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Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
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PADRE SERRA, CAMARILLO

Vertigo

Padre Serra parish, at 5205 Upland Road (off Lewis Avenue) in Camarillo (near the archdiocesan seminary) was erected in 1995 under the aegis of Father Liam Kidney. Delayed by traffic, I arrived late for the 11 a.m. liturgy there, on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 20, 2001.

Pulling up into the packed parking lot, I admired the Mission Moderne architecture, hurried through the social plaza, and into the church. After dipping my hands in the heated holy water font/baptismal pond, I found a seat. It was the offertory, and bowls of cash were passing back and forth throughout the very large, mostly Anglo, congregation. Some of these bowls were wielded by ushers and usherettes; others, by the flock of altar girls. The three younger of these were dressed in white albs, while their four older sisters wore quasi-Franciscan habits, in playful reminiscence of Padre Serra's friars.

Padre Serra is an oddly designed building; sort of a theatre in the round. Apart from the table in the center, the church has no real focus point. The kneeler-less chairs surround the altar on all sides, and several cyclopean columns support the roof. Attached to one of these pillars is a large crucifix (invisible to me where I was sitting) with a contorted all-white corpus. The immediate effect was vertigo, as one might have in an elevator.

Once the money had been collected, the elderly visiting priest passed through to the canon. At the phrase, "shared with His Apostles," Father rotated the chalice around, presumably to include the congregation in the story. He then altered the words of consecration from "for all" to "for all people." While he did not elevate the Sacred Species, neither did he genuflect. All through these proceedings people moved around or chatted with one another as they stood, emphasizing the casual nature of the event.

For the "Our Father," everyone held hands which, given the construction of the place, produced an effect of concentric circles around the table. At the rite of peace, the priest asked God to "spare us from all useless anxiety." The handshake of peace was vigorous. During the "Lamb of God," an army of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist emerged, bearing many plates of hosts, which they placed on a table near me, which served as a sort of central assembly point.

The ministers arranged themselves in a circle around the table, and gave out communion, and most communicants received on the hand. This completed, the priest announced to the half of the congregation remaining (the others left immediately after receiving) that he was "going home," but hoped that Father Jarlath Dolan, the pastor, would let him return. He and the seven altar girls then recessed to a tune unknown to me, but much like the Seekers' "New World Tomorrow," which my fellow boomers may remember.

After the applause stilled and the place emptied, I began to explore. There were no stations of the cross, no tabernacle, nothing save the crucifix to imply that this was a Catholic church. Asking for the whereabouts of the tabernacle, I was directed out of the building and down a colonnade to a separate structure. The tabernacle itself was shaped like a brass Dutch oven upon a rock, itself placed upon a pedestal in the center of the small room. There were upholstered chairs and pries-dieux around the tabernacle, and on one wall a cross with shells scattered on it in place of a corpus.

I returned to the central plaza, to find the coffee and doughnut table.

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