PRESENT
Fr Tom Egan, Fr Vincent Malone, Fr Kevin Moule, Sean Carroll, Patrick Bolger, Edoardo Albert, John Wilson, Jane Landi, Ramon Landi, Greg Howard, Pat Madigan, Gerard Barden and Anuli Igboaka.
APOLOGIES
Jackie Reddington, Brian Hunt, Joe Sutton, Shaneez Hassan, John Donnelly and Felicity Brown.
OPENING PRAYER
The newly ordained Fr. Vincent opened the meeting with a prayer.
MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING ON 13th SEPTEMBER
The Advent talks will be on Wednesdays not Tuesday as stated in the minutes.
The minutes were signed as accurate.
MATTERS ARISING
PAPAL VISIT. This went very well. The Diocese are planning various follow-up initiatives. There will be a second collection to help with costs of the visit.
We have had a number of volunteers for Children’s Liturgy and for our counting rotas, via appeals in the newsletter.
TENTEN. There is nothing planned for the parish before Christmas. They are very busy at the moment, as they are expanding into Primary schools and are also doing Confirmation sessions. They recently won a Fear and Fashion Award, an organization which works with young people who are involved in knife crime, against some very strong opposition.
FINANCE
Page One of printout
Comparing Sept 09 with Sept 10 shows much similarity between the net recurring figures from £27.5K in 2009 to £26.5K this year.
Offertories are holding up.
The Gift Aid tax refund is not in yet, but the figure should be similar to last year.
Page Two
The balances between June and September 2010 are down £15,000 – largely due to the sanctuary floor costs, which amounted to £18,567.
The marble was expensive but many people have said how good it looks. It will last for a long time.
WEBSITE
Eddie is keeping it up to date – people should be encouraged to send him links/photos. There are a number of Fr. Vincent’s ordination available to view and Brian Hunt has promised some shots of the pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi.
The website has had 5,000 unique visitors, most of them interested in Mass times apparently. It is used!
PRAYER AND EVANGELIZATION
Advent talks will be on 1st, 8th and 15th December, and will be about the origins of the Mass, with reference to the new Missal, which is coming on slowly due to various disputes about the English translation.
ECUMENISM
Fr. Vincent’s ordination has been mentioned in Compass.
The Carol Service at St Paul’s will be on 19th December.
FUND RAISING
We are not in need of fund raising at the moment.
Sheryl Coutinho has offered to do a concert, but needs a pianist.
We are looking to replace the red floor at the back of the church with a covering that will last.
PARISH HALL
There is no pressing need to do anything about the hall floor. It was designed to “give”. Irish dancing is not an issue.
PARISH TEAM
Confirmation starts in January with 10 sessions, including one with Ten Ten. Confirmation will be on Wednesday 5th May. We intend to hold all the sacraments in the same week, with two First Communion masses on Saturday 7th.
This year we intend to have two age groups for Confirmation in an attempt to bring down the age of the candidates. For this to work we will need a larger group of catechists – appeals will be made in the newsletter. From the following year Confirmation will be offered to school Year 9 (13/14), rather than Year 10 (14/15).
Last year there were concerns with discipline in the Confirmation course – parents will be told that youngsters will be out if they don’t behave. The course in this Parish is lenient, and short, compared to some others.
The First Holy Communion course has started but there has been a noticeable lack of commitment on the part of some parents. It is hard to understand why they enrol their children, if they are not prepared to attend either the sessions or the Sunday mass. Parents are the first teachers of their children, who will not learn about their religion if they are not getting instruction, or example, at home.
All our sacramental programmes are parish based, not school based. Information is passed on through the newsletter and candidates come from a variety of schools.
We also have problems with the signing of school forms. The information is clearly announced in the newsletter as to dates and times of signing sessions, but we still get enquires from people who obviously don’t come to Mass. The parish team does their best but people are not always willing to meet them halfway. They don’t seem to realise that the schools are for practicing Catholics, not those who wish to be converted. Catholic school entry criteria has been much diluted in the past few years and some of the forms are not easy to complete.
It is important that we understand the children are not to blame here!
ANY OTHER BUSINESS
Parish Fayre. We held this a couple of year ago – various groups had a stall and some information for other parishioners. It was an opportunity for people to find out what goes in the parish, and maybe volunteer to help with something. It was felt that the Spring would be a good time to hold another such event.
Quiet Day for ministries. Fr. Kevin would look into this, but we would need to chose a date.
Ramon was thanked for chairing the last meeting, as was the entire council for the help and assistance they offer to the priests.
DATE FOR NEXT MEETING
Has subsequently been changed to 28th February at 8.15 pm in the Small Hall.