in 1913 and the church was declared open in 1918 in front of a crowd estimated at 80,000.