Looking for a more traditional church in Phoenix, AZ

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inlovewithlife

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Hi everyone,

I’m not sure if this is the correct forum for a post like this, please let me know if I should re-post elsewhere!
Here in a few months I’ll be moving to the Phoenix area. While visiting recently, I attended a Catholic service that was a little too modern for me; while it was a nice service, I would really life to find a more traditional church to attend when I move there. According to the people I was staying with, it seems that it might be difficult to find a more traditional service there. I would love to hear of any churches in the area that are more traditional and multiple recommendations would be great, since I’m not sure exactly where in the Phoenix area I’ll be.

Thanks so much, blessings,
inlovewithlife
 
While I will speculate that you are looking for a traditional Latin Catholic chuch, I thought it worth mentioning that Phoenix is the seat of one of the four eparchies (dioceses) of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Catholic Church in the US. The Cathedral of St. Stephen (link to webite) is a very nice place to worship, if only occasionally. I have attended while on business in town, and felt most welcome (even before I disclosed that I was a “cradle” Byzantine Catholic). Proximity might be a good excuse to experience the Light of the East, in the Catholic Church.

We’ll pray that you find a place of worship that inspires you!
 
May I offer a contrarian view? After years of always looking for a better (i.e, more traditional, more conservative) Mass, better priest, better parish, and being associated with other Catholics doing the same, I now believe that the best thing to do is just to go to the nearest parish to wherever you are staying.

Why?

Because what really matters is the inner-Mass going on inside me and inside you, and the inner-priest preaching insider you and inside me. Any attempt to find an external alternative to these internal phenomenon will just leave you and everyone in your family empty and un-elevated.

Blessed Pope John Paul II called the family the “domestic church.” If you are the head of your household, then you are the chief teacher of the Faith in your “domestic church,” and external teachers here or there don’t really matter one way or the other.

Just an alternative view. And it might save you some gasoline.

Best wishes.
 
Thank you so much to everyone so far for the responses - a lot to think about for sure! and I would still love even more ideas…

I should have been more detailed about what I meant by traditional - I’ve actually never attended a Latin Mass, but I wouldn’t mind trying it out by any means.

The more “modern” mass I went to during my visit had a 30 person praise band with a complete drum set (in a very nifty plastic cage to dull the sound). They also only did popular gospel music and there were no statues or pictures anywhere but instead they had two projector screens that only showed the words to the gospel music.

I want to add there is nothing wrong with anything I mentioned above, but being from a Baptist family (I’m a convert, the only Catholic in my family) from the Bible belt of the south, I associate the above with a large southern Baptist church instead of a Catholic one 🙂 Heck, I’d just go back to a Baptist church to worship that way 😉
I’m just hoping for something at least a little more “Catholic”, but I’m staying open to possibilities and am enjoying all the ideas

Thanks so much, keep the ideas rolling in please 🙂
 
There’s always Ss. Simon and Jude Cathedral. They have masses that are less formal and more formal, with the most formal being the 11 a.m. Sunday mass. However, I have never witnessed an occasion where fancy notions were put ahead of the prescribed, reverent way of doing things. You might find that they use more Latin in their masses than you’re used to (or maybe not), but it’s in the sheet music and you’d easily pick it up in a few weeks if you don’t already know it.

Even if you end up somewhere else, the First Friday Benediction and prayer for vocations is worth attending. On the feast of Corpus Christi in June they’re going to begin Perpetual Adoration.

St. Thomas the Apostle is also worth considering. They hosted Phoenix’s Latin Mass parish (Mater Misericordiae Mission) for several years until that congregation was able to stand on its own feet, though of course they use the ordinary form of the mass, not the Latin. They also do things very correctly and I have never felt uncomfortable attending one of their masses.

Behind the altar they have a huge, weird painting of Camelback Mountain with the sun shining through the clouds over it, but there are also a great many traditional accoutrements such as a canopy, several statues, all sorts of things that help it to feel distinctly, unmistakeably Catholic. Many find the painting endearing.

Ss. S. & J. is in central Phoenix, while St. Thomas is in sort of south-central Scottsdale. The pastors of both are good homilists; both have schools attached to them, so if the constant presence of children is a delight to you, the schools might help you feel more at home. There are consecrated sisters teaching at both, too, with the Loreto sisters’ convent on the grounds of the Cathedral. I do not know whether the Dominican sisters live at St. Thomas the Apostle or not.
 
I put the question to some serious Catholics I know in Phoenix.

The reply;
I would have suggested St Thomas, Ss Simon & Jude, or the Mater Misericordiae Mission depending on what they were looking for and part of town.
Click to expand...
 
Queen of Peace in Mesa… Fr. Thomas ends the Mass with the St. Michael prayer.

Tell him his sister-in-law sent you! 😉
 
If the SSPX is regularized by the time you move to Phoenix, you can also look into Our Lady of Sorrows. You would love the Prior there, Fr Trevor Burfitt. He was the young priest assigned to the chapel on Long Island several years ago that was vandalized and the Blessed Sacrament scattered in a mud pile outside of the church. Fr. Burfitt knelt and consumed all of the hosts from the mud. He then consecrated that small patch of land.

It also has the added benefits of daily Mass in the EF and a Traditional Catholic school attached to it.

This is the chapel I accidentally walked into on a business trip to Phoenix several years ago and re-discovered the TLM and the traditional practices that I had long forgotten from my youth. My life literally changed in an instant.
 
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