This parish is comprised of two churches.
1. The older St. Mary Star of the Sea which dates back to 1877.
2. The "newer" Holy Savior which opened in 1954 but was renovated to its current look in '67-'68.
Below is a great site that has the entire history of how both churches came into existence:
www.ocmuseum.org/index.php/site/oc-history_article/saint_mary_star_of_the_sea
I would have liked to have seen the inside of St. Mary but with only one mass a week offered there at the barbaric hour of Sunday at 7am I knew that wasn't happened so we settled for the 8:30 at Holy Savior. Nice inside with large portraits of various saints on the walls and the all piano/no organ mass was nice as I'll take anything musically that is remotely different.
Speaking of different, the layout of the altar area is unusual where lector is on one side, the priest sits on the other side by another lectern, the altar servers sit a good distance back from the priest near another lectern which the cantor uses and the tabernacle is a good hike all the way at the rear of the church. Also a neat twist is that
Father Stan uses a wireless throughout the mass so that during the homily he is mobile to walk/stalk/pace. His homily was fairly lengthy but was also interesting about family even though the children blacked out after a while.
Hopefully on our next visit there is a more convenient mass time at St. Mary or hopefully I can blast myself out of bed pre-7am but either we'll be back here next time we're in town. read more