Dear parishioners,
Every June, each parish submits their Status Animarum report to the Diocese as a way to track the sacramental activity by the numbers at each parish. We usually include this information in our annual report that we send out to parishioners every year (which will be ready in the coming weeks), but I want to give everyone a look at those numbers in advance. Kindly remember that the diocesan fiscal/sacramental year runs from July 1 – June 30. In the last fiscal year, we had 8 baptisms, 2 marriages, and 29 deaths.
While I am at it regarding parish data, we presently have 592 registered parish households, comprising 1546 individual registered parishioners. Only 4 households officially transferred their membership to other parishes over the past year. The above numbers continue the downward trend that has been happening for a long time. Remember that this number reflects registered parishioners, but not the number of people actually coming to Mass on a weekend. I should note here that within the last few months, we discovered a glitch in the database which caused it to count a number of deceased parishioners as still being active. We remedied this problem and the number of registered households/parishioners mentioned above is the accurate number. With this being said, the situation of our parish demographic decline has been worse than we realized because the number of registered households was actually lower than what we realized it was!
Because our school year starts this week, kindly remember that our school Masses will return to Fridays this year. Our first school Mass is this Friday, August 18 at 9:15. There will be a few Fridays throughout the year on which we will have to move the time of the school Mass due to scheduled two-hour delays for teacher in-services. We will be sure to notify everyone in advance when those particular days are approaching.
Lastly, I would like to remind everyone again that this Tuesday, August 15 is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and is a Holy Day of Obligation. Our Mass schedule will be slightly different than we have done in the past. As I mentioned a few weeks ago in the bulletin, we will not be having a Vigil Mass the evening before, but will be having all three Masses on Tuesday. The Mass schedule is: 8:00a.m. Mass in Payne, 12:00 Mass in Paulding, and 7:00p.m. Mass in Paulding.
Have a great week!
Fr. Ammanniti
