The Project returns to West Philadelphia! Believe it or not, we haven’t come to this section in nearly six months—not since our April visit to Overbrook’s midget parish, Our Lady of Lourdes. I didn’t plan on avoiding the area for so long, but I had a hard time syncing up my schedule with the available churches and masses—times, Upper v. Lower Church, and so on.
Take this week’s long-awaited target, Mill Creek’s Our Mother of Sorrows. I’ve had this church on my list forever, but I was continually hamstrung by their mass schedule. One service, Sunday morning, 9 a.m. For someone who lives nowhere near West Philadelphia, a 9 a.m. start time is like a swift kick in the groin. I put it off. Again. And again. Until, finally, I decided I best get it over with before winter. Because if there is anything worse than waking up and leaving early on a Sunday morning, it’s doing so in the freezing cold.
So was the impressive-looking Our Mother of Sorrows worth the wait? To fully answer that, I’ll need a time machine. OMS, you see, is a small, beleaguered, long-suffering Dead Parish Walking (more on that later.) As a result, it’s become one of the ultimate examples of a Tabula Rasa church.
In theory, OMS is a columned, non-cruciform, Romanesque design highlighted by soaring circular arches and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. In practice, I can’t tell what the hell is actually going on. The design has been altered and re-altered so many times as to render this place a architectural quagmire. There are signs of the original décor; the marble steps and altar piece; the large and decent stained glass windows; and the impressive organ.
That’s about all we get, though. The blue and white paint job is persistently plain and most certainly not original; there are obvious spots where you can tell murals or script work used to be. Instead, there is a lot of new agey-crap: slanted pews (which I don’t even think are the original ones); ugly blue carpet; a large wooden altar table in the middle of the nave; an intrusive chandelier with weirdly circular bulbs; and an invasive handicap ramp on the left side.
(Not that handicapped people shouldn’t have access to churches. They should. Just not at the cost of the original décor.)
Not that it matters much here; whatever original design this place had looks to be long gone. It’s a shame, because it’s structurally well-designed. We even get a stained-glass skylight in the apse, which we haven’t seen since St. Peter the Apostle.
The thing is, OMS looks worse because the past and present meet in such a slapdash, muddled way. Tabula Rasa can be a tragedy, but it can also be an opportunity to create a new, cohesive design. That didn’t happen here. The old and new elements were thrown together, without any thought to how they work together. (They don’t.) And sometimes the new elements come completely at the expense of the old. For example, the new altar table means that the old sanctuary isn’t even used. And the newly slanted pews shamefully cover up the intricate tile work in the side aisles.
Of course, I understand the difficulties and financial hardships OMS has had. No one is more mindful of that than I. However, I can only evaluate the building as I see it today. I suspect what was once here was significantly nicer, as only befitting a Catholic church that was built in 1867. But without that time machine, I can’t say for certain.
And in 2008, OMS is a long, long way from 1867.
Size Rating: 9 out of 10
Ornamentation Rating: 6 out of 10
Overall Design Rating: 7 out of 10 crosses
