About fifteen years ago, maybe even more, I started attending the early Mass on Friday mornings, before my husband had to leave for work, and after Mass I would join the three ladies who dusted the altar and took the week’s linens home to launder. I thought this ministry would be a good one for a mother with a large, young family because I could get there and back before my husband had to leave, so no sitters and another load of laundry didn’t make much difference since I did it almost continuously anyway.
The ladies recruited my because they wanted someone young (I was in my forties) to know the routines and procedures for these chores, altar linens cannot just be tossed in the wash, they must be rinsed and that water must go into the ground, in case they became to ill or infirm to carry on. They were all north of seventy-five and one lady was ninety.
The day has come that I am the old one doing these chores and I am, at the moment, the only one, we are experiencing a volunteer crisis in the parish, in most parishes from what I hear.
During the summer, having taken stock of life and obligations I determined that I could volunteer to be a reader at Mass as well, since they seemed in desperate need. Shortly after I completed the training I was called upon to read at the early Mass on Fridays since the lady who does it had a medical issue. Shortly after that the lady who read on Monday and Tuesday became very ill and I am filling in there as well. The two people who read at the noon Mass are also sick (all but one of these people are elderly) so that Mass has no reader because no one can fill in.
We have an aging population in parishes all around the world and since Covid, even fewer people go to Mass so there are no younger people stepping up to fill those spots.
With that problem arises the problem of donations being down. Your local parish has bills to pay same as you do, the lights have to be turned on, as does the heat or air conditioning. The water bill must be paid, the payroll has to be met each week and general maintenance on the building itself is generally ongoing. This terrible economy has hit your local place of worship as hard as it has hit you and they have fewer resources to fall back on since the main resource, parishioners, have beat feet to soccers fields, sports bars, coffee shops and bottomless brunches.
Here’s the thing, I mostly blame the Bishops.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Thing With Feathers to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.