...at Mass on Sunday are young families: we have a thriving Sunday school, a lot of young altar servers, and a wonderful Children's Choir, plus lots of smaller children and babies squeaking and wriggling with their parents in the pews. There are teenagers who sort of slope in separately to show they are independent. And as this is London, we also have a good many visitors - sometimes people just google to find the nearest church to their hotel, or come across the church by chance and find us convenient for Mass on Sunday. And then there are students, some of whom live nearby...
After Mass there is coffee and a loud babble of talk. Then sometimes some of us who are not so young and don't have immediate commitments sometimes gather for a drink in a nearby pub. We are a slightly random group, and that is part of the charm: we probably wouldn't know each other at all except that we have this great thing in common, this Faith which is at once so important and so ordinary...
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My theory is that a big enemy of church attendance is the motorcar, and the way in which it atomises communities. A parish no longer has much geographical meaning because people's psychological map is home ... shopping centre ... workplace ... schools with the ellipses connected by car journey. London is maybe an exception to that, the days of taking a car into central London and parking it are now over. So is that why the situation at Precious Blood is so promising?
This is so good to read and we find the same thing at St Josephs in Guildford with lots of young families and children so it is not just in London that his is happening.
I wish I could report the same. But a few years ago my parish was closed, and I went to another one nearby. Initially the pews were crammed. But gradually and without any noticeable change, empty spaces have appeared. It's still enough for a viable Mass, but there are only a few families, mostly the congregation is older people. If the trend continues that parish too will eventually have to close.
Many still drive to Precious Blood some come by Train some by Bus One of the teenage servers comes by Bus from Kent
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