Our parish strategy says, “As a united parish with three churches and a school, we welcome and love 

newcomers with transformative weekend worship, and then lead young, old, and in between to take their next step as disciples of Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church.” Some members of our parish Pastoral Council and our liturgy committee have suggested that we might better welcome and love newcomers at our  weekend Masses if we had an 8:30 am Mass at SSP Church instead of a 4:30 pm Mass at SSP Church. This would make our Sunday schedule 7 am at SJB, 8:30 am at SSP, and 10 am at IHM. As you might imagine, there is much we should consider before such a change.

That’s why we are considering an experiment to temporarily add an 8:30 am Mass for 6–10 weeks sometime this year. During the experiment, our Mass schedule would be 7 am SJB, 8:30 am SSP, 10 am IHM, and 4:30 pm SSP. Limitations on priests mean we couldn’t run that schedule long-term, but in the short term we would be able to gather information about the extent to which an 8:30 am Mass at SSP would help us while also 

continuing the good done by our 4:30 pm Mass.

What do you think? Come tell our Pastoral Council your thoughts at our fall open Pastoral Council meeting: 7 pm on Tuesday, October 28, in the SSP parish hall. We’ll also be discussing the upcoming 100th anniversary of SSP parish in 2026. God bless you!