Ideas for unification

bmullins · #1 May 10, '12, 11:38 am

As part of the Evangelization at our local parish we are looking at ways to work on the three aspects of it.

Catechesis and teaching of existing active catholics
Reaching out to members of other faiths, no faith, and spreading the gospel
Reaching fallen away catholics and bringing them back

One of the problems we seem to have and need to work on is in our own catechesis and unity in the Parish. We have what seem to be two very distinct communities that don't necessarily work against each other, but don't seem to be involved either. We have an English speaking community with one priest, and a Spanish community that has a visiting priest who does a mass for them. Recently I realized that during our council meetings to create a new Parish directory we completely neglected to get volunteers to set up tables to register the Spanish families for pictures! It never even came up that we needed to have a table at that mass, but we all remembered the English speaking masses and have them covered.

I find that to be a disturbing problem that while we are one parish, one family, we also seem to not think of each other as a cohesive hole.

My question is this:

What are some ways that we can bring about unity in this way? What are some ideas of projects, goals, etc that we can do to help make both communities not only feel welcomed and active, but to unify them not as a separate Spanish and English group, but as one 'mixed' group of Spanish and English speaking Catholics?

asia53 · #2 May 10, '12, 12:10 pm

Hi bmullins,

Occasionally, I go to a neighboring parish for Mass. They are a duo-parish, English and Spanish speaking.

Once, I spoke to a parishioner about how they deal with being a duo-parish. She told me, they do 3 things:

The weekly bulletin is in English and Spanish.
All parish events advertising posters are in English and Spanish.
They have a committee of 3 parishioners from each group. The committees coordinates all parish events, activities, etc---so no one is left out.

I hope this helps you.

P.S. Noticed your Religion status has changed---Welcome home!

bmullins · #3 May 10, '12, 12:46 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by asia53

P.S. Noticed your Religion status has changed---Welcome home!

Thank you, it's been a long journey for me but it's such a comfort to be here. I am so glad I followed God and came home to the Catholic church!

The three members from each group is something we need to work on. Our Parish council and evangelization sub comittee have no one from the Spainsh community, not even the visiting priest (who may not be able to do so, as he is very busy and works with three different parishes). I'm going to bring that up at our meeting Tuesday. That would definitely be a benefit

George Largess · #4 May 10, '12, 1:10 pm

Greetings and Welcome Home.

My wife and I attend a duo parish (English and Spanish and Portuguese); St. Joseph's is English and Spanish and Holy Ghost is Portuguese/English).

We have basically the same categories as Asia53 mentioned. To evangelize others you may want to check out Orthodox Churches where we can share Vespers on a continuing basis; "Liturgical Protestant Churches" (Anglican and Lutheran) where Vespers or Common Prayer (I forget what it is called but I think it is "Evensong"); all others we can share prayer services. Non-Christian is much more difficult since there is usually no common mode of understanding except perhaps for the Jewish People (Orthodox, Lubavich, Reform, etc.) have some practices common with the Christian Churches. Islam and the Far East not at all. Maybe Fr. Ho Lung in Jamaica could be a good source.

We'll keep you in our prayers and unvoiced Mass Intentions.

George & Lorraine Largess

IX NIKA!