My New Digital Camera

I got myself a digital camera for Christmas. (Kodak. $99.00. Thanks for the tip, Instapundit.) I am having a good amount of fun with it. I'm afraid I'll never be a journalist, though; I keep missing all my opportunities to take pictures of massive drifts and raging floodwaters. I do, however, mean to work on my incredibly picturesque sunsets. :)

I also want to put up pictures of the beautiful churches in Dayton's diocese (and whereever else I happen to wander). I mean, I'm going to church anyway, so why not?

On Saturday, I ended up traipsing around downtown Dayton in the unseasonable winter sunshine. Here are a few pictures.

Lorenz Publishing, a very good church music publisher. I don't remember the name of the Protestant church next door. St. Joseph's is a block behind Lorenz.

St. Joseph's was an immigrant neighborhood church (mostly German and Irish). They had an old and small church on the present spot, which they'd outgrown. So they got the money together just after the turn of the century to build this showplace. Note St. Patrick and the Infant of Prague. (The baptismal font and other stuff were moved over to this side area during Christmas.)

Today St. Joseph's is run by the Precious Blood Fathers, since the neighborhood really can't support a parish. (Nobody lives downtown anymore.) But lots of people do go there. For one thing, there's been a 6 PM Sunday Mass at St. Joe's for as long as anyone can remember, and that's a real lifesaver.

Also, a good deal of pro-life and traditional-but-not-rebellious activity is centered here, due to the PODness of the good fathers. This picture is hung out in the vestibule over the pro-life bulletin board.

On one side of the vestibule, St. Therese and her roses preside over the bulletin boards and radiators. (The other end has the bathrooms and water fountain, with a plaster bas relief of the Last Judgement. The old baptistery has also been turned into bathrooms, an act of charity toward the elderly church attendees.) You will notice that St. Therese's toes get a lot of wear! This statue was put up shortly after she got canonized.

Here's one of the beautiful sets of vestibule doors. Note the stained glass over it -- the lily for chastity is an attribute of St. Joseph.

As you can see, the Nativity scene and Christmas decorations were still up (probably because of all the weird weather). So I took some pictures of them. The top picture is how a lot of these pictures looked without "enhancement" by my software. The camera doesn't see things as brightly as the human eye and brain can with its proprietary self-adjusting hardware and software. Even though your digital camera has a flash. :)

There's always been a St. Anthony statue in the back of the church. He's (among other things) the patron of finding lost objects (because a thief once stole his psalter and then returned it). So it's appropriate and charming that the shelf underneath his statue has become the designated lost and found area. You can't really make it out, but there are gloves and scarves down there. (As well as Elmo.)

I apologize for not having any good pictures of the beautiful altar and tabernacle. St. Joe's always has a lot of people praying and doing devotions both before and after Mass, even on weekdays. I didn't want to disturb them with my flash. Then the lights got turned down after Mass, and there were still tons of people there, so I held off some more, and...well, finally I did take pictures, but there were still enough people praying that I felt the need to slink around the outer bits, and not snap any good pictures of the altar. So that's why there's no pictures yet of the most important parts of this church, not because I lack understanding of the relationship between the architecture and the Mass. ;)