We’ve been fairly fortunate since our church fire to have consistent worship in one place on Sundays. Today, however, was the only exile weekend (late September to mid-April) in which our usual venue, the Iowa State Center’s Benton Auditorium, was booked. So we decided to do as much as humanly possible to promote the change. We were able to score the large hall in the student union across the street from our building. Worshipers were able (as they have been for the past three months) to leave their cars in our new parking structure, and walk across the street for Mass. The Knights also picked this weekend to welcome people back (temporarily) to Campustown with a pancake breakfast.

But as we hoped wouldn’t happen, not everybody got the message. It was on Facebook–all the parish Facebook pages. It was tweeted. It was on the banner all week at the parish web page. It was communicated in “traditional” ways–the post-Communion announcement and the print bulletin.

One of our more active students posted to Facebook:

This was not published very well …

I admit feeling a bit stung by that.

It’s a good thing modern Catholics, God bless them, don’t live in a catacomb-to-catacomb Sunday existence anymore. But they do have expectations of … what’s that monastic virtue? … stability.

It is a good thing to have a known, comfortable, and expected place to which to go to worship. Seven more weekends. Can’t come soon enough.

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