Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: January 29, 2017
Thanks to everyone who participated in this past week’s Parish Pot Luck Supper. Two things we never seem to have trouble with here at the Cathedral are food and fun! Everybody who was there had a great time, and we’re already looking for a date in a few months when we can do it again! Particular thanks have to go out to Joy & Vic Weston who provided the decorations, and to Sheila Juneau and Carla Kennedy of the Parish staff and parishioner Erick Swenson, who took care of setup and making sure we had the “main course.”
For a number of years now the Parish Office has published a calendar of each month’s coming events in our Bulletin. It’s been a useful thing for many, I trust, but on occasion it’s gone “out-of-date” long before the end of the month! Now that we’ve redesigned the Bulletin to become The Carpenter, we’ve also put this calendar on our website. This way it’s available to everyone – and it’s updated often, even daily, as things are added or changed. We urge everyone to view it there, at http://cathedralbr.org/calendar.php. You’ll get more up-to-date information and we’ll have more room here in The Carpenter for you too!
As you can see on p. 6 of The Carpenter this week, we’re continuing to publish here the official Bible readings offered by the Church, and the for mal intentions requested for our Parish Masses. But these are two things which quite likely also will, in time, be moved online.
As you look at those formal intentions, note that always, on Sundays (and holy days of obligation) there is always celebrated one Mass “for the people,” that is, for the parishioners of the Cathedral Parish. This is a legal requirement for which the pastor is responsible: it goes back to the days before priests had salaries, and depended on the monies derived from Mass intentions to live on! Back in those “good ole days” the Church required the priest to provide one Mass “for the people” at no charge, so that the faithful could fulfill their Sunday obligation to worship even if they were too poor to offer anything to the priest!
This custom still survives in Church law. It’s now more of a spiritual obligation. You may be sure that I pray for you a lot more than at just one Mass a week! And priests no longer live off of the small stipends which accompany requested formal intentions – these go into the gen eral Parish funds. But a few things have been lost over the course of time: some Cathedral records note that even in the hard days of reconstruction after the Civil War in addition to about two dollars for Masses the pastor usually got at least one chicken a week! (But he was expected to keep his own vegetable garden just in case times got tough.) I guess I’m happy living in the 21st Century!
Very gratefully yours in Christ,
Father Paul
