'We Live It Every Day'

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Catholics Find Solace in Religious Keepsakes

The Hickey family keeps Catholic relics throughout their house as a reminder of their faith.

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The family goes to Mass every Sunday and on Holy Days and celebrates the myriad Catholic feast days. Like other devout Catholics, they keep holy water, which has been blessed by a priest, in a small font by their front door. They say the rosary and pray to the saints daily.

"We live it every day," Guelcher said.

Like Catholics of their generation, young conservatives grew up under the liberalizing changes to the church brought on by the Vatican II Council in the 1960s, but some rejected those reforms as they reached adulthood.

Paulitz, 32, remembers "lots of guitars and banjoes" at church services and priests who had fallen away from church doctrine.

"I felt uncomfortable about it constantly," he said.

Like the Hickeys and the Guelchers, Paulitz and his wife, Diane, found their way to St. Mary Mother of God, a 163-year-old parish near the Verizon Center in Northwest Washington. It is one of the few churches in the Washington area that offers the traditional Latin Mass every Sunday.

To traditional Catholics, the old Latin Mass -- a formal rite entirely in Latin -- stands in marked contrast to the more informal modern Mass ushered in by the Second Vatican Council. Benedict last year loosened restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass, also called the Tridentine Mass, cheering conservative Catholics everywhere.

St. Mary's, which has been holding the Tridentine Mass for more than a decade, has become a gathering place for traditional Catholics. Most Sundays, the church is overflowing.

Capitol Hill aide Paul-Martin Foss, 26, says he feels comfortable at St. Mary's. Worshipers there, he said, don't question church canon.

"On the major doctrinal issues, it's pretty much settled," he said. "They are all pro-life and faithful on all the church's moral teachings and dogma."

It is not an easy existence. Conservative Catholics, compared to "cafeteria Catholics" -- the term for Catholics who pick and choose which doctrines to follow -- say they can feel off the beaten path culturally.

Daniel Heenan, 25, a Sterling Catholic school teacher who plans to enter the seminary, faces the amused scrutiny of his peers for his devout life. "A lot of them think I'm a lunatic," Heenan said.