CRHP Weekend Cancelled

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Faith1960

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I just found out tonight that my CRHP weekend has been postponed because there weren’t enough women who signed up.
😦 They needed at least ten women to sign up but only seven of us did. They’re planning to have our group do the spring CRHP early next year and hopefully we’ll have a larger group. A friend of mine who was on a previous team and who was scheduled to make our breakfast said that she doesn’t think this has happened before.
We’re wondering if this was just a particularly busy weekend for a lot of people or if the majority of women in our parish who wanted to do CHRP have already done it and we just don’t have enough new parishioners interested? Has anyone experienced a retreat weekend or some other activity through their parish that had to be postponed or cancelled due to a lack of participants? I’m disappointed but feel more disappointed for the team that had been planning this.
 
Faith1960 said:
I just found out tonight that my CRHP weekend has been postponed because there weren’t enough women who signed up.
😦 They needed at least ten women to sign up but only seven of us did. They’re planning to have our group do the spring CRHP early next year and hopefully we’ll have a larger group. A friend of mine who was on a previous team and who was scheduled to make our breakfast said that she doesn’t think this has happened before.
We’re wondering if this was just a particularly busy weekend for a lot of people or if the majority of women in our parish who wanted to do CHRP have already done it and we just don’t have enough new parishioners interested? Has anyone experienced a retreat weekend or some other activity through their parish that had to be postponed or cancelled due to a lack of participants? I’m disappointed but feel more disappointed for the team that had been planning this.
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My father signed up for a CRHP weekend that was postponed for the same reason and it was a first for our parish. Six months later he attended the next Men’s weekend which had more than enough interest.
 
Danya said:
My father signed up for a CRHP weekend that was postponed for the same reason and it was a first for our parish. Six months later he attended the next Men’s weekend which had more than enough interest.
Click to expand...
I hope ours does too. I feel really bad for the team who were putting it on. When I spoke to one of the women tonight, she said they’d been working hard, planning it and she sounded pretty disappointed.
 
Christ Renews His Parish is very much like a Cursillo retreat. It is a great experience. Its emphasis is on prayer (esp. with scripture), renewal and a closer relationship to Christ.

It doesn’t really do much catechesis or personal spiritual direction. I found it was a wonderful step in my journey. Most of my team members went on to do more formation on their own or with different ministries.

Our parish just had the last two teams do a year’s formation versus six months because the continuation Committee (a support team made up of former participants) wasn’t very helpful (read: a mess). But they are giving retreats this weekend. God bless them.
 
leonie said:
Christ Renews His Parish is very much like a Cursillo retreat. It is a great experience. Its emphasis is on prayer (esp. with scripture), renewal and a closer relationship to Christ.

It doesn’t really do much catechesis or personal spiritual direction. I found it was a wonderful step in my journey. Most of my team members went on to do more formation on their own or with different ministries.

Our parish just had the last two teams do a year’s formation versus six months because the continuation Committee (a support team made up of former participants) wasn’t very helpful (read: a mess). But they are giving retreats this weekend. God bless them.
Click to expand...
I was really looking forward to it and as you said, I was told by many people that it was a good step in my faith journey. It’s also supposed to be an excellent way to meet and bond with fellow parishioners.
 
The OP asked about “any other” parish activity that was cancelled.

I don’t mean to be a thread-buster, but you asked…

Yes, the parish activity cancelled was Bible study. First, the pastor dismissed my request for Bible study five years ago. He said nobody was interested.

This, in fact, was contradicted by the DRE in the parish who said people were interested.

I wrote him more than 100 letters (which I found out, have ended up in the ‘crazy’ file in the diocesan office) about his stubbornness about not having Bible study.

In contrast, he’s nuts about the charismatic stuff. He wrote an essay in the bulletin that when someone near him was speaking in tongues, that he said it “sounded like” scripture.

I wrote him, of course, that the charismatic meetings which “sounded like” scripture could be actually surpassed by Bible study, where you actually read scripture. There was no response from this priest.

In other issues of the bulletin more recently, he wrote two essays about starting scripture study. Get this. He was impressed about how a woman in some parish a thousand miles away wanted a Bible study, and pulled one together.

He was mocking me and the DRE, of course. Somehow, he got inspired by reading about this in a magazine, ignoring the people in his own parish who wanted it.

What’s more, our diocese has a ten-year goal (a real slow boat here) to get adult formation out in the parishes, and guess what?, it includes Bible study. So here’s the picture, the priest, as usual, is collecting money for the Catholic Services Appeal, which funds the diocesan effort for Bible study, but, at the same time, he is obstructing the same in his own parish.

In our diocese, there are a majority of women running the religious formation. I suspect that there was gender bias in the priest declining my offer to organize the Bible study.

Further, he did not tell me about the diocesan effort or encourage me in any way towards that, or even suggest that I enroll in the local master’s ministry program as a prerequisite for organizing the Bible study. Nothing, nada.

As I started to say, the priest seemed to relent and wanted to start up a lectionary-based scripture study conducted by the DRE, but this has died on the vine very quickly, for reasons unknown to me. Not the least reason for which, I’m sure, is that the priest has not promoted the concept of Bible study, which I feel is relevent for all people of all ages.

(Part of his reluctance, I"m certain, is his attitude of skepticism towards the Bible that was instilled in him during his seminary years. He says he “learned” that the opening chapters of Genesis, for example, are myths, just like the myths of Santa Claus [his words], notwithstanding that the Catechism of the CC says something different.)

The activities which the priest does promote are: fund-raising dinners, fund-raising casino bus trips, fund-raising card tournaments, and fund-raising craft shows in the gym.

When he announced the year-long activities for the parish’s 100 year anniversary, they were all pot-luck dinners. There was nothing special of a spiritual-orientation. I complained to him and to the Bishop, and, a week-long parish mission was announced and subsequently conducted before the anniversary date.

I don’t know if this helps in the context of the retreat that was discussed in the OP. Don’t hold back. Am I crazy, like they say?
 
Crumpy said:
The OP asked about “any other” parish activity that was cancelled.

I don’t mean to be a thread-buster, but you asked…

Yes, the parish activity cancelled was Bible study. First, the pastor dismissed my request for Bible study five years ago. He said nobody was interested.

This, in fact, was contradicted by the DRE in the parish who said people were interested.

I wrote him more than 100 letters (which I found out, have ended up in the ‘crazy’ file in the diocesan office) about his stubbornness about not having Bible study.

In contrast, he’s nuts about the charismatic stuff. He wrote an essay in the bulletin that when someone near him was speaking in tongues, that he said it “sounded like” scripture.

I wrote him, of course, that the charismatic meetings which “sounded like” scripture could be actually surpassed by Bible study, where you actually read scripture. There was no response from this priest.

In other issues of the bulletin more recently, he wrote two essays about starting scripture study. Get this. He was impressed about how a woman in some parish a thousand miles away wanted a Bible study, and pulled one together.

He was mocking me and the DRE, of course. Somehow, he got inspired by reading about this in a magazine, ignoring the people in his own parish who wanted it.

What’s more, our diocese has a ten-year goal (a real slow boat here) to get adult formation out in the parishes, and guess what?, it includes Bible study. So here’s the picture, the priest, as usual, is collecting money for the Catholic Services Appeal, which funds the diocesan effort for Bible study, but, at the same time, he is obstructing the same in his own parish.

In our diocese, there are a majority of women running the religious formation. I suspect that there was gender bias in the priest declining my offer to organize the Bible study.

Further, he did not tell me about the diocesan effort or encourage me in any way towards that, or even suggest that I enroll in the local master’s ministry program as a prerequisite for organizing the Bible study. Nothing, nada.

As I started to say, the priest seemed to relent and wanted to start up a lectionary-based scripture study conducted by the DRE, but this has died on the vine very quickly, for reasons unknown to me. Not the least reason for which, I’m sure, is that the priest has not promoted the concept of Bible study, which I feel is relevent for all people of all ages.

(Part of his reluctance, I"m certain, is his attitude of skepticism towards the Bible that was instilled in him during his seminary years. He says he “learned” that the opening chapters of Genesis, for example, are myths, just like the myths of Santa Claus [his words], notwithstanding that the Catechism of the CC says something different.)

The activities which the priest does promote are: fund-raising dinners, fund-raising casino bus trips, fund-raising card tournaments, and fund-raising craft shows in the gym.

When he announced the year-long activities for the parish’s 100 year anniversary, they were all pot-luck dinners. There was nothing special of a spiritual-orientation. I complained to him and to the Bishop, and, a week-long parish mission was announced and subsequently conducted before the anniversary date.

I don’t know if this helps in the context of the retreat that was discussed in the OP. Don’t hold back. Am I crazy, like they say?
Click to expand...
I don’t “know” you well enough to determine if you’re crazy or not 😃 but I can say that I’d be exasperated with your priest if he was my priest. The head pastor in my parish can be very blunt and I feel intimidated by him but one thing I can say is that we have so many things to become involved in, spiritual activities as well as non-spiritual activities that foster a friendly parish community.
 
Faith1960 said:
I just found out tonight that my CRHP weekend has been postponed because there weren’t enough women who signed up.
😦 They needed at least ten women to sign up but only seven of us did. They’re planning to have our group do the spring CRHP early next year and hopefully we’ll have a larger group. A friend of mine who was on a previous team and who was scheduled to make our breakfast said that she doesn’t think this has happened before.
We’re wondering if this was just a particularly busy weekend for a lot of people or if the majority of women in our parish who wanted to do CHRP have already done it and we just don’t have enough new parishioners interested? Has anyone experienced a retreat weekend or some other activity through their parish that had to be postponed or cancelled due to a lack of participants? I’m disappointed but feel more disappointed for the team that had been planning this.
Click to expand...
We had a city wide confernece cancled last summer. It was going to be super with great speakers but they could not get enough people to cover the costs.:crying:
 
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