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From the St. Cecilia/St. Margaret Mary Team

An Update from Fr. Michael Grewe

I write you today concerning our Journey of Faith progress. We have now finished our fourth working meeting with the St. Margaret Mary team. We have come a long way as we have discussed many different topics relevant to both parishes. In September we are going to discuss specifics like how we can work together with various programs like Adult Faith Formation and Evangelization.

We will also be taking an in-depth look into our Mass and confessions times. The Archdiocesan plan calls for three priests between the two parishes. With that in mind we will be setting the Mass schedule so that three priests could handle the schedule normally, but that it would also be possible for two priests to manage the weekend if one is gone. With the size of our Cathedral we could easily handle our entire Sunday morning worshipers in one Mass. Most likely each parish would retain their Saturday evening Mass and we would probably maintain our Sunday evening Mass. What we really need to do is to stagger the Sunday Mass times so that a priest could go back and forth between parishes and that we would offer a variety of times that are not duplicated.

The weekday Masses also need our consideration. Right now St. Margaret Mary’s has a 6:30 am Mass that is very well attended. The question is which time would be best for us? If we drop the 7:00 am Mass because of St. Margaret Mary’s time, then would we keep the 11:15 am or maybe go to an 8:30 am each day which is the time of our two weekly school Masses.

Well, as you can see, these are difficult questions to answer. I welcome your discussion and input on these matters. This will certainly be the major topic of discussion at our August Pastoral Council meeting. We are always encouraged to be open to new ideas. We cannot live in the past when every parish had a whole array of Mass times. We don’t have the priests for that anymore and, quite frankly, we don’t have the large numbers of people that we used to have. Just as a side note, St. Margaret Mary’s probably has twice as many parishioners as we do.

Another point to keep in mind is that everything we do needs to be directed toward evangelization. We need to put our time and energy into bringing people to Christ. That ultimately is the bottom line. If people are truly committed to Christ, then they would be willing to make sacrifices to get to Mass. Maybe with fewer Masses and bigger crowds we would all feel more support from each other. How good it would be to see our Cathedral full again!

We will keep praying for this process. We trust that the Holy Spirit is directing our actions. We only want to go in the direction where God is leading us.