“Make holy days great again”! It’s always struck me as a weak argument that it might be too difficult for American Catholics to attend Mass two days in a row. Let’s hope this clarification from Rome makes that silliness go away.
“Make holy days great again”! It’s always struck me as a weak argument that it might be too difficult for American Catholics to attend Mass two days in a row. Let’s hope this clarification from Rome makes that silliness go away.
I don’t disagree, but with limited priests, that’s not always possible. As a working parent, I understand how hard it can be….but things that are worth doing are often hard.
It is rather interesting, that weekdays are harder for people to attend, everyone who attends on Sunday should be attending the weekday Holy Day Mass, and we therefore have fewer Masses for the Holy Day. ???
I can see how that would not be ideal for a working person, but as a stay at home mom I appreciate those times. Lunchtime or evening masses conflict with nap and bedtimes, and in my experience sleep deprived toddlers are the worst behaved children of all.
That said, I do think it odd to *only* offer a mid morning Mass on holy days. Our parish isn't staffed so well that they can offer a full Sunday schedule (including evening), but they try to get pretty close, and people come.
That's a good perspective. I can see the benefit for families with little kids and I thank you for reminding me of that.
Fortunately I haven't experienced the mid-morning mass being the only one offered, but I have definitely lived in places where the only evening holy day mass is the vigil, leaving me unable to attend holy day masses on the days themselves.
I agree with you about vigils. I like the Easter and Pentecost vigils because they are their own thing with their own traditions, but the other days don't have that feel to them, at least not anymore. I suppose I could broadly include Midnight Mass for Christmas in there too.
(This reminds me also that our parish is short on servers for the vigil of All Saints...hmmm...what would a lot of children be doing in the evening hours on October 31, I wonder...)
Children unavailable to serve would be a weekly problem in my parish, since religious ed is between the two middle Masses, and kids tend not to attend the earliest or latest Mass. We just have adult servers, problem solved.
I thought a major reason for the transfer of HDOs was not so much the working people, but more the working priests who nowadays are often manning multiple parishes, in some cases parishes that are 1-2 hours apart, and the priests have to scramble to provide Mass at reasonable times for all the parishes that one priest might be covering.
“Make holy days great again”! It’s always struck me as a weak argument that it might be too difficult for American Catholics to attend Mass two days in a row. Let’s hope this clarification from Rome makes that silliness go away.
See my comment above: Diocese need to help make ot easier for working people to attend weekdays.
I don’t disagree, but with limited priests, that’s not always possible. As a working parent, I understand how hard it can be….but things that are worth doing are often hard.
It is rather interesting, that weekdays are harder for people to attend, everyone who attends on Sunday should be attending the weekday Holy Day Mass, and we therefore have fewer Masses for the Holy Day. ???
Well, if parishes are sensible about their mass schedules.
A small pet peeve of mine is the 9am weekday holy day mass
I can see how that would not be ideal for a working person, but as a stay at home mom I appreciate those times. Lunchtime or evening masses conflict with nap and bedtimes, and in my experience sleep deprived toddlers are the worst behaved children of all.
That said, I do think it odd to *only* offer a mid morning Mass on holy days. Our parish isn't staffed so well that they can offer a full Sunday schedule (including evening), but they try to get pretty close, and people come.
That's a good perspective. I can see the benefit for families with little kids and I thank you for reminding me of that.
Fortunately I haven't experienced the mid-morning mass being the only one offered, but I have definitely lived in places where the only evening holy day mass is the vigil, leaving me unable to attend holy day masses on the days themselves.
I agree with you about vigils. I like the Easter and Pentecost vigils because they are their own thing with their own traditions, but the other days don't have that feel to them, at least not anymore. I suppose I could broadly include Midnight Mass for Christmas in there too.
(This reminds me also that our parish is short on servers for the vigil of All Saints...hmmm...what would a lot of children be doing in the evening hours on October 31, I wonder...)
Children unavailable to serve would be a weekly problem in my parish, since religious ed is between the two middle Masses, and kids tend not to attend the earliest or latest Mass. We just have adult servers, problem solved.
I thought a major reason for the transfer of HDOs was not so much the working people, but more the working priests who nowadays are often manning multiple parishes, in some cases parishes that are 1-2 hours apart, and the priests have to scramble to provide Mass at reasonable times for all the parishes that one priest might be covering.