I am very grateful to Dr.
Marsha Long for wanting to collaborate for Our Lady of Fatima, which we had
live on YouTube and you can access on our YT channel now. I’m also grateful for
our musicians who have planned and sang for us week after week now, pretty soon
after public Masses were suspended.
Last Week I mentioned that
perhaps I could relay some information to you from Bishop McElroy in this
communication, but so far I have not received any new communication from him
yet as far as a timeline. All I know is that the scheduled meeting he had with
his council last Friday did take place, and he and Bishop Dolan are meeting
with all of us pastors this week on various days. We have received so far
general guidelines for when we do have public Mass in the future.
So far it sounds like
these general guidelines are what we have gotten used to with facemasks and
social distancing, but each parish will have to make local decisions for the
implementation.
Gorge Vian, our sacristan,
and I measured and calculated how many people we could have in the church if
everyone is 6 feet apart, and we calculated 65 people. This calculation assumes
that every person will need to be 6 feet away from everyone else. I know that
couples and families living together do not need to be separated, and that it
would increase the capacity of people in the church if a family or people in
the same household sit together.
I also read that having
live music will be discouraged (there has been some evidence of droplets being
aerosolized during choirs singing at other churches). Also, holy water fonts
will remain empty, and pews will need to be sanitized, and the restrooms as
well, possibly every two hours.
These procedural
necessities raise a number of questions: How will we coordinate where people
sit? Do we assign pews on a first come first served basis? What will we do if
someone does not bring a facemask? Do we turn that person away? What do we do
if someone starts coughing during Mass and the person does not leave? Do we
stop the liturgy and ask the person to leave? Will we have the technical
capability of having pre-recorded music? Who will wipe the pews after each
Mass? If we have outdoor Mass(es), who will put out the chairs, collect them,
and sanitize them?
I have heard that a number
of you miss very much the Eucharist, so I ask you to please help us with the
sanitation efforts after each Mass, because having Mass will be contingent on
us having the capacity to comply with the norms. These norms are for everyone’s
safety.
Even before the ongoing
COVID19 pandemic, our 5:30 PM Masses on Saturday and Sunday, sometimes would be
this low in attendance, so I would encourage those of you who usually attended
the 7:30 AM and 9:30 AM Masses, to please rotate through our Mass schedule.
This way, our Masses can share more equally the volumes of people. Masses that
had higher attendance can shift some people to the Masses that had fewer people
attending. The ones less crowded had been the evening Masses.
Someone shared with me
that in another parish their plan is using an online reservation system, much
like the ones movie theaters use, when you could reserve a seat ahead of time.
In this system, a household would be able to reserve a pew ahead of time. Given
the number of Masses we have, I imagine that managing such a system would
consume a lot of my time, in organizing the various lists of reservations, but
if one of you is willing to help out in organizing such a system for one or
more Masses, please let me know. Perhaps a first come first served basis would
be easier.
I also want to thank those
of you who have donated your stimulus checks funds to the needs of the parish.
I mentioned to someone that our ACA assessment can be paid by going to the
Diocesan website and selecting our parish - Saint Patrick in San Diego, since
there are two other Saint Patrick parishes in the Diocese. Thank you for your
ongoing support! When we do have Public Mass again, we don’t know when our
collection will resume to pre-covid19 levels and yet, our budgeted expenses
continue, and new ones surface such as the termite problem we have.
I mentioned that three
companies came to do an inspection, and I am moving closer to making a
decision. Thank you to a couple of people who have donated or pledged to donate
in the future toward this cause. Since we are now planning to resume public
Masses, I would like to have this treatment done soon, so that it won’t disrupt
our weekend liturgies. Even though I have been told that the procedure only
lasts three days, my experience has been that delays happen often, and so there
is a significant risk for the tenting and fumigations to cause disruptions if
we wait until resuming public Masses.
Also, thank you to those
of you who have donated food, cash, or gift-cards for the St Patrick Food
Pantry for parishioners in need. We are conducting the operation of shopping
and organizing the food baskets every two weeks thanks to the leadership of Br.
Arturo Renteria, OSA. About 20 families have been served the past two times we
have done it.
God bless, Fr. Carlos, OSA
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