Diary of a Parish Priest

Hymnal Survey So Far

Please take our survey if you have not already done so. It will help us decide how many and what kind of in-pew worship aids to buy.

 

HYMNAL SURVEY

More Shingles

Workers took some time to prepare two of the old windows for removal. The Resurrection and Ascension windows will be placed into western most windows in the old part of the church and shine into the sanctuary.

Meantime, it's a bit of a challenge to decide how to handle the "not exactly straight" lines of some of the spires in the old part of the building. 

Very handsome new shingles. It will be exciting to see how the entire building looks!

 

There are many nooks, crannies and crevices.

More Insulation

 

I start itching just seeing all this insulation.

North Working Sacristy

 

North and South Sacristies and Reredos take shape

Too Wide for One Lens Now

New Skin, Inside and Out

New Sheathing for the Siding

 

At this point, the windows you see will remain "as is" except the installation of a clear window in front of them. The damage to the stained glass over the years may someday be repaired, but as of yet, no donor has come forward to help restore these original Ward Avenue windows.

New Siding on Northeast corner of Church

 

Interior Insulation: Either the Windows are Coming or We're Betting on No Rain

Church Donations

Some encouraging news regarding donations to the music program of the new church: we have our first donation toward the cost of a new organ, a $10 K. Nine more are needed in order for us to afford a new digital organ. Meantime, we are assessing the repair costs for the used organ we have had in the gym for the past months and will install this one in the church if we have no alternative. The sound system to which it will be attached will be new.

Donations of hymnals are starting. Now that we've finalized the template for the bookplates, we'll be printing them and ordering the hymnals. Look for a display of materials (and hopefully some donor evnvelopes from the hymnal company) by the weekend.

 

 

Revised Hymnal Bookplate

We did a little more work on the bookplate template, since we realized we had more freedom to edit the publisher's template.

This is the new version which will adorn the inside front cover of our hymnals for years to come.  All donor information will be personalized in either of three formats we have available: 1) Given by; 2) Given by, In Memory of; 3) In Memory of

For the Cedar Shingles, "Any Day Now" Arrives

On the North Side

 

Cedar Shingles on the South Side.They smell great!

 

New sheathing on the old part of the church

Interior insulation material for the drywall dividing walls. We've specified extra sound baffling from the vestibule, confessional and bathroom in both transepts.

 

Framing for the sacristy wall northeast corner of the old church.

 

Every construction crew should have a stereophonic bird nest detector

St. Colum's Isle of Iona

 

Pray For World Peace

Holy Cross Rood

Rood is a synonym for Cross, and the woodworker has just begun work on ours. We have collected the corpus (body of Christ) and carved wooden statues of St. John and Mary from antique sources. They will be fashioned into a crucifixion scene which will hang from the center of the new sanctuary. Here is an architect's rendering of the design drawings:

The design will be used in the bookplate memorials to be affixed to the inside front covers of our hymnals.

 

Sunday 5 PM Mass

Thank you to all who took part in our survey. The comments were helpful, but too varied to include here. 

We're planning on the 5 PM Sunday mass for the Fall/Winter Mass Schedule to begin in the gymatorium and continue in the new church.

This is not replacing the 7 PM Latin Mass, which will also continue.

New Skin

The old church gets a layer of new skin as workers prepare to apply the cedar shingles.

The shingles didn't make it here yet. A builder's mantra: "Any day now, any day."

Survey: Hymnals with or without the Sunday readings ?

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Time to Order Hymnals for the New Church

Believe it or not, we're about to order hymnals for the new church. Several years ago, after reviewing all the music and lectionary materials available for in-pew use, we decided to postpone selecting a new worship resource until after the move into the new church.

Use of any printed material in the gymatorium would have been difficult and frankly, unecessary because of the ease of projecting words and lyrics. Our new church will not have this capability at first; the wiring is being done, but purchase and installation of the monitors and/or projectors are deferred until we can afford it. Further, recall that since the seating is very similar to the old church, not all seats will have an unobstructed view of the screens.

So we will be going back to printed materials, but to a hymnal rather than the disposable quarterly missalettes. The hymnal  will be a hard bound book with a potential life of 5-10 years. They are printed with or without the Sunday readings. A new survey asks whether having the printed readings is important to you, assuming the sound system is great. While I don't have a really strong preference, the priests and the lectors often remark that it is a pleasure to see people looking at them rather than having their heads buried in a book!

To help defray the cost of the hymnals, we will be offering bookplate memorials for individual hymnal at a cost of $ 20 per hymnal. Subscription envelopes will be available in the Parish Office, after masses and probably online. Our initial purchase will be Worship: 4th edition by GIA publications. Many communities use more than one hymnal, but this will be a great beginning.

Bookplate example

Three types of bookplates will be available: 

Gift of
Gift of / In Memory of
In Memory of

The purchase of one or more hymnals is a fitting way to honor a loved one and help our worship assembly to glorify God.

Look for the envelopes at mass or call the office for one or more enrollment forms.

 

 

 

Parish Emails and Parishioner Registration Data

 

For many years now, the school has enjoyed the efficiency and economy of email to parents of our enrolled children. How many remember the weighty "Wednesday Envelopes" which were dutifully carried home by the children each week? 

 

Parish Electronic Communications Hampered by Inability to Send

Database Email

Unfortunately, the parish has been unable to use email from the database program which keeps our registered parishioners. The problem apparently is a difficulty between our server, our Internet filtering program and the parish database software. Neither software consultants nor our own in-house technology people have been unable to find a solution to allow ParishSoft (our database company) to send emails to parishioners.

Email Addresses Rarely Tested

Our relatively new Ministry Scheduler software allows us to schedule and email our liturgical ministers and generate the weekend schedules, but only them. For all other emailings (including our Religious Education program), staff members have assembled various lists and done small emailings to their committee-sized groups. Sometimes email additions or corrections to these smaller lists do not make it back to the master database.

We'd like to use our email list more regularly, but it is out of date and many email addresses are untested.

When Do We Amend the Database ?

We amend the database when

• a US Postal service letter or packet of weekly contribution envelopes  is returned for wrong address, or the addressee has moved
• an email is undeliverable or bounces back
• someone moves out of the parish bounds and tells us
• someone chooses to register in another parish and tells us
• the parishioner asks us to do so
• reception of a sacrament of initiation, baptisms, weddings
• we celebrate a Mass of Christian Burial for a registered parishioner 
• we are informed by next of kin that a registered parishioner has died, or a friend requests a mass card for a deceased registered Holy Cross parishioner

New Diocesan Registration System Automatically Informs Parishes when a Registered Parishioner Changes Parishes

Within the last two years, the Diocese has connected all parishes in the Diocese of Trenton to one registration database which permits a family to be "registered" in one parish only. This prevents someone who changes residences from becoming unwittingly registered in more than one parish. It also automatically informs the former parish when someone "switches" parishes and registers elsewhere. Until very recently, registration data was generally not shared between parishes. 

Update e-mail list and new e-mail program

So please be patient with us as we update our email address list in order to us a new email system. People change their email addresses frequently and we may have an old one. Someone on our staff may even be using your correct email but the main database is inaccurate.

As we check up on the parish database, we will also inadvertenly email some people who never wanted to hear from us again or who have left the parish and/or the Catholic faith. Please tell such people to let us know and we will promptly adjust their record. If they want to speak to someone on the Parish Staff, it might be helpful for everyone concerned.  If we offend anyone by emailing someone who has died, we will say a mass in their memory. We don't want to make anyone angry. We want to quickly inform people who want to hear from us about important events in the parish, or for example, to receive the bulletin electronically just like the school families receive the Wednesday emailings from our school.

Peace,

Fr Manning

 P.S.  We are planning a methodical parish census to review and update all parish records around Christmas time and the move into our new church. 

 

 

 

Our Church Lights the Darkness

Our church is all dressed up in reflective insulation and glows in the dark!

Alaskan Yellow Cedar Shingles to be Delivered Tomorrow

The cedar shingles are scheduled to be delivered tomorrow and the building is just about ready for them. All the areas which need to have exterior, rigid insulation applied have been covered.

There's been a delay with the delivery of the exterior, tempered glass for all the windows (not the stained glass which is being fabricatred as I've described.) A couple of more weeks before the building can be enclosed.

Someone asked, "Hey, is there a hole in the top of the roof?" Yes, that's the opening for the spire which will be mounted above crossing at the main entry door. We're waiting for a few parts from the steel manufacturer.

More HVAC ducts enclosed in the attic

 

Carpenters make progress with the interior arches in the side aisles

 

Opening for the roof spire at the west narthex

 

 

Holy Cross Marble Statues Being Restored

 Our architect, James McCrery has sent us several photos of our marble statues now in Rugo Studios for cleaning and repair. In order that the missing pieces of fingers look as close as possible as the original statue, they bore cores from the base of the statue from which the fingers and other missing parts are fashioned.