Wednesday, July 27, 2016

What is Wrong With This Picture?


The new chapel at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Saint Paul, Minn.

No Mass is offered in the chapel.  And no Mass is offered on a Sunday.  Has Mass ever been celebrated here?

There is not even a daily service.   

Sunday is an "ecumenical" service (not sure what that means).  Two days a week there is a "Catholic" Communion service.  

This is a far cry from the good old days when the upstairs chapel of St. Joseph's Hospital was packed every day for prayer and penance, Baptisms and Masses.  My grandma even said they wheeled her in from the maternity ward in the 1940s after she had her babies in the to pray with the nuns and others.

The CSJ nuns ran a tight ship, until they went bonkers.  May the dead nuns who gave their lives to this institution over many decades pray it will make a return to its Catholic roots and heritage.    

2 comments:

  1. Truly sad. I know there is a priest shortage and the weekly Communion Services may be the best option available....but surely the priest could commit to ONE MASS per week.
    Drop a Mass at the parish church if necessary and celebrate that day in the hospital.
    Have a communion service in the parish church. As for Sunday....come now.....can't a Rota be made up of surrounding parishes and a priest have Mass on Sunday a month. And just for the care of souls can the priest at Assumption just bite it and have an afternoon Mass at the hospital?
    Care of souls.
    And God bless the CSJ sisters from years past. And may the sisters today find their way. And God bless the work they do still.
    And the chapel looks cold, uninviting and rather ugly.

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  2. No flowers on the altar and wrong time on the Jesus clock. That's my guess.

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