[aidenn0]

> viewing a lot of parish websites to check for Mass times

How was your luck with that? I often find the website is terribly out-of-date in general, and if the times have changed since the last update...

Sometimes the website links to recent bulletins, which are almost never wrong. If there isn't then I call the office to check; most parish offices have a list of Mass times in their voice-mail message.

[dhosek]

Generally good. The one case where it failed was for a Spanish Mass in a neighborhood targeted by ICE where the Mass began about half an hour after what the website said. Out of nearly 400 parishes in the archdiocese, only one parish¹ completely lacked a website and one’s online presence was a Facebook page which showed no updates for nearly two years. For added confusion, there is a pair of parishes which share a single website and the clergy preside at Masses at any of the three (formerly four) worship sites.³

I was (the project concludes on Friday) visiting churches on their patronal feasts⁴ and whenever bulletins were available, I would check them to see if there was any deviation from their published schedule because of the patronal feast. Life frequently intervened to make me miss a number of Masses that I would otherwise have attended, not to mention that a number of parishes didn’t have any Mass at all on their patronal feasts, but it’s still ended up being a lot of church visits.

⸻

1. The Renew My Church reorganization of the diocese has resulted in the number of parishes being less than the number of actual churches with a significant number of parishes having two or more worship sites. Some parishes have a new name for the combined entity with the individual churches retaining their name (e.g., Queen of Apostles Parish has two churches: Queen of Angels and St Matthias) while others just name themselves with the two constituent churches (e.g., St Luke/St Bernardine).²

2. One such parish near me had a previously consolidated parish, St Catherine/St Lucy (which only had a single church after consolidation) and became St Catherine/St Lucy and St Giles) until operations costs led to the closing of the St Catherine/St Lucy church building (the school remains open) and while the parish retains the long name, I don’t think anyone other than official documents calls it anything other than St Giles.

3. That being the St Catherine/St Lucy and St Giles of the previous footnote and the other parish in Oak Park, Ascension and St Edmund.

4. https://www.dahosek.com/category/catholic-nerd-pilgrimage/