Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Atlanta

At 10 a.m., Mass will start at Our Lady of Lourdes this Sunday. But Lulu and I will be a good four hours north on the road to Philadelphia, then on to NYC so Lulu can go back to college. Boo hoo… I’m gonna miss her badly, but in a good way. I am not remotely Christian behind the wheel (ask anybody who’s ever driven with me) but my $100 will still religiously be going to OLOL….for the reasons below. Over and out!

Okay, so I’m Catholic. A practicing Catholic. And I am therefore supposed to (required to) go to church every Sunday. I am also (super old school here) supposed to tithe, i.e. give 10% of my income to the church. However, since I have a very modest (okay, pathetic) income and basically live off my husband, I’m just going to pretend, for the purposes of giving myself one day a week off from this blog, that I’m making $365,000 a year and go from there. So every Sunday – all year long –I’m going to be giving $100 to Our Lady of Lourdes, my amazing, adorable church in the heart of the Martin Luther King Jr. Landmark district in Atlanta.

Our Lady of Lourdes was founded in 1912 as an African-American Catholic community, financed by Mother Katharine Drexel – a rich Main Line, Philadelphia heiress who founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and donated her fortune to serve Native American and Black people. From the steps of OLOL (no relation to LOL, kids) you can see Ebenezer Baptist Church (where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his father, grandfather, and brother all preached), and the Auburn St. neighborhood infuses the church’s soul.

I love OLOL so much, it’s ridiculous. It’s small, it’s mighty, it has awesome music (thanks to our Minister of Music and chair of Spelman College’s Department of Music, Dr. Kevin Johnson), and it’s got Father John Adamski – our tall, rail-thin, challenging, intellectual, lovely priest. I’m not sure if you know many Catholics, but I can tell you for sure, we’re not the monolithic, homogenized, “jump to the Pope’s every proclamation” pack of lemmings that you may think. I, for one, believe that the church’s stance on birth control is socially irresponsible, morally insupportable, and just plain nuts.  But I also think the church’s position on poverty, social responsibility, gun control, the death penalty, immigration, health care, equality, civil rights, justice, and charity is truly inspired.

For these reasons – and for the reasons I’ll add every Sunday that I go to church and am freshly inspired (or spiritually challenged), I’m making this my weekly tithe. If you can find a church, synagogue, mosque or temple you love even half as much as I love Lourdes, you’ll feel blessed to support it, too. I promise.M