Late masses & confessions: Why aren't there more?

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Jessica_Ceceila

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Hi. This is my first post. It’s good to be here and I’m hoping for some answers and advice.
I was wondering why more parishes don’t offer late mass on Sunday. I used to live in an area where multiple paishes had late mass on Sunday, at 5, 6, and 7pm. As some one who has a late work schedule all week, I depended on this. These masses were very popular and usually were packed. Full of all age groups, families, single people, etc. Where I live now the latest mass I can find on Sunday is 11:15 am. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
It’s just a sad fact of our society that people work crazy hours and everything is opened 24hours a day. Many of people work 6 days a week, with Sunday being their only day off. It’s their day of rest and worship.
Personally, I used to drift in and out of sleep when I had attended early masses. It’s only natural that faithful people would want to go to mass rested and alert with a renewed mind.
Most parishes have 2 or sometimes 3 masses on Sunday already, but they are usually all in the morning. I don’t know if it’s just the state I live in or if this happens all over the country, but I’m sure that people everywhere want later mass times.
I have written to my new diocese, but haven’t recieved a response yet. I have yet to find a parish home because every Sunday I find myself driving across state lines to go where there are late masses. Which brings me to confession.
Most of the confession times in my diocese are listed in the bulletin as: “Confessions: 2:30pm to 3:15pm on Saturday or by appointment”. Saturdays, and every weekday for that matter, are out of the question for me and my husband and probably a lot of other people. Our only options are to either, make an appointment for a Sunday, (which we never feel comfortable doing) or drive across state lines to the shrine where they offer confessions from 1pm to 4pm on Sunday. We always end up driving to the shrine.
To wrap this up, I just want to know what I can do to help myself and all the other lay people who find themselves in a similar predicament. I do believe the Lord is telling me to advocate for this. If at least one parish in every diocese could have a late Sunday mass and a Sunday option of confession, It would help people like me a great deal. This way no one would have an excuse not to go to mass or confession…in fact I can guarantee confession attendance will go up. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to your advice.
In His hope, Jess
 
I’m totally with you on this! I wish they would have one late Mass on Sundays. Even just once a month would be good. My church only has one Mass at 11:00. I have four kids, ages 11, 4,3, & 2. The 11 year old is my stepdaughter, and she’s at my house every other weekend, and her mother isn’t Catholic and isn’t exactly comfortable with her attend church with me. My husband is not a practicing Catholic (baptized Catholic, but raised Protestant) and works nights. He has no desire to come to Mass with me. He isn’t practicing and he doesn’t get home until between 4 & 5am Sunday mornings. And I CANNOT handle three boys of those ages by myself at church. Especially if I need to go to confession! Who’s going to watch them? My church has no daycare or any facility where I can take them. if they had a later Mass, I could go with my 4 year old and leave the others with my husband. Right now I try to work things out with other family members, but this problem wouldn’t exist if more Masses were available. Guess I should count my blessings that there’s a Mass available at all!
As far as offering advice, I have no idea. Talking to the priest, or maybe getting the parishioners to sign a petition in favor of it may be an option. I’m all ears for anyone offering advice for this situation as well!
 
I went to a really small (not many Catholics) parish once. Mass was only in the morning and confessions were only on a Saturday in a 30 minute window.

I then went to a really big (hugh Catholic population) parish. Mass was on almost every day, confessions were heard for several hours on a Saturday, and there were at least 3 masses on a Sunday.

Do you think that the above scenarios might give you an answer as to why?
 
Well, I’m glad I have your support, Lynne. If I create an online petition, I hope you will sign! There are all sorts of reasons to advocate for late mass. Maybe you could talk to some people in your parish about it too. I plan on talking to some local priests, but my goal is for parishes nationwide to become aware of the need for late mass. <3 Jess
 
I agree with confessions. When visiting Chicago there was a church that actually offered confessions most days of the week for most of the day and even in the evenings too. I realize that this is probably not feasible in small towns with one or two priests. Even so most of the parishes where I live all schedule open confession hours on Saturday afternoons. Perhaps with busy schedules more people could make it to confession more frequently if parishes coordinated and spread out confession times to different days of the week or different hours. Another thing that would be helpful would be if volunteers would provide free or inexpensive babysitting during scheduled confession times. I think that would be very helpful for parents of young children to make it to confession more frequently. I’m not sure I foresee either of these happening but it would be nice.
 
LemonandLime, I would not be raising this issue if every heavy populated area had at least one late mass and a Sunday option for confession. But I have found that at least where I live, there are several heavily populated towns and a few cities that have 0 late masses nor a Sunday option for confession. I am an apologist for the Church. I realize the struggles that parishes and piests go through. But consider the world we currently live in…we cannot just sit by and let business and industry win in taking our sabbath from us. They will not ever ease up on religion. We must carve out opportunities for the light of Christ to get in any crevice we can.
 
Agree with you 1000% percent. I live where there is alot of late Masses however confessions are still only 45 minutes on Sat afternoon. When you have to work every Sat, it makes it really hard. I wish they would have confessions before Sunday Mass. During Lent they had confessions every Wed night in addition to Sat dioceses wide. Our diocese already have the parishes clustered so it would be easy to arrange the schedules by clusters.
 
I found a Domincan church near me that helped bring me back to the church and kept my teens going for a while before college, because of a 5pm mass on Sunday and confessons everyday but Sunday! The late Sunday mass has college students from nearby and other age groups. They have the priests though having a priory next door with at least 5.
Sometimes if a survey or committee can show a late mass might bring in more people, they can do it as a trial.
We have a popular 11 to 12 Saturday confession time but during the week, it’s hard for many to come. When some bulletins say, call for confession" I can see why most wouldn’t, no confidentiality there.
Some priests are just too busy and sitting for an hour when no one comes must seem like a waste of time, but you never know when the lost soul will come.
We have lnes at our confessions, but Domincians tend to be very reverent. : )
 
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