St. Philip Neri Church is located near SE 18th and Division. It was once a predominantly Italian-American parish. The present church building was built in 1950. The interior is a cavernous space with a ceiling that must be 60 feet high. The interior is spare and the acoustics are supposedly excellent. Today, however, the PA system was intermittent, with the right-hand speakers going on and off. A man I assumed to be the pastor, Father Gerald Tully, CSP, (Congregation of St. Paul -- The Paulists) asked visitors to raise their hands and then asked everyone to introduce themselves. My pew neighbors were quite friendly. Dress was generally informal, with lots of jeans. On the conservative-liberal spectrum, I would say this church tends toward the liberal side.
The St. Philp Neri parish emphasizes faith-building, outreach and social justice. Next to the church there are buildings dedicated to these goals called the Paulist Center. It has its own website explaining its works.
The most unique part of the Mass was that the homily was given by a woman, not by the presiding priest. This, to say the least, is not a common practice in Catholic churches. I am not sure I have ever heard a woman preach the sermon in a Catholic church before. I do not know whether she was a lay person or a religious. She was not wearing a habit but not all nuns do. She gave an informative and rather academic exposition mainly concerning the Old Testament reading, which was from the book
of Daniel. Should you think that everyone believes women should be preachers, however, just do a web search on "should women preach" and read what you find. There are plenty of bible versus that can be used to argue that women should not preach. The opposing arguments are likely to be that those verses were written in a time and in a culture very different to our own, and should not apply today. I leave it to others to decide this question.
St. Philip Neri made an impression on me as a friendly church and with the Paulist Center, like an excellent place to get involved in church activities outside of Mass.
No one except for an ordained priest or deacon should give the homily at a Mass. My guess is, based on what I know about this parish, they are doing this as an "equality of women" in the church thing.
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