The following
announcement appeared in the Good Shepherd Parish bulletin for Sunday, June 10th. “Beginning
Friday, June 15, 2012, the daily 6:30 am Mass at Good Shepherd Parish will be
moved to St. Henry church, located just a block toward the river at 921 General
Pershing. Currently, our rectory chapel can be cramped for our daily
Mass, and St. Stephen church is terribly expensive to heat and cool. After
consultations were made with some of the former parishioners of St. Henry’s as
well as some of our daily Mass attendees, we asked permission from Archbishop
Aymond to begin using St. Henry for the daily Mass. Last week, he gave us
permission to open St. Henry’s for daily Mass on Monday through Friday.
St. Stephen’s will continue to be used for all of our Sunday Masses.”
Good sense
and practicality, as well as appropriate economic stewardship, have
carried the day. In addition to being a
smaller venue, the St. Henry church building is in fine condition having been
renovated in the recent past. The church
is an intimate and beautiful space. The stained
glass windows illustrate the Beatitudes through the saints depicted in each of
them. The altar once served as a
centerpiece of a Eucharistic Congress.
This is a long-hoped for and happy event for so many who hoped that the
church could still be open after the suppression of the parish some years ago.
At the
Volunteer residence the renovations to the unfinished first floor space
continued last week. It involved the
removal of an old water fountain, renovations to a reception kiosk, to two
doors that were badly warped and the removal of debris. We still have more items to discard and there
is plenty of plastering, painting and cleaning ahead of us.
On
Saturday the 9th we joined Sr. Nancy Hale and Sr. Pauline O’Reilly,
members of the Congregation of the Holy Faith, at their home on Coliseum Street
for a wonderful dinner and evening.
On Sunday,
the 10th, Dr. Michael Horan, a professor of theology and
administrator at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, spent the day with us. After Mass at St. Gabriel’s he treated us to
brunch at C’est La Vie, a French bistro around the corner from our house. Michael is uncle by marriage of Vincent
Fiedler-Ross who was in our first group of volunteers! Before marrying Patricia Fiedler, Michael was
one of our Brothers from 1974 to 1994.
Michael was in town to lecture at the Summer Institute for Catholic
School Leadership.
It has
been warm and very rainy recently. The
mosquito season started 6 weeks early due to a warm winter.
On a
somber note, the murder rate for Louisiana still is desperate. The
national murder rate is 5 per 100,000 people.
In 2010 it was 59 per 100,000 people in Louisiana; it declined to 50 per
100,000 in 2011. As this is written, the
second section of the local paper recorded 3 deaths by murder yesterday and the
day before in the city.
The
Archbishop of New Orleans speaks of “The New Battle of New Orleans: Violence,
Murder, Racism.” In a prayer recited in
Catholic parishes we say: “Hear our
prayer and give us the perseverance to be a voice for life and human dignity in
our community.” AMEN
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