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Monday 27 August 2012

This could easily turn into a rant

I was staying with a friend this weekend and we went to her parish for mass. The parish happens to be in the care of the Augustinians and everyone was invited to the mass for the feast of St Augustine on Tuesday, which will be followed by lunch.

The mass is at 12 o'clock.

I really don't know how to express my annoyance that parishes have daily mass at a time which anyone who works simply cannot attend. My parish, for all its faults, at least has mass at 7:30pm twice a week, which is just as well as it's at least 5 miles to the next parish and I don't drive. I once lived somewhere where there were 4 parishes within a mile and a half of my house, and all of the daily masses were at either 9 or 9:15am. One parish had mass at 7pm once a week. I will concede that mass at noon is marginally better than at 9:15am because one might be able to go during a lunch hour. I do feel that this verges on denying the sacraments to parishioners. Couple this with confessions only available for 30 minutes a week...

And then people talk about how there are no young people at mass. Here's a thought...maybe that's because at 9am, 9:30am, 10am and 12pm the non-retired are at work. I am flexible in my definition of youth...25 years ago my Mum was the youngest person at daily mass in the parish. Now she has a full time job and can only go occasionally: she's still the youngest person there.

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