Deacon Ward's Essentials and Expressions 8/21/20
St. James the Greater
Mater Dei Parish
St. Mary Star of the Sea / St. James the Greater /
St. Benedict Labre
St. Edward the Confessor
Coming Soon! Fall of 2020
Why do Catholics do that?
· Are you interests in learning more about your faith
or about the Catholic Church?
· Perhaps you have been thinking about becoming a
Catholic, (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), or maybe you are just
curious about what Catholics believe.
· Do you wish to be baptized, receive First Communion
or be confirmed?
If you, or
someone you know, are thinking about becoming a Catholic, we encourage and
cordially invite you to check out the formal welcoming process into the
Catholic Church.
Most importantly,
all are invited to learn and live the richness of our Catholic faith!
For more information, please call Deacon
Ward Nolan at 1-802-624-4964
Email: nekdeacon@gmail.com
before our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ....Starting at 7:00 PM!
Today, let us pray for those souls of our parish who have recently died, and for their grieving families:
Benjamin Lapan-Farina
May God gather him into His Loving arms.
John Burger August 18, 2020
Pew Research Center finds Americans generally satisfied with internet worship, but look forward to returning to in-person services.
Americans are largely satisfied with the virtual worship experiences they have been having since the coronavirus forced houses of worship to close, but very few will continue using the internet to attend services once the health crisis passes.
That is the
finding of the Pew Research Center,
which also said that a third of U.S. adults have watched religious
services online or on television in the past month.
“Whatever the
reasons, lots of people like virtual worship,” said Pew, announcing the results
of a survey conducted in mid-July. “Nine out of 10 Americans who have
watched services online or on TV in the past month say they are either ‘very’
satisfied (54%) or ‘somewhat’ satisfied (37%) with the experience;
just 8% say they are ‘not too’ or ‘not at all’ satisfied.”
Like other houses
of worship, Catholic churches continue to grapple with meeting the spiritual
needs of parishioners at a time when social distancing and masks are expected
or required in public. While many are happy to be able to return to
church after public Masses were suspended for some time, some are wary and
continue to stay home, viewing Mass online or keeping the Lord’s Day
in some other way, such as private or family prayer or Scripture reading.
At least one
diocese, though, has reversed its suspension of the rule that all Catholics
must attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.
Alan Cooperman,
director of religion research at Pew, in reporting the findings of the latest
survey, asked if Americans will have lost the habit of going in person to
a church, synagogue, temple or mosque.
“Some
commentators have suggested that just as the pandemic has accelerated the trend
toward shopping online and made Americans reliant on the internet for work,
school, health and entertainment, so might many, if not all, varieties of
religious experience move online in the 21st century,” Cooperman commented.
“But that’s not what the people who’ve been worshiping online see in their
future. On the contrary, most U.S. adults overall say that when the
pandemic is over, they expect to go back to attending religious services in
person as often as they did before the coronavirus outbreak.”
Cooperman
clarified that 43% of Americans didn’t attend religious services in person
before the pandemic struck anyway, and don’t plan to start going to a house of
worship when it’s all over. “But 42% of U.S. adults say they plan to resume
going to religious services about as often as they did before the
outbreak, while 10% say they will go more often than
they used to, and just 5% anticipate going less often,” he said.
Similarly, a
lot of Americans are not interested in virtual services: Two-thirds of U.S.
adults say they have not watched religious services online or on TV in the past
month. But of the one-third of U.S. adults who recently watched services online
or on TV, relatively few (19% of this group, or 6% of all adults) say that once
the pandemic is over, they intend to watch religious services more often than
they did before it started.
Most online
worshipers say that after COVID-19 has passed, they plan to revert to their
pre-pandemic habits (18% of all adults) or watch online less often
than they did before the outbreak (9%).
Of respondents
who told Pew in a 2019 survey that they went to services at least once or twice
a month, 92% expect that when the pandemic is over, they will attend in-person
services at least as often as they did in the past. This includes 10% who say
they will also watch online or on TV more than in the past.
“Of course, it
is impossible to predict how behavior will actually change after the pandemic,
particularly if it extends further into the future than people expect,” Cooperman
concluded. “But, at the moment at least, very few U.S. adults anticipate
substituting virtual participation for physical attendance at their church or
other house of worship: Just 2% of the pre-pandemic regular attenders think
that in the long run they will watch services online or on TV more often – and
attend in person less often – than they used to.”
Food Shelf Needs For This Week:
Cans of Meat and Cans of Fruit
<<<<<<<>>>>>>>
Thanks to all for your generosity!
In His Peace.
Deacon Ward
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