an idea I've been kicking around...

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Not an easy thing … to rate a parish based on a mass.

My church in Allen, TX has several masses: daily, saturday afternoon, several on sunday.

i find that each is different.

the 6pm sunday afternoon mass is called by many the ‘teen mass’ and has much more upbeat live music.

8am Sunday mass has a small choir and a guitar and has an older crowd.

10am Sunday has a big choir and has many families with small children

The 8am Sunday would seem more orthodox, while the teen mass may not.

😉

michel
 
In the last five years, I’ve made several lengthy trips for my company. I’ve been to Parishes that were Catholic in name only, including one with no kneelers and a Priest who made up the Eucharistic Prayer as he went along. I think your idea would provide a great companion site to www.masstimes.org!
 
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Charlemagne:
In the last five years, I’ve made several lengthy trips for my company. I’ve been to Parishes that were Catholic in name only, including one with no kneelers and a Priest who made up the Eucharistic Prayer as he went along. I think your idea would provide a great companion site to www.masstimes.org!
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ACtually, Charlemagne, that’s what gave me the idea to do this. I’ve been burned myself and how.
–Ann
 
Hey, if anybody comes across a site that rates parishes on the other end of the ideological spectrum, please let me know!

I’d love to be able to find parishes that

a) encourage the participation of women
b) don’t use kneelers
c) encourage qualified laypeople to preach
d) welcome the ACLU

just to name a few issues…

Naprous
 
Naprous,

What denomination? There are plenty of protestant communities which offer what you want.
 
Reviewing the masses at different parishes can be useful, I think, although many parishes have a great variety of staff, all which might not be consistent with each other, so you’d have to be careful.

Also, the rules for saying masses are traditionally applied in a pretty flexible manner. Today’s picadilla may be perfectly acceptible tomorrow and vice versa.

I think you would just want to report the facts, allow the people to make up their own minds where to go, and avoid the judgements, as St. A parish might just be a little ahead of the curve, and not truly abusive, whatever that might mean.
 
I think the best way to do it is give every church a 100% rating and allow a way to report liturgical abuse with your survey style questions to avoid ambiguity. I don’t even think you have to get too far into it because there are abuses that are known to be rampant in the US. People know when the laity are giving homilies. Give people login id’s so they can be tracked and do not flag a church as containing an abuse until X number of reports come in from credible users who happen to coincide. Also I would also develop some sort of credibility system and rate the most credible users the highest.

The biggest problem I see with this site would be folks purposefully coming on and lying about parishes just to affect their ratings. There is a staunchly orthodox parish in our diocese that some folks would just love to have the opportunity to smear online. In that case, the one parish you might want to go to in our diocese is the one you might be least likely to visit.

I generally choose a parish on vacation by
  1. indult TLM mass
  2. vocations from the church (if available)
  3. perpetual adoration
I have had some trouble with using 3 on occasion. 1 & 3 are easy to find and sometimes 2 is available through the diocesan or church web sites. I also visit the church web site if there is one (and these days there usually is). You can usually spot heterodoxy fairly quickly there.
 
I think that this will only work if there are a huge number of people participating. One rating on any particular parish would not be very useful. There would need to be a big effort to spread the word, and encourage people accross the country to participate.:twocents:
 
I voted yes because, while I agree that there are all sorts of potential pitfalls in such a system, I recognize that a flawed reporting system is probably better than none at all. If used simply for church-shopping, I don’t think the site would be that helpful. Someone looking for a new home parish can check things out in person (they could even make sure to go to an orthodox service before attending the new “unknown”). The real need is for traveling Catholics who only get one shot. Having recently been burned by an atrociously abusive parish when I had to attend Mass in a nearby city, I know a directory/rating system would have been a huge help.
 
That really sounds like an awesome idea. There could be a simple checklist of yes/no questions so it could be somewhat objective.

Good call!
 
Based on what ? If the Parish follows the Sacramentery (sp?) there will be no abuses. If they do not then there are abuses. How would you judge, by feelings? by music? by preaching? Jesus is truly present in all valid Masses,
 
I think the survey is a brilliant idea, and I don’t agree with most of the detractors here and all of their points can be easily dealt with.
I think it can be done prudently and objectively without a spirit of division, but with a spirit of honor to God.
I especially get annoyed with the reaction that “well, Jesus is present at all the masses”… as an excuse to overlook ‘inovations’, or abuses. :rolleyes:
Good luck Ann -
 
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cmom:
How can you be objective?
It would simply be better to have a checklist and say this happened or this didn’t. Otherwise your opinons will color the outcome.
How would you know its a typical Mass? What if its not your type of music? Maybe they have a visiting priest, maybe they have more than one priest? Maybe the priest was having a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day? 🙂

How many people know the GIRM , Canon law and Redemptionis Sacramentum by heart to know if something is an abuse or an option?

That said, while it sounds good in theory, I think the idea has too many practical problems attached to it.
Any mass where you can recieve Jesus Christ is a good Mass.
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Exactly my thoughts, too!
 
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ridesawhitehors:
I think the survey is a brilliant idea, and I don’t agree with most of the detractors here and all of their points can be easily dealt with.
I think it can be done prudently and objectively without a spirit of division, but with a spirit of honor to God.
I especially get annoyed with the reaction that “well, Jesus is present at all the masses”… as an excuse to overlook ‘inovations’, or abuses. :rolleyes:
Good luck Ann -
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I agree, for the most part, although I don’t necessarily think the idea is ‘brilliant’. 🙂 A GOOD idea for sure! 🙂 It reminds me of a site that I saw that rates other Catholic sites on orthodoxy, I don’t remember the name of that site, however.

The only question I have is who would do the evaluations, and how could we know that their subjective reasoning(and rating) is accurate? :confused:

Just a thought.
 
I voted that this was a good idea.
I also think we should not leave our parish when things go astray but stay in our own parishes and help each other…sometimes even help form our priests…?
I don’t think too many priests in our diocese get too far off the mark… In our parish, I would say we’ve only had one priest who was a little flaky— some people complained to the archbishop about him…and I think the archbishop “discerned” him too… don’t think he has a parish anymore, but does hospital work…
but I do think the people could be more informed about the GIRM and the why and wherefore and deep meaning of the liturgy… maybe this website would also serve as a good education for many of us.
 
I would love to see a site such as this. I would also like to suggest that you have an overall rating for the entire experience. Knowing that a Mass is not filled with abuse does not mean that it will necessarily be the best experience.

I go to a Parish that has wonderful Liturgy. The music is great, our priest is very concerned about following the GIRM. The congregation participates beautifully, in fact we were complimented by the visiting priest that was there last Sunday. I know that there must be many wonderful Masses around, but it seems that many people are having trouble finding them.

I think that if people could know where to go for the best experience in Mass, and began to move to those parishes, maybe it would become more common for Priests to be more diligant in such matters.

I was just on another thread where people were talking about the beauty of the Masses in other Rites, and it saddens me to see this. I have a wonderful experience in the Latin Rite Parish that I belong too.
 
I think that if people could know where to go for the best experience in Mass, and began to move to those parishes
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I don’t think that one in a thousand Catholics would move their household for such a reason. Although it might be a factor for a few, if they were going to move anyhow and were choosing a new residency.

I think objective reports about priests and the masses they say might be useful, but “ratings” just seems like its the general public taking a supervisory role over them.
 
I voted yes with reservations. The problem is that for many Traditionalists, the most orthodox Novus Ordo Liturgys aren’t ever orthodox enough and for many Novus Oradinarians the least orthodox traditional Liturgy is excessively orthodox. Whoever is doing the ratings would have to strike a very delicate balance and not show any favoritism whatsoever for the ratings to be considered valid by all.

Pretty good idea though.
 
As long as it doesn’t get nasty and backbiting, but stays charitable. Even people who dance up the aisles and offer burning grass to a set of pantheistic myths deserve charity, right? Just state the facts. It could prove useful.
 
Anyone can find out exactly what GIRM says and how it’s supposed to be taken seriously by reading it on a link from Adoramus.org. I voted yes, but I’m not sure how a survey could be done to any effect without finding out how strongly diocesan bishops have pushed it to parishes and/or how strongly priests have gottent the word out to the people. The parishioners in the pews are responsible for some of the rubrics; e.g., bowing at the “by the power of the Holy Spirit . . .” in the Creed, bowing to the Host before the priest places it in mouth or hand and also before the Blessed Cup, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion not to approach the altar until the priest has had Communion himself, etc. Our pastor has his job as altar christus down beautifully, but he mentioned what we were to do just once and not too enthusiastically. He’s quite new (little over a year) and a priest only three years. There are some pretty voluble 60-somethings who’ve probably complained about other things (like having meetings at inconvenient times for them, etc.) and he may not want to rock the boat. A lot of others pew warmers probably weren’t paying attention. Well, that sounded uncharitable–sorry! A lot of it is the follower syndrome, I think: if everyone isn’t bowing they’re sure not gonna. GIRM should be required from the bishop and required from the priest, and since VII that’s hard to accomplish because they’re only the authorities, we’re the community, why obey?forums.catholic-questions.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=765448#
😦
 
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