Tale of One Parish

St. Gertrude's struggles with the question of being Catholic while disagreeing with the Pope

At St. Gertrude's Church on Chicago's North Side, even the traditional Mass is a little too hip for some old-timers. "I miss the Latin Mass; it just seemed more reverent," says Raymond Seitz, 68, who married into the middle- class parish in 1950 and is still smarting from the seismic Vatican II reforms of the early 1960s. "And when they started ending the Mass with this 'peace be with you' stuff, where you have to shake your neighbors' hands or kiss them, well, that didn't go over well at all." But at St. Gertrude's, the 10 a.m. Mass is downright stuffy...

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