A reader kindly alerted me to a astonishing creativity at St. Joseph’s in Mandarin, FL (Jacksonville area) in the Diocese of St. Augustine.
First, to their credit, I see in their parish bulletin that they have an adoration chapel. Also they offer confessions on Saturday from 4:30-5:30 PM in English and on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday-Saturday at 7:30-7:55AM and they have a separate schedule for Spanish including Sunday 20 minutes before the Masses. With four priests there they should have confessions during the Masses too. And Wednesday 6:30-7:00, which doesn’t seem like very much. However, that’s a great deal better than most places right now. Whenever I hear about goofy things in a parish, I look at the bulletin for their confession schedule. Not only, they have VESPERS a couple evenings a week and adoration. Masses are in English, Spanish, Polish and Portuguese. If only there were a single language available, with which all these different groups of LATIN CHURCH Catholics could pray together instead of splintered groups.
Now to the creativity. On Ash Wednesday at their Parish School Mass Father said “we need to show eagerness and enthusiasm to run the race with the destination to Heaven.”
They had a couple of kids foot race in the church down the main aisle.
Get it? Run the race? GET IT?
I could never have come up with that. So meaningful.
MUSIC WARNING. You may need your handy emesis basin.
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They must have very good insurance.
I can’t wait to see what they do when they read of the stoning of St. Stephen!
Looking through their bulletin, I see some good things. They have Bible study, and a Seven Sorrows of Mary Devotion group. And it looks like a High School maybe with some sisters and Cemetery. Lots going on.
HOWEVER, this was a dumb thing to do, in my opinion. Demeaning of both the sacredness of place and of the moment: Mass.
Meanwhile, the people who want the Vetus Ordo have to be suppressed.
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I frequent this parish quite a bit! This occurred no doubt in the new church- there is a low Mass and a high Mass weekly in what the call the “historic church” which is quite beautiful (built in the 1800s when the area was still being developed). Both Masses are always packed.
And no, you didn’t miss that in the bulletin- the pastor dutifully refrains from promoting his red-headed-step childre- er, I mean, TLM Community.
St. Patrick’s in NYC just had a funeral for a self-professed atheist. Colorful crowd. The eulogy was a real homage to the deceased, “the whore…mother of all the (putas)…mother of all the whores…”. The whole thing looked like Hell, but then again, the whole world looks pretty much like Hell now.
St. Patrick’s probably shouldn’t have a Mass until Fr. Ripperger visits and does an exorcism first.
What stays God’s hand.
Is this what it was like to live when Arianism was at its zenith? It’s easy, today, to look back and casually discuss how so many bishops were heretics, how the Pope was compromised, how St. Athanasius was exiled . . . but for the people at the time, the simple lay person, surely it was bewildering. Knowing the Faith, but then seeing it proclaimed incorrectly by bishops, seeing the orthodox punished, people ignoring the actual dictates of a recent council . . .
Because I look at stuff like this, and I just can’t square it with the Catholic Faith as I understand it or with what I’ve studied about it as it existed throughout the ages. Will there be a time when they look back at today and casually chat about how the modernist church practically involved every bishop and all the high level Vatican offices? I hope they appreciate how bewildering it is to live at a time when a transgendered person can have their child baptized in a Catholic Church, but it’s somehow forbidden for a faithful Catholic couple to have their child baptized in the traditional form, even if it’s their 7th kid and the previous 6 have all been baptized in that very same way in that very same church. (and, yes, this is literally the state of things in my own diocese, considered one of the more “conservative” in the US.)
This morning at my local unique expression of the Roman Rite, the elderly priest sat out Communion so it was only EMHCs. I watched as one Host was dropped only to be caught mid-air in the EMHCs hand. Who needs a paten when you’ve got quick reflexes? A few seconds later, he bent to pick something up (another Host?) from the floor. But the best part was the old woman who went up to receive Communion with her little dog on a leash. I had to do a double-take because I thought I was seeing things. I really have to be less rigid.
Orual, if that’s a legitimate service dog, I don’t see a problem with that. If it’s because Fluffykins couldn’t bear to be alone for more than an hour by herself at home, that’s an entirely different matter.
My Irish grandmother (whose family were friends of St John Henry Newman) would have killed me for running in Church-at any time. I dread to think what would have happened if I’d done it during Mass!
DavidJ, the woman wasn’t blind nor did she seem to have any physical disabilities. I saw her get into the drivers seat of her car after Mass. The dog was a small lapdog and had no label of ‘service dog’ on it. In my opinion, it would have been better for someone to bring communion to her in her seat rather than taking the dog up with her.