I have a major pet peeve and I know I'm not the only one. It really annoys me how most Catholic churches that I am aware of seem to care nothing about communicating information to parishioners. I live in Newfoundland and we get a great deal of poor weather during the winter. Yet, most churches will make no effort to inform people as to whether or not they are open. This is very frustrating. Most of the time, you have to show up in person to find out personally. They have to do better.
This article stems from the fact that I sought out confession today. I checked websites, phone numbers, etc. but nothing was mentioned about whether or not confession would go ahead. I drove all the way there and tried to enter as it was scheduled to commence at 3:00pm. I tried all the doors but everything was locked. Then at almost exactly 3pm I get an email from the church informing me they would be closed for Mass at 5pm. There was never any mention of confession. How would anyone have known if it was going ahead or not?
The fact that they even have an email makes them very unique and on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to informing parishioners of whether or not they are open. Yet they failed to employ it when it came to confession.
At my main church, on a stormy day, I go to their fancy, modern website which has a section for "announcements". To say it's outdated is an understatement. The latest "update" is from 1.5 years ago. This is not atypical. It's so weird to me that a church would go out of its way to develop an ultra-modern and possibly expensive website only to never use it to convey any actual information.
You would think that they would have at least mastered the telephone, but you'd be wrong. Here's a question: why would someone call a Catholic church phone number? There could be several reasons, however it seems logical to me that the vast majority of calls would be to find out Mass times and whether or not Mass is going ahead (plus confession). Yet you will rarely if ever find such information. They don't even say when Mass times are. This is particularly annoying in smaller communities where they have complicated schedules. For example, some weeks Mass doesn't even take place in a particular church. When you go online to get information, you're lucky if it's less than 5 years old, if there's anything to begin with. Normally the recorded message will simply say "Sorry we're unavailable, our office hours are ---". Thanks for your office hours, but again, 90% of calls are to find out Mass and confession times, not the office hours.
Literally if there was a new Catholic or someone from away, and they were absolutely desperate to go to Mass, they would find it difficult or impossible to find any information.
I believe this behavior conveys the idea that they don't care. They don't care if 90% of Catholics attend Mass or if 9% do. To them it seems like it's all the same. Why would anyone bother going to a church which doesn't seem to take itself seriously? This is even more true of sacraments like confession. To not even bother contacting people via email or other means about the cancelation of confession gives the impression they don't care whether or not people go. It gives an impression of how they feel about confession.
The solution is quite simple. If you have a website, update it to indicate if the church is open or closed when there is inclement weather. If there's no website, at least use Facebook or some other well-known social media. If you have none of those, at least update the telephone recording with the up-to-date information. This is not difficult at all. It would take mere minutes.
I'm not saying Catholic churches have to operate like businesses selling products, putting out television commercials, etc. but at least do the minimum to keep people informed with regards to times of sacraments and whether or not you are open. It's a pet peeve and I really hope churches start to take this seriously.
