Notes From a Baltimore All Souls’ Day

Snow flurries met the dawn on All Souls’ Day in northern Maryland, ending two weeks or so of unseasonable warmth at the Mason-Dixon line. That means digging out sweatshirts and coats for the kids before bundling everyone into the car for the drive to Baltimore for the holiday’s obligatory Mass.

St. Alphonsus, the only church in the archdiocese that consistently hosts the traditional Mass, had previously been the city’s Lithuanian parish. There are no longer any Lithuanians in Baltimore; if there were, they would not live in that neighborhood. So the archbishop was happy to hand over the church—a grand…