I celebrated St. Gregory the Great Church’s 5th Sunday of the Time of the Year at their Vigil. The church was packed, seating about 700 souls. But they also need an overflow space in their social hall where the Mass is live-streamed to the hall. A deacon there distributes Holy Communion at the same time as Communion is distributed in the church—the social hall is a glorified “Communion Service” and I am not sure how kosher it is, but alas.
4 comments:
I want to rearrange all that wrought iron whenever I see this church, which I do like.
Father, your situation reminds me of a parish nearby where i am here in Indonesia. So this particular parish has had a hard time in erecting a proper Church building due to the law surrounding the building of a new Church here. To workaround these limitations, this parish built a multipurpose hall to serve as the place where they celebrate Mass. So this multipurpose hall is made to be 4 stories high with the main hall where most of the seating is located and where a curtain might be used to cover the Sanctuary when the hall is not used for Mass while in the stories below there are rooms where the overflow crowd would be livestreamed the Mass and have the priest / EM's distribute communion. Sadly this is not an altogether uncommon thing especially in older churches where there is no longer any space to expand or new parishes which is having a hard time to build a Church.
The Church was meant to be a temporary building as when it was built 15 years ago, everyone knew Bluffton was about to explode in growth with retirement communities. And it has. The building needs help, but they need a new church building and additional parishes in the area. This things are on hold. What drives me to distraction are the distracting microphones. There are ways to be more discreet with these. I am shocked another solution hasn’t been chosen. They can afford it!
My first comment was for ByzRus. This one for Avid in Indonesia. The parish has plans for a new and much larger church building. But there is also a need for another parish about 10 miles up the road. This area of South Carolina is booming. Currently St. Gregory has about 7,000 registered household, but these are empty-nesters and older retired people, although there are young families and there is an elementary school and high school connected to the parish.
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