A reader sent me this link from two parishes back east. What do you think?
To obtain a pew card is quite easy: simply visit the Parish Office during office hours, or call either office and and leave a message with your name and address, or email your request to [email address]. These cards are available only for those who attend Mass regularly or frequently in [either of our two parishes.]
Missalettes are available in the pews and recommended for following along with the readings and the Eucharistic Prayer. But apparently, parish beancounters have discovered what I’ve discovered. We ordered 650 pew cards. We have 549 hymnals in our bookcarts. When we surveyed after the first two weekends of implementation, we were twenty-two short of the one-card/one-book plan.
So these parishes have decided to make people responsible for their own aids.
19 December 2011 at 9:19 pm
The Archdiocese of Boston provided stacks of laminated 2-sided pew cards to parishes.
19 December 2011 at 10:52 pm
I’m looking forward with anticipation that Santa will bring me a new hand missal this Christmas!
19 December 2011 at 11:29 pm
I wonder if they have it on Kindle …
20 December 2011 at 8:59 am
Here are the RCAB pew cards:
http://www.pilotprinting.net/order-form-for-pew-cards/
20 December 2011 at 10:40 pm
I thought I was being overly cautious in buying one Mass card for each registered family, which is to say about 3,000. One weekend we stuffed the bulletins (we print about 1,200 bulletins on a typical weekend, which leaves a few extras for the weekday Masses) and encouraged everybody to practice at home. The bulletins were gone with one Mass to go. So the following weekend each family at that Mass received one. So I had about 1,200 to go and ordered another 1,000. They have been slowly disappearing with time, so now there are probably about 300 cards remaining for a 700 seat church.
Of course, at this weekend’s Mass I heard very few mistakes other than a few at the “right and just,” and the “roof,” so the modest expense has been well worth it.
22 December 2011 at 6:33 pm
” To obtain a pew card is quite easy: simply visit the Parish Office during office hours, or call either office and and leave a message with your name and address, or email your request to [email address]. These cards are available ** only for those who attend Mass regularly or frequently ** (emphasis mine) in [either of our two parishes.] ”
So much for the possibility of using these cards as an (gasp!) evangelization tool. So Catholic: we’re here. It’s up to YOU to come to us.
Mail the darned things you to every name on the parish mailing lists with an invitation to come back.
There are times that Catholics don’t exhibit the brains and common sense that God gave a goose.
25 December 2011 at 8:34 am
Amen, Jimmy Mac. And making these available “only for those who attend Mass regularly or frequently” just astounds me, especially in the season of Advent when many, many Catholics are coming home.
How sad that those drawn back to the church will find the language of the Mass changed and no way to follow along and participate.