Catholicism For the Time Being

On Sunday, with my latest broadside on matters Catholics filed and published, I drove with my family up into northwestern Connecticut â?? just for the drive, no particular destination in mind. We ended up stopping for mass at a shrine near Litchfield, built in imitation and honor of Lourdes, that Iâ??d visited occasionally many years earlier with my parents. The place was mostly unchanged: A big expanse of land, gray and somewhat forbidding on a cloudy day with the trees half-gone toward winter; a grotto where they have outdoor masses in warmer weather; a long stations of the cross ascending a wooded hill to a lifesize Calvary; and various gift shops and outbuildings scattered around the grounds. One of the outbuildings doubles as a chapel, and thatâ??s where the All Saints Day mass was held: In a crowded, close, carpeted space, with a mostly-gray haired congregation (we were some of the youngest people there) dressed in suburban- Catholic casual and packed into too-small chairs on three sides of the altar.