Catholic Churches in San Antonio, TX?

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Hi!

My name is Michaela and my husband is a dentist in the Air Force and we are moving to San Antonio, TX this summer as he is getting stationed at Randolph AFB. We are conservative Catholics and would like to join a good solid orthodox Catholic Church in San Antonio. Was wondering if anyone was familiar with the area and could point us in the right direction. We hope to live near Randolph - so if there is a good church around that area…But we will drive further for a good church. Also how are the Catholic schools in San Antonio? Is tutition really high-good solid faith formation?? Any advice suggestions would be great!!!

God Bless - Michaela
 
I’ve a friend in San Antonio, they attend a TLM Parish. I can get you the name of it if you are interested in a Latin Mass.

I can also reccomend the best pizza in San Antonio - Dough on the Go. It is close to base.
 
Hi!

Thanks I would appreciate that. A Latin Mass would be great. Any advice on a good solid Catholic Church to attend is welcomed!

Thanks for the suggestion on good pizza-its a favorite in our house!
 
Look up Our Lady of the Atonement Church. It’s beautiful and very orthodox. The priest celebrates the Tridentine Mass. My husband and I haven’t been there in a couple of years since we live in DFW, but I’m sure it’s still the same!

Good luck on your search for a home parish! And a welcome to Texas!!! 🙂
 
Our Lady of the Atonement is an Anglican use parish, which means it is in union with Rome (and does celebrate the Latin liturgy on Sunday evenings) but the Sunday morning Masses are according to the Book of Divine Worship, Rite I. Here is their website: www.atonementonline.com/index.php.

Here is the archdiocese’s list of parishes: archdiosa.org/ParishLocator/ParishSearch.asp

Be warned I asked this very question over a year ago on these forums and the only names I got were Our Lady of the Atonement and St. Maximilian Kolbe (which celebrates a Latin Mass, but is, IIRC, a nursing home chapel.) That is, if that hasn’t changed already. Many of the Masses we’ve attended in SA make us cringe (not to mention every Mass starts with a spirted round of “find the tabernacle”, followed by “avoid Father ‘Phil Donohue’s’ eye” as he works the crowd to see who the newcomers are.)

But enjoy San Antonio as a whole. The missions are beautiful (maybe you can get a Mass schedule for when Mass is celebrated at any of the four missions) and it’s easy to find good Mexican food (although we just usually go to our friends’ home!)

Good luck!
 
bluerose said:
Our Lady of the Atonement is an Anglican use parish, which means it is in union with Rome (and does celebrate the Latin liturgy on Sunday evenings) but the Sunday morning Masses are according to the Book of Divine Worship, Rite I. Here is their website: www.atonementonline.com/index.php.

Here is the archdiocese’s list of parishes: archdiosa.org/ParishLocator/ParishSearch.asp

Be warned I asked this very question over a year ago on these forums and the only names I got were Our Lady of the Atonement and St. Maximilian Kolbe (which celebrates a Latin Mass, but is, IIRC, a nursing home chapel.) That is, if that hasn’t changed already. Many of the Masses we’ve attended in SA make us cringe (not to mention every Mass starts with a spirted round of “find the tabernacle”, followed by “avoid Father ‘Phil Donohue’s’ eye” as he works the crowd to see who the newcomers are.)

But enjoy San Antonio as a whole. The missions are beautiful (maybe you can get a Mass schedule for when Mass is celebrated at any of the four missions) and it’s easy to find good Mexican food (although we just usually go to our friends’ home!)

Good luck!
Click to expand...
Really? Awww, dang it!

Well, I had already set my heart on Atonement anyway.
 
One of my closest friend’s dad is a Deacon at St. Matthew’s. I’ve visited there with them before and really enjoyed it, though I’m a recent Convert and so I can’t tell you how “traditional/conservative” it really is compared to most Parishes. I certainly didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary based on my limited experience, and everyone was incredibly friendly. I don’t think it’s too terribly far from Randolph, as they’re both kind of North of town.

Here’s the link to the Parish website:

stmatts.org/index.html

My friend went to the school there I believe through 8th grade, and always speaks highly of her experience and was really successful in high school and college. I don’t personally have any experience though. Here’s the school’s website:

smcssa.org/

Good luck in San Antonio! It is a wonderful city. You’ll definitely get to experience the full scope of Texas culture there!
 
You’ll love San Antonio…we just moved from there about three years ago and still miss it sooo much 😦 .
The San Fernando Cathedral is one of the oldest cathedrals (if not the oldest) in the country. I loved going to Mass there, it is downtown and relatively fast to get to from Randolph on a Sunday morning.
Ou kids all went to Catholic schools. The best one for preK - 8th is in a suburb called Alamo Heights, can’t remember the name of the parish. Not far from Randolph. The best high school, in OUR not-so-humble opinion, is Antonian College Prep. We loved the school so very much!
Enjoy your new home!
 
St. John Newman in Windress, eight miles from the base. Very orthodox.

OLPH - in Selma will have the best deacon starting this summer! 😃 My father-il-law will be ordained in May. He and his wife are third order Carmelites. They have a cloistered convent near downtown.

My inlaws live in Universal City. Let me know if you have any questions. If I don’t know, I’ll ask them.

Good luck at the Taj Mahal!
 
Aww, pnewton, you took two of my three recommendations! Shucks!

My older two kids went to OLPH for a year or two, before we moved. I also still like St. John Newman.

It’s a drive, but my best friend’s family goes to St. Leonard’s. The extended family had been members of another local parish. When her dear FIL died in his kitchen, the other local parish was too busy to care about silly little things such as blessing the body, or comforting her MIL- who had done significant volunteer work for the other local parish. The deacon and priest at St.Leonard’s was more than comforting.
 
Thank you everyone for your help and suggestions! I really appreciate it! I think we will definately be checking out all of them before making a final decision on a home parish.

I’ve been told SA has a good bishop and the diocese on the whole is conservative. Is this true? I looked at the diocese’s webpage and I was pleased with what I saw.

Thanks again and we are really looking forward to moving to Texas!
 
It astonishes me how often this question is asked regarding one area of the country or another. It’s as though once this forum site is found, the user stops using search engines. I found the archdiocesan web site for you so you won’t have to tire your fingers.

www.archdiosa.org/

There is a directory of parishes by counties. Most if not all have parish web sites. Do the homework.

Matthew
 
drafdog said:
There is a directory of parishes by counties. Most if not all have parish web sites. Do the homework.

Matthew
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If you do not want to help, then don’t. I for one do not object in the least. Besides, the question asked for opinions on the parishs’ orthodoxy, not just their addresses and phone numbers.
 
Having the web sites for all the parishes in the archdiocese will allow Michaela and her husband to find a parish close to his work and whose programs and activities seem to best fit their needs. It doesn’t take long to go over a map and select possible parishes from the list provided by the archbishop’s staff. I thought that information from the horse’s mouth as it were trumps personal opinion. Let Michaela make up her own mind.

Matthew
 
If you look up the website for St. Francis of Assisi on De Zavala Road, it looks pretty good, if you’re looking for something conservative. But it’s not. You get theatre in the round (the church is set up like an amphiteatre, with the altar in the “pit”), a rock band (electric guitar, keyboard and drums) backing up the choir, standing throughout the whole Eucharistic Prayer, a “cast of thousands” distributing communion, which sometimes appears to be chunks of whole wheat pita bread, and of course the “meet and greet” at the beginning of Mass, with the “Phil Donohue” show at the end where the priest asks for all the newcomers to identify themselves and tell where they’re from, asks birthday and anniversary celebrants to stand up and be congratulated, etc.

There’s A LOT they don’t tell you on the websites!
 
Okay, I’m back from playing a puzzle game during which I let my mind wander about. I’ve realized why I get testy over threads like this. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain.
Joan went to school (college) with my Mum. After college Mum moved back to her parent’s home and one thing and another Mum and Joan married and began having their families. They always stayed in touch with letters and cards at Christmas. Joan and Vern were Episcopalian. When they first came to visit us in another state, they wanted to find a church. I suggested St. John’s down the road about two miles. When they came back, they were clearly dissatisfied and I asked what the trouble was. As a high school student I was pretty inquisitive. It turned out that St. John’s was low church. Joan and Vern and the kids were high church. Ever after when they came to visit they came to our parish with us on Sunday morning. The Catholic Mass was much closer what they were accustomed to find at home.
What does this have to do with this and other parish searching threads? I guess it sounds like Joan and Vern trying to find a high enough Episcopalian church to suit them. It stuck in my mind over the years as “something Protestants do.” When I find it in the Catholic church, that’s the echo I hear. “This is something Protestants do.” In the Catholic church we don’t have high and low church. We are Catholic. We don’t shop for high church over low church, or low church over high church. We’re Catholics.
Maybe I’m testy about this, but that’s the story.

Matthew
 
Then the great thing is that one is just as free to refrain from posting as they are to post. Perhaps if we still had manditory parish boundries, there might be an issue. But especially in a metropolitan area, why not avoid the frustration of an inovative priest or the temptation to play liturgical police every Sunday? Often enough in life we are placed in a situtation where we must suffer. I see no reason to invite it.

FYI - I went to St. Francis once and agree with bluerose’s assessment.
 
drafdog said:
It astonishes me how often this question is asked regarding one area of the country or another. It’s as though once this forum site is found, the user stops using search engines. I found the archdiocesan web site for you so you won’t have to tire your fingers.

www.archdiosa.org/

There is a directory of parishes by counties. Most if not all have parish web sites. Do the homework.

Matthew
Click to expand...
Now then, froggie- This is more than a questor who can’t use a search engine. Some parishes look great on a web site, but hey, I can look great on a web site, too. There is NOTHING like first-hand knowledge of a region, maybe a PM with a name or two of somebody someplace new, to make a person feel at home.

It’s called being hospitable. It esp. applies to military families, who DESERVE all the help we can give them. Those of us who took the time to serve our country (be it USA, Canada, Australia) KNOW the base chapel does not always have best program.

There are several parishes of which I know in San Antonio, as Uncle Sam thought it was a good place to place me. And I can tell you that, while I will not name those parishes out in the open (anybody can PM me, though, and I will be happy to “out” them privately), there are some really good parishes that should be recommended for their fine work.
 
After having moved a lot and even having spent some time at Randolph I can say your best bet is to shop around. I have noticed churches in an area tend to balance each other. In our area my church is very tratitional while the other one a few miles away is more modern. The last two places we lived we also noticed a bit of diversity between churches.

At Randolph they used to have masses on base. We either attended on base or the one in Schertz. Can’t remember the name of it. Of course you may want to check out some of the older churches there especilally the ones down town, very beautiful.

By the way you have to get to Chester’s hamburger place just off base if they are still open. The best Hamburger’s I’ve ever had. For a good big steak you can’t beat the Hungry Farmer up the street. And you have to try Bill Miller’s Barbeque. But no guarantee any of those places are still in business, I haven’t been there for a long time.
 
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