Call the Police and/or Ring the Parish Center/Friary Door Bell
We are fortunate enough to be able to leave our church doors open all day. I am always edified by the number of people who stop in church for a moment to say a prayer. Last week something disturbing happened. When some of our Senior Citizens were praying the Rosary a “gentleman” who said he was from North Carolina came in and requested money from them. When they were reticent to give him any he became angry and belligerent. Then he rang the doorbell of the Friary and harassed Fr. Raymond, then he went to Parish Center, and finally I just happened to come home when he was yelling at Jeff Batter in the parking lot. With each of these encounters his story changed. By the time he came to me he was very angry and showed it when I asked him to leave the property. Please understand, it is not our practice to hand out money to strangers at the friary or the Parish Center. We are willing to talk with people and direct them to the appropriate resources. We have also on occasion given people something to eat when we had something to give. We want people to feel comfortable and safe in Church and so do the police. If you are in church and anything like this happens again, please call the police first and then make sure to let us know.
The Pastoral Council
Last Monday our Pastoral Council met in the Church Hall. All but two members were present.
1)I gave the members of the Pastoral Council a run down on each of our ministries, including numbers involved and how active each group is. The Pastoral Council was very impressed with the work of the Family Life Committee and wanted to make sure we highlighted the great work of this new ministry group.
2)I also presented the Pastoral Council with an overview of our finances and the status of the Youth Minister Search.
3)We spent some time discussing how things were going with our Religious Education Program and what we learned from the Pre and Post tests this year.
4) The Pastoral Council was very interested in our project list for this year. Projects we are planning for include our Gym Roof, the replacement of the doors on the Parish Center after an attempted break in, the upgrading of our parish computer network, internet filtering and the replacement of our parish server which crashed last year. Finally we spoke about some Asbestos Abatement in the school.
5) Toward the end of the meeting we had a rather long discussion on our parking situation and its consequences for the pastoral life of our parish. I also brought them up to speed on the work of our Parking Committee.
The Pastoral Council meeting was just under 2 hours long, but I felt that it was very important to make sure that the Pastoral Council members were in the loop on both our Pastoral and Physical Plant concerns facing our parish.
A Special Polish Night Thank You
I want to make sure that we thank the Polish Supper team for their great work. The other day I was going over for Mass and the wonderful smell of golombki certainly caught my attention. Let me tell you, it’s hard to concentrate on your pre-Mass prayers when the aroma of great Polish cooking is in the air. As always, the Polish Supper was a great success. Everyone had a wonderful time. Some of our younger women helped prepare the food this year and were grateful for the chance to learn from the polish cooking veterans. I assure you will agree that events like this are so important, because they give the members of our parish a chance to get to know each other. Thanks again Barbara Rival and everyone who worked so hard to make our Polish Supper a mouth watering reality.
God Bless!
Fr. Robert