Church of the Presidents

President and Mrs. Obama along with their daughter Sasha attended Saint John’s Church Lafayette Square, where they received Holy Communion at the Episcopal Liturgy Sunday (March 18) morning.  Saint John’s is called the “Church of the Presidents” as every United States President since it was built in 1815 has attended worship there at least once during his time in the White House. The Church stands facing 16^th Street, across Lafayette Square from the White House. It was built after the burning of Washington during the presidency of James Madison.  Madison was a charter member of the parish and his wife Dolly, a convert from Quakerism, was baptized and confirmed here. At the time, the Madisons were not living in the White House which had been burned by the British during the War of 1812, but in Octagon House on New York Avenue in Foggy Bottom, about twice the distance from Saint John’s as the White House. When President Madison left office, he and Dolly retired to his plantation, Montpelier.  Not one for quiet country life, in her widowhood Dolly returned to Washington in 1837 and lived until her death in 1849 in a home just “around the corner” on Lafayette Square from Saint John’s where she worshipped regularly.  

      The Madisons regularly sat in pew 28, during subsequent rennovations this pew was renumbered 58 and then later 54.  President Taylor “bought” the Madison pew in perpetuity (the purchase of pews by parishoners for regular use was a custom in many churches—Catholic as well as Protestant—in the nineteenth century) for use of himself and future presidents.  However it is the protocol that the President and his family, when they do attend, be seated in the first pew on the right.

     At the time of John Kennedy’s tenure in the White House it was still considered forbidden for Catholics to attend Protestant services and this provided a challenge to the custom that each President visit the church at least once in his term of office. However, when the Reverend John C. Harper was installed as Rector in March 1963, President Kennedy made a courtesy call on the new rector at the beginning of the service, discreetly leaving before the service proceeded.   

      The Church has many connections with prominent Americans besides presidents.  Benjamin Latrobe, the architect of the United States Capitol, was a man of many talents and not only designed Saint John’s Church, but served as its first organist and choir-master.  The 1000 pound bell in the church steeple was cast by Joseph Revere, son of Paul Revere—the metal supplied from British cannon captured in the War of 1812.

     The Obamas, accompanied by Vice-President-elect Joe Biden and his family, attended services at Saint John’s before proceeding to the Capitol for their inaugurations on January 20^th 2009. (Vice President Biden is a devout Catholic but today the Catholic Church does not object to Catholics attendng worship services in other Christian traditions although Catholics do not generally recieve Holy Communion except at a Catholic Eucharist.)  The Obamas have been back at least twice since before this morning for services.  The President attends church services only occasionally but, while he is not an Episcopalian, has attended Saint John’s more than any other church during his time in office.

More on Maryland's post Vatican II heritage even before Vatican II

Pius VI who was Pope at the time
of the American Revolution and
later named John Carroll as the
first Catholic Bishop for the new
Republic

I had mentioned in an earlier blog that colonial and early American Maryland Catholicism bore more resemblance to contemporary Catholicism than to the pre-Conciliar Church in which many of us grew up.  While the Mass was in Latin and celebrated with the priest’s back to the people in eighteenth century Maryland and the liturgy—in general—was the same liturgy (for the most part) we all knew up until the 1964 changes began to introduce a thorough revision of the Mass, there was still much with which we would feel comfortable today.  Priests, on their own, had put some of the sacraments—especially Matrimony, Baptism, and Penance into English, either in whole or in part.  Many of the funeral rites were celebrated in English.  It went so far as that in order to have some uniformity in rites a “Baltimore Ceremonial” was drawn up and that was done without any reference to Rome.  Unlike today when any perceived variation in the liturgical text or form is reported to Rome, this was not a problem in an American Church that recognized its own maturity to deal with the pastoral needs of its people without constant reference to purpled desk-jockeys from a foreign culture who had themselves never undertaken a pastoral ministry much less one in what was then a missionary land.  The first American bishop (and first Archbishop), John Carroll, fostered loyalty to the Holy See among American Catholics, but according to the website of what was his archdiocese, Baltimore,” he was not overly generous in the information he supplied the Roman authorities nor overly conscientious in following their directives.”   (The website is new—Carroll was pretty modern but not that modern.)  During much of Carroll’s episcopacy the popes—Pius VI and Pius VII—were kept by Napoleon in exile from Rome which somewhat naturally separated papal loyalty from curial obedience, a healthy distinction.  
      When Carroll built his Cathedral in Baltimore, now known as the Basilica of the Assumption, he hired Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the architect who built the United States Capitol despite the fact the Latrobe was not a Catholic.  Carroll wanted a Cathedral that did not reflect European heritage but the ideals of the new American Republic.  The consequent church, like the public buildings of the republic, embodied reason, order, discipline, and harmony.  It’s crisp clean lines, not in gothic or baroque but in American Federal style speak of the American faith experience: enlightened, rational, discreet, and hopeful.  But Carroll, for some reason, never thought to put a single statue in his basilica—that would only come with Archbishop Maréchal, Carroll’s second successor who was Archbishop from 1817 until 1828.   The basilica recently underwent a restoration and has proved itself to be suitable for the current liturgy without doing violence to the original design.