Mr. Smith-Jones Goes To Washington
GUEST COLUMN
It was a perfect summer day when Fred Smith-Jones’s family left the Midwest for a vacation in the nation’s capital.
Fred and his wife, Joyce, both middle-class suburbanites, were excited and had spent several days designing an itinerary. Their two adolescent children — Ashlee and Zodiac — were likewise filled with wonder regarding their first-ever trip east of the Ohio River.
After arriving at the Reagan Airport and checking into their hotel, the family quickly hit the streets. Tour buses took them to the U.S. Capitol, the White House, and Union Station. The family photographed every monument and statue.
On the third morning, the Smith-Joneses, who are Catholic, visited the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
They toured North America’s largest church in awe. Fred used his camcorder to videotape everything, including the reconciliation chapel where dozens of people waited in line for the Shrine’s two confessionals.
You May Also Enjoy
Aesthetics can take us one of two ways: Our response to beauty will be self-centered, the self-serving of a consumer; or it will be other-centered, leading us to its Source.
Restoring Truly Sacred Music... Crossing the Tiber?... Don't You Realize that Our Church is Crumbling Fast?... Good Effects Are Not Good Enough... Free the Traditional Mass...
The blossoming of Christian Rightist organizations in the mid- and late 1960s made me increasingly nervous about the injurious effect of political conservatism on evangelicalism.