The first church I visited in San Francisco was St. Paul's, a Catholic church in Noe Valley a couple of blocks from our apartment. They had sent us a nice welcome-to-the-neighborhood letter when we first moved to SF that said: you are welcome to come visit us, this is what we are about, and also, here is another list of all different kinds of places of worship in the area if our church is not your thing. Dan and I were impressed. We had also looked them up on the internet and discovered that Sister Act was filmed there! Woo hoo! I LOVE Sister Act.
The place was pretty empty the day we visited. We were attending the second and later service, however, so it's possible the first service had more people.
The service was, of course, very liturgical and formal. There was no way to know (as clueless, visiting Protestants) when to sit or stand or cross ourselves so we had to watch the people around us and follow them as closely as we could. Some part of me was definitely expecting the choir to break out into "My God" so I was a little disappointed, to say the least.
There were several people and even a large GROUP of people who came in just for the communion and then left afterwards. That was fascinating to me. I didn't go up for communion this time because I didn't know the routine and I was afraid the priest was going to persecute me in front of the whole congregation if he knew I wasn't Catholic. But I'm determined to ask one of my Catholic friends to teach me what to do, so I can participate next time.
There was an organ and hymns, which are not for me. The priest seemed nice. There were Latinos, Asian Americans and whites- no African-Americans.
Probably won't go back again unless I hear Whoopi is stopping by. It was nice to visit though!
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