Name of Church St. Joseph
Address 319 E Street, Crescent City, CA 95531
Phone number (707) 465-1762
Website www.sjccc.net
Mass times Saturday vigil, 5 p.m. Sundays, 8 a.m. (Latin Tridentine), 10 a.m., noon (Spanish). Tuesday – Friday, 5:15 p.m. Tuesdays, 6:30 p.m.
Confessions Saturdays, 4:15-4:45 p.m., Sundays, 9:15 – 9:45 a.m., 11:15 – 11:45 a.m., Tuesdays, 6 – 6:30 p.m.
Names of priests Father Adam Kotas, pastor. Father Kotas is originally from Poland, and grew up in Chicago, which has a large Polish community. He was ordained a priest in 2010; Santa Rosa Bishop Robert Vasa assigned him to St. Joseph’s in 2012.
Music Choirs with guitar and piano.
Special groups and activities Knights of Columbus; Women’s Society; Little Flowers Club (teaches virtue to girls); Filipino, Portuguese and Hispanic community groups. St. Joseph’s serves the Catholic inmates of Pelican Bay State Prison, which houses California’s most dangerous criminals.
Fellow parishioners Anglo and Hispanic.
Parking Plenty.
Acoustics Good.
Cry room No.
Additional observations Crescent City is a coastal town in the diocese of Santa Rosa, not far from the Oregon border and three blocks from the ocean. St. Joseph’s got its start in 1869, when Catholics bought an abandoned Methodist church and converted it to the city’s first Catholic church.
The church was rebuilt multiple times; twice it burned down in fires. The 5th and current St. Joseph Church was built in 1961. A Good Friday 1964 tsunami which devastated much of Crescent City left the church untouched (and its parking lot littered with debris).
The diocese of Santa Rosa has suffered much in recent decades due to financial and sexual scandals, but has begun to reform under the leadership of its new bishop, Robert Vasa, who came to the diocese in 2011. St. Joseph’s reflects that reform with some orthodox teaching and pious prayer (despite having such a young pastor!)
This small church is proof that it’s what is done within the walls of the church that matters. Though having a traditional, beautiful church is delightful to the eye, it sounds like this young faithful pastor is truly feeding his sheep. God bless him and his congregants. May they continue to bring salt and light into their community.
Not to be weird, and of course one cannot see the entire picture well, but WHAT IN THE WORLD are those wings behind him?
It looks like the throne of Cleopatra from some fifties film…
Father Adam Kotas is a wonderful, orthodox, young priest. The people of Crescent City and St. Joseph’s Parish are fortunate to have him as their pastor. He is enthusiastic and brings his love of the Church to everyone he meets and every place he visits. God Bless Fr. Adam.
Very likely what you’re seeing are cherubim guarding the Tabernacle,M.
It’s front and center where it is supposed to be. I’m not surprised you didn’t recognize it, and that you would put such a negative spin on it.
Thanks, Dana — you are probably right.
The wings got me for a moment, because they are so huge.
(By the way, the tabernacle in our parish church is front and center, too, but it seems our pastor found no need to install winged creatures to guard it. His homilies are enough to put the fear the Lord into anyone even thinking about shenanigans in church!)
Well,actually the verb I should have used would have been adoring…the Cherubim adoring the Tabernacle. Glad you’re church has it properly placed…mine is behind a semi-opaque glass wall__ I have no idea why, and is about twenty feet from the altar. Another church I attend occasionally has the Tabernacle behind an ornate lattice/wall and I have no idea where it is. I think I’ll pursue that at Mass today. No shenanigans in my church..just lots of music from the 70’s , especially “Let There Be Peace on Earth” (cokes the real thing) and a woman cantor with a voice that might shatter glass someday if all the planets are aligned and she manages to hit the same key as the piano. Think of all the blown hearing aids and eye glasses.
Michael, Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative! I did not even notice the “wings” you were referring to….only noticed them when you called attention to them.
What Dana writes above is only too obvious. I too am surprised at the tone of your comments
Wow, a priest actually wearing a bereta at that and celebrating the Holy Sacrifice facing God on the Altar!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
“…facing God on the altar.”
Oh, please.
The whole understanding of celebrating Holy Mass ‘ad orientam’ has nothing to do with tabernacles (just look at St. Peter’s Basilica), but rather with the celebrant and congregation all facing toward the east:
In the Catholic liturgy the expression ad orientem (Latin for “to the east”) describes a particular orientation of a priest celebrating Mass.
The literal meaning of the expression indicates that the priest faces eastward, an orientation that has been described as linked with the “cosmic sign of the rising sun which symbolizes the universality of God.”[1] Outside of Rome, it was an ancient custom for churches to be built with the entrance at the west end and for priest and people to face eastward to the place of the rising sun.[2]
However, ad orientem is more often used to mean facing the apse or wall behind the altar, with priest and people looking in the same direction (as opposed to the versus populum orientation, in which the priest faces the congregation), even if they are not facing to the east or even have their backs to the east.[3]
By the way, the hat is called a “biretta,” unlike your spelling which means a handgun.
Why do they 12 Sacraments listed on their website?
Thank you Anonymous…what a great website, and they offer a free download of the Lamb’s Supper by Scott Hahn, EWTN kids website and even a webstore. Truly one of the best church websites I’ve seen so far. It’s not twelve sacraments, anon, which the seven are listed first and then other offerings like blessing animals on St.Francis’ feast day Oct. 4. Outstanding!
FYI: The piano music is during the Spanish Mass, the Saturday vigil has an organist, and also included with the guitar are drums and other percussion. The weekly Latin Mass is not currently happening, it is only going to be monthly for the time being.
Too bad, the TLM would be really attract the young people of the parish, they can get drums, guitars and other secular music anywhere, sadly they cannot always be lucky to have the TLM available.