The Armchair Liturgist: Who Welcomes Whom

I don’t travel much on weekends, but occasionally I find myself in a church where some announcer (lector, songleader, or priest) welcomes me. I appreciate the thought. Even in the rare non-Catholic service I might attend, I strive to make myself at home: singing the songs, responding vocally when prompted, closing my eyes and praying when I can.

For my current parish, I’ve given our songleader a brief script in which the welcome’s emphasis is placed on visitors and newcomers. Earlier this summer, one of my people did a little improv and welcomed “everybody.”

Now, my wife disagrees with my hrrumph and says that it is nice to welcome everybody. On the other hand, I lean to the notion that if parishioners have any kind of ownership, this welcome is misplaced.

Sit in the purple chair and play Solomon between nice and grumpy. Welcome parishioners? Guests and noobs only? Or word it somewhat differently to make nice before Mass begins?

About catholicsensibility

Todd lives in Minnesota, serving a Catholic parish as a lay minister.
This entry was posted in The Armchair Liturgist. Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to The Armchair Liturgist: Who Welcomes Whom

  1. Liam says:

    For Catholics who attend Mass weekly, I suspect the scripts – however worded – are background noise.

    Another approach I’ve seen is for the celebrant to thank visitors and regulars, as it were, in brief remarks during the concluding rites.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s