What is your parish doing to help the community during COVID-19?

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CurtisHouse

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My Diocese like so many others across the nation (and the world) have suspended all Church activities. I am still a new convert. I used to be a member of the church of Christ. I converted and was confirmed back on Sept 21, 2019. I was just looking at their website and they are looking for volunteers to help those that are most vulnerable to the coronavirus and are still having their worship service every week. Is your parish doing anything to help those in need at this time? If so, what are they doing? Would love to hear about it. God bless and stay safe.
 
Not to knock the CoC, but if that Church is anything like the ones I attended growing up, it probably has 30 members with only one worship service on Sunday morning/evening. But it’s not surprising at all that they are volunteering to help. You’d be hard pressed to find a better set of Christians and I suspect I’ve meet some saints in my youth.

Yes, my parish is volunteering to help others in need. We have a coordinator who is matching up requests for assistance with members offering support. Monsignor is also live streaming his private Mass every morning and confessions are still available at the same time as before. The Church is also open for prayer and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
 
The one I used to attend has hundreds of members. It’s one of the biggest churches of Christ in California, if not the nation. They have the morning service and evening as well and the obligatory Wednesday night Bible Study. Could never find that in the Bible though haha

I have a lot of respect for the church of Christ though. They helped me along in my journey bringing me home. The people probably don’t think much of me now though but they’ve always been nice to me. They’ve always been good about reaching out to help others too. They still give out food to the less fortunate the first Saturday of every month I think and volunteer in the poorer areas of town. They’re so close to the Fullness of Truth. It was just a hop, skip and jump for me to come home to the Catholic Church.

That’s fantastic about your parish. Our chapel is open right now so at least I can go in there and pray for a short time. I need to find out what they’re doing to help and get more involved. With work being suspended starting on Monday, I am going to have a lot more time on my hands and, thank God!, both me and my wife will be getting paid leave.
 
First of all, the parishes I attend are huge and there are a lot of members who are still working “essential jobs” as designated by the state, such as police/ fire, EMT, medical personnel, various manufacturing, takeout food, grocery store staff etc. These people are getting swamped with work on their regular jobs in which they are helping the community, so they’re not going to be able to do extra volunteer stuff.

Second, the parishes I attend have regular social service ministries to the poor that they are carrying on to the extent they can do so under the state requirements. For example, the day care obviously had to close because mandated by the state, but probably some of the other stuff like the food distribution to the poor and the delivery of the meals to the homebound seniors can and will still go on, with appropriate precautions so as not to spread the virus. Obviously if a senior citizen is depending on someone bringing food for them to eat, that can’t just stop, the person will not have food.

Third, since the restriction on Masses just happened on Wednesday at noon which is less than 2 days ago, the churches are still working out what more they can do to help in some cases - probably checking on elderly and homebound will be a big part of that.

Fourth, the churches are still open for private prayer, some are having Adoration, etc. so even though the Masses are suspended, there’s still opportunities for worship activity.
 
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CurtisHouse said:
They’re so close to the Fullness of Truth. It was just a hop, skip and jump for me to come home to the Catholic Church.
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Not to derail your thread but this is so true. Coming from a Church so based on the Bible, it wasn’t hard to come home to the Church that the Bible was based on.
 
I belong to a rural parish with four worship sites and one priest. All Masses have been cancelled through Easter, but our Outreach programs are still ongoing. Our foodbank is open to the community twice a week, as usual, and we have a good supply of paper products available…deliveries are still available for those without means of transportation. We host a community meal once a month [tomorrow]…since the size of the gathering is prohibitive, we’ll be providing free carryout meals.
 
Charities have not been suspended in my diocese, so there’s that, but they would be doing that even if there wasn’t a disease outbreak.
 
We have volunteers who will do shopping for anyone who needs it. We are a small rural parish so we are mostly looking after the elderly members of our parish.

Several of the volunteering that we already participate in or closed such as manning the thrift shop.
 
Although all public Masses and Sacraments are cancelled, our Parish Church is open weekdays from 6 am to 6 pm for private prayer and you can donate food during those hours. If you need food and other material or spiritual assistance, you are advised to call the Parish office.

The Parish website lists internet resources for streaming live Masses and other sites for prayer.

Our Diocese prepared a written Sunday Liturgy of the Word for this Sunday, adapted from Sunday Celebrations in Absence of a Priest, which can be prayed at home, alone or with a small group:

https://christourlight.net/home/mul...4-sunday-march-21-22-liturgy-of-the-word/file
 
The Church office is open and doing even more work that normal.

The Parish has Adoration from 10 am till noon on weekdays, with Confession and Anointing.

Adoration from 2:20 til 4 on Saturday, and from 8 AM til 4 pm on Sunday. Confession and Anointing available by appointment anytime.

That many more times to open, close, set up, clean the Church is a task.

What we have seen is a decline to almost none of people coming to the door asking for money, calling asking for money.

We are also doing far more social media than ever before.

ETA on Monday we will begin calling every parishioner over age 80 (about 150 of them) to see if they need anything
 
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My state has banned large gatherings, so mass is being broadcast to us online daily. All church activity is suspended and we have been directed on how to make a spiritual communion.

Our Knights of Columbus are doing essential errands for anyone in the parish or community at large who cannot or should not go to the few places still open, like the pharmacy and grocery store. Our priests and deacons are making personal phone calls to parishioners they usually visit, or know are elderly or otherwise at risk or in need.
 
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humbleseeker said:
Not to derail your thread but this is so true. Coming from a Church so based on the Bible, it wasn’t hard to come home to the Church that the Bible was based on.
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I completely agree. It took some getting used to with the Magisterium which is the one huge difference between the cofC and the Catholic Church (aside from the Real Presence of course) but that’s all part of learning to be completely submissive to God and His Church.
 
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