Dear Parish Family,

I wonder if it is not providential that just as we recall Pentecost, the moment when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and inaugurated the Church, I find myself proposing a new way for St. Theresa and St. Vincent de Paul to work together in a more unified manner.

At Christmas time this year I noticed how often we continue to plan Masses in the same time slots with the goal of trying to serve each community as though it were a completely independent entity. Besides many Holy Day Masses being at the same time, every weekend we have Masses happening at the same times on both Saturday and Sunday.

I also continue to feel burdened by our Mass schedule. Three years ago, four priests were present to cover the same number of Masses as we continue to offer today on the weekends with only two priests. I did not want to cause a shock when I arrived at the beginning of Partners in the Gospel, and so I left things in place, but I am reaching a point at which I would like to engage more deeply with our community, and I feel like the energy required just to say Masses on the weekends often prevents me from being truly available to people when they come to me with needs or would like me to be present at events.

So after the New Year, I began speaking with our Parish Family Advisory Council and our parish staff about the possibility of changing our Mass schedules in a way that could be less competitive (i.e. not offering Masses at each parish at the same time) while also reducing the burden on the priests, so that we can be more present and available to minister in non-liturgical ways during the weekends.

Our Mass schedule proposal has come out of multiple meetings with the Parish Family Advisory Council (PFAC) and parish staff but was finalized in our PFAC meeting on May 14. Here is the proposal:

St. Vincent

Saturday 5pm

Sunday 8am, 10:30am, and 1pm Spanish



St. Theresa

Saturday 7pm Spanish

Sunday 9:30am and 12noon

Reasoning

One of the major questions we asked was, “How many Masses do we need to accommodate all the people who come to Mass?”. Another way of putting this is, “How much space/seating capacity do we need for all the people who come to Mass?”.

Seating capacity in our churches – per diocesan standard measured at 22 inches per person per pew, plus chairs – at St. Theresa is 427; fire code says we can fit 499 people. At St. Vincent, seating capacity is 770, with fire code permitting 950.

The Archdiocese of Seattle requires parishes to count Mass attendance two months out of the year: May and October. We have those numbers for both parishes from the last several years.

Looking at the highest normal numbers at our two 5pm Saturday Masses, there are sometimes weekends when, if all the people from both Masses came together in the same place, everyone would fit at St. Theresa. But there are also sometimes weekends when, if we combined everyone, they would only fit at St. Vincent. This is a clear opportunity for us to combine efforts in our parish family, and so from the numbers it makes sense to plan for a 5pm Saturday vigil Mass at St. Vincent.

We also wanted to continue to offer a Saturday night vigil for those who cannot get to Mass on Sunday to our Hispanic community. Even on weekends of highest attendance, those numbers are within the range of the St. Theresa seating capacity, and so it made sense to keep the 7pm Saturday Spanish Mass at St. Theresa.

The 1pm Spanish Mass at St. Theresa is a different story, as it regularly gets more than 600 people. This means people sitting in the narthex, in the hall, sometimes even all the way back in the chapel, or outside, instead of being able to be present in the church! Besides the inconvenience, it is potentially a major safety hazard. If we truly want to serve our community, we need to accommodate everyone. As St. Vincent has the space, it makes sense to move the 1pm Spanish Mass to St. Vincent.

But moving that Mass to St. Vincent will cause major problems with parking when we have major celebrations that take longer than normal, such as Palm Sunday or baptisms during Mass. Additionally, staff expressed the desire to have plenty of time between Masses in order to be able to plan classes, especially for OCIA. Since the 11am Mass at St. Vincent is the largest Mass, also regularly getting in the range of 600-700 people or more, we could end up with our largest Mass trying to leave the parking lot at 12:30 or 12:45pm, with our next largest Mass trying to come in at the same time. We would like to avoid that problem, so we propose moving the St. Vincent 11am Mass to 10:30am. The PFAC felt like a half-hour change would not be too disruptive to the current 11am Mass community, so we made this part of the plan.

We used the same logic in looking at the earlier Mass at St. Vincent: a 2.5 hour gap seemed like a good way to avoid parking lot problems as well as leaving time for classes between the Masses. In conjunction with reports that the earlier Mass at St. Vincent was also well attended, we decided to plan for an 8am Mass at St. Vincent.

But if we look at overall attendance numbers in our parish family, two Masses in English at St. Vincent, even though it is the larger church, are clearly insufficient to seat the number of people that come to all the Sunday morning English Masses at both our parishes, at least on weekends of highest attendance (without considering Christmas or Easter, which are their own category). Even more specifically, we clearly need at least two Masses between 9am and 12pm to fit the numbers that have been coming.

9:30am seemed like a reasonable mid-point between 8am and 10:30am for Mass at St. Theresa, and also a midpoint for normal St. Theresa parishioners who have typically attended either the 8:30am or 11am Masses. We then have Masses offered during the 8, 9, and 10 o’clock hours as well.

But there were doubts that one 10:30am Mass would be sufficient for all the people that are accustomed to going to either one of our 11am Masses, especially on weekends of highest attendance.

But if we added another Mass, and kept the 5pm Mass on Sunday, we would still end up with both priests celebrating a minimum of four Masses per weekend, which means it would still be difficult to offer other kinds of ministry.

Recognizing that even 10:30am might seem too early to some (I know there are at least some teenagers out there!), but trying to make a decision between having sufficient space for those accustomed to our morning Masses and maintaining the evening option, the PFAC voted on offering a 12pm Mass at St. Theresa.

No Mass schedule is unchanging; parishes always hit points where the time comes to make adjustments. I hope what you can see is that we tried really hard to meet the needs of parishioners, the needs of our ministries, and the needs of the priests. There is always going to be some tension and difficulty in finding the right balance, but I present this proposal firmly believing that this is a good way forward for us at this time in the parish family of St. Theresa and St. Vincent de Paul.

I am grateful to our Parish Family Advisory Council as well as our staff for all the time and work they put into this proposal.

Feel free to let me know your feelings about it. You can reach me through Roxanne Moynihan – rmoynihan@stvincentparish.org; or if you would like to talk to one of our PFAC or staff members, they will pass on your feedback to me as well.

Ultimately, Mass is not about us, but about the Lord. I hope this new Mass schedule allows us to continue to turn to Him and make Him the center of our lives.

In Christ,

Fr. Dion