As a result of this post I’m searching for a new church to call my spiritual home. Given the number of Roman Catholic churches around the area I can afford to be a little choosy, so the only requirements I have are rather subjective in nature – that being, that I can attend Mass and feel like I’m part of a spiritual experience that helps serve as a center to my prayer life for the upcoming week. Oh, and one other thing – that it takes place somewhere in the four o’clock hour on Saturdays. This may sound a bit petty, but the fact is, due to work I no longer have Sundays as a recreational day, so to attend Mass on Saturdays not too late in the afternoon is rather important to me. The finalists are:

1. St. Anne Catholic Church – if it wasn’t for the new wacko music director there I’d be pretty happy, content to practice my budding Roman Catholicism there. Whether or not I return to worship God regularly there is still very much up in the air, but we’ll just have to see how my parish search turns out.

2. Holy Cross Church – looks like this parish is approx. a 30 minutes drive from my house – very much to the east. Whenever a parish website tells you it’s predominently elderly or retired – I’m sorry, but that’s a warning sign to me. I’m willing to give it a try; we’ll just have to see how it goes.

3. St. Mary Catholic Church in Chandler – the Mass times are at 4:30 PM but I kinda like the idea of staying south of U.S. 60 – it always makes me feel like I’m hangin’ ’round my neighborhood, so we’ll just have to see how it goes.

4. St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church – this is a church that doesn’t yet have a building. Masses are at 4:30 PM, but given that they’re just starting out on the ground floor, this is something I would be very interested in, as growing churches from the ground floor has always been something close and deep to my heart.

Four churches, one pilgrim on a spiritual journey. Who will win out? I guess we’ll just have to see.