St. Mary's Cathedral

1716 NW Davis Street http://maryscathedral.com/

The full name is St. Mary's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, but nobody calls it that. It's called either St. Mary's, The Cathedral or St. Mary's Cathedral.

I went to the 5:30 pm Mass on Sunday. This is a last chance Mass. The music is uptempo and -- for lack of a better descriptor -- contemporary. The Mass has a younger, single or newly married crowd, but not entirely so by any means.

This is the bishop's seat, so to speak, and it looks the part. The church was remodeled about ten years ago and the interior looks very nice -- at least to most people. A friend who is an interior decorator thinks it's gaudy and uses too much gold. But, it is clean, spacious and reasonably friendly. Drawing from the West Hills, it is undoubtedly one of the wealthier parishes in Portland.

I go here so often it is hard to comment on it; it's so familiar to me. Each Mass time is a little different: 5:30 pm vigil is middle of the road; 7:30 am is quiet; 9:00 am is for families with children and features donuts and coffee afterward; 11:00 am has a full choir and has the most pomp and circumstance; and 5:30 pm I spoke of above.

I imagine that this church gets more out-of-town visitors than all the others and I think it shows Portland well.