My former parish
I was raised Roman-Catholic, but growing up religion was pretty much only relevant during celebrations like Easter or Christmas. There have been times in my life when I was more and when I was less religious, currently it's the latter. (more details - talking about religion is hard.) My mom, however, started going to mass more often in the past few years.
I really like my home parish, always have. I was a member of the children's choir there, I went to first communion and confirmation there, I'm good friends with the pastoral assistant, and together with LB and SS, or with LB and my mom, we occasionally did the church music. (We wrote our own psalms sometimes!) It has a church as well as a smaller community building fifteen minutes away where mass is only held on Sundays, often by the chaplain. Chaplains change every few years and some are better than others.
Recently the parish (almost weird not to be able to say "we" anymore) got a new chaplain. In his latest sermon he talked about how homosexuals have no place in the church and that abortion violates the sanctity of life. My mom walked out in the middle of his sermon, and I'm pretty proud of her. I don't think she would have done it ten years ago, but now I'm less surprised that I thought I would be. <3
She later contacted the pastoral assistant and was told that apparently her leaving helped others realized how controversial (mildly put) the new chaplain's statements were, so that's nice. Nobody else left, but others I know apparently later tried to discuss the topic with the chaplain, with no success. Mom also got a message from the priest: he said that he didn't know about the extreme views of the new chaplain, definitely doesn't share them and believes it's not church policy either, and will talk to him about it. (The new chaplain studied in Poland and has been a chaplain in Austria since 2007, I'm not optimistic he'll be quick to change his view.)
Apparently our priest is also a member of a workgroup about the integration of LGB people in the church, I didn't know that, nice. I'm happy that I didn't misjudge him: I never really talked about these topics with him, but I always got the impression that he's fairly open and it's nice that I was right in this regard.
LB is now debating if he wants to do church music there again because he says he wants to be able to walk out in case something like this happens again, and as the musician it would be kind of awkward. We used to do music for the past several Christmas masses, but not this year anymore (which was decided before this.) My favorite part about (Christmas) mass was always the music, and we can sing and play at home as well.
In other news, the NY Riveters finally won a game! Against Boston, no less. The EHV Sabres won both their games against Bratislava. The Baby Pens had an amazing 7-6 OT comeback win after being down 1-5. And the Pens... the game footage in the new In the Room is very pretty.
I really like my home parish, always have. I was a member of the children's choir there, I went to first communion and confirmation there, I'm good friends with the pastoral assistant, and together with LB and SS, or with LB and my mom, we occasionally did the church music. (We wrote our own psalms sometimes!) It has a church as well as a smaller community building fifteen minutes away where mass is only held on Sundays, often by the chaplain. Chaplains change every few years and some are better than others.
Recently the parish (almost weird not to be able to say "we" anymore) got a new chaplain. In his latest sermon he talked about how homosexuals have no place in the church and that abortion violates the sanctity of life. My mom walked out in the middle of his sermon, and I'm pretty proud of her. I don't think she would have done it ten years ago, but now I'm less surprised that I thought I would be. <3
She later contacted the pastoral assistant and was told that apparently her leaving helped others realized how controversial (mildly put) the new chaplain's statements were, so that's nice. Nobody else left, but others I know apparently later tried to discuss the topic with the chaplain, with no success. Mom also got a message from the priest: he said that he didn't know about the extreme views of the new chaplain, definitely doesn't share them and believes it's not church policy either, and will talk to him about it. (The new chaplain studied in Poland and has been a chaplain in Austria since 2007, I'm not optimistic he'll be quick to change his view.)
Apparently our priest is also a member of a workgroup about the integration of LGB people in the church, I didn't know that, nice. I'm happy that I didn't misjudge him: I never really talked about these topics with him, but I always got the impression that he's fairly open and it's nice that I was right in this regard.
LB is now debating if he wants to do church music there again because he says he wants to be able to walk out in case something like this happens again, and as the musician it would be kind of awkward. We used to do music for the past several Christmas masses, but not this year anymore (which was decided before this.) My favorite part about (Christmas) mass was always the music, and we can sing and play at home as well.
In other news, the NY Riveters finally won a game! Against Boston, no less. The EHV Sabres won both their games against Bratislava. The Baby Pens had an amazing 7-6 OT comeback win after being down 1-5. And the Pens... the game footage in the new In the Room is very pretty.