I’m sorry I was so long winded in my article last week. They were hardly A “Few” Simple Words. I guess I wanted everyone to know that the life of the parish was continuing, not only with our capital improvement projects, but also more importantly with our pastoral life. This last month has certainly been a challenge, but we can’t just curl up in a ball; and I shared so much of what was going on because I wanted you to see just that.
The Awareness Meetings
When you read this, our two parish awareness meetings will have already taken place. As I write this they have not. I hope and pray that they will go or went well. We really spent a lot of time preparing them. The purpose of these meetings was threefold:
1. The Response Team and I wanted share with the registered members of our parish any information we could regarding Fr. Michael and his situation.
2. We wanted to have a forum where we could answer the questions posed to us in conversations & emails, by our parishioners.
3. We wanted to make sure that everyone knows all of the safeguards we have in place to keep our children safe.
Throughout this ordeal, we have always tried to be as open and transparent as possible, while respecting the law and Fr. Michael’s right to privacy.
Summer Camp
Our first Summer Camp will be ending this week. In my opinion things went really well. The children who participated seemed happy. The camp provided some very heroic High School volunteers with a very positive experience. There has been lots of noise and excitement these last several weeks on our parish campus. I want to thank everyone involved, especially Mrs. Julie Scalora and her family for their hard work. I don’t know where you found the energy and stamina to run such a good program.
Religious Education and Registration Nights
For the last several months we have been having Parish Registration Nights for people wishing to join our parish. I believe the experience has been very positive for everyone. With the registration nights, we are really able to help people get acquainted with St. Paul Church, our prayer life and our parish organizations and events. Several people have requested to register for Religious Education but could not or did not want to attend our Registration Nights. As you know our Religious Education is one of the biggest in the state and is only open to St. Paul Parishioners. If a family could not attend the August registration night because of other plans, we have come up with this compromise. We have decided to allow families to register for Religious Education for their children without attending a parish registration night. However, no child will be able to attend class if their family is not registered. So it will be very important for every new family who is not registered to attend the September 12th Parish Registration Night to get registered.
Fr. Raymond will be back on Monday and Fr. Noel, a New Britain native, will be joining us for the rest of the month to help us out.