Good News About St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Charlottesville, Virginia
The other day, Sarah and I received a letter (addressed to the "Parishioners and Friends of St Thomas") from the wonderful Dominican pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Charlottesville, Virginia. The letter contains some great news (those familiar with the architecture of St. Thomas Aquinas will surely be interested in this):
When our present parish church was built back in 1995, the pews were designed without kneelers, as was the "custom" in the Diocese of Richmond under Bishop Sullivan. Some of you who might remember the original parish church will recall that the building didn't have any fixed pews but merely folding chairs. As we planned the furnishing of the new Chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the Parish Center in 2004, I wanted to make sure that we obtained pews for the chapel that would have kneelers. We contracted with a local, Virginia, church furniture company for the construction and installation of the pews in the chapel. This same company has now agreed to retro-fit the pews in our church with sturdy, padded kneelers. We have already signed a contract with them and are hoping to have kneelers installed in church by the start of the new academic year, although the timing is not guaranteed.Outstanding! No more bruised knees (not to mention sticking out like sore thumbs as part of only a handful of worshippers who are kneeling) whenever we're back visiting family in C'ville!
(emphasis added)
Anyone interested in contributing to the roughly $30,000 necessary to pay for the kneelers can make a check out to "St. Thomas Aquinas Parish" and put "Worship Account" in the memo line. Checks should be mailed to:
Fr. Brian Mulcahy, OPSarah and I plan to make a small contribution.
St. Thomas Aquinas Church
401 Alderman Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903
I hope Father Brian doesn't object to my posting this. He certainly did not put me up to it, and I didn't ask his permission before doing so. Nevertheless, I wanted to give any readers of this blog with connections to St. Thomas Aquinas Parish the opportunity to consider making a donation.
Thanks!
posted by Pro Ecclesia 2:41 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
That's interesting. When I was parishioner there, 1998-2001, the pastor went to great efforts to stop daily mass goers from kneeling by saying that kneeling was not part of the Dominican rite. I guess that wasn't true.
Hmmm. Never heard that one to explain not kneeling during the Eucharistic prayers.
This was one explanation: "In the early church, everyone stood throughout Mass."
Or this one: "We sit to listen, we stand to pray, we kneel to adore."
Or: "We don't need that anymore."
All of these explanations came from priests!
When we moved to Richmond from Tucson, Az. in 1977, our parish kneeled.
We lived in Alexandria from 1980-1983 and attended St. Mary's in Old Town--and kneeled.
Returned to Richmond in the summer of 1983. Went to Mass at the Cathedral as we weren't sure of where our parish church was (we were living in a different neighborhood). My husband, I, and one other person kneeled--what the !@#$% had happened? Finally found our parish church,older church, traditional architecture, about half the folks kneeled. Over the years, folks stopped kneeling. I prayed a lot about this. Realized that one day, we would kneel again! It was a LONG TIME COMING.
We do kneel now!!
Once in the mid eighties, the Bishop came to our church for Young Adult Ministry gathering. Ask the Bishop!! So I did. Why don't we kneel during the Eucharistic prayers? He burbled an answer (see above) and finally said: "Well, no one is saying you can't kneel." I said: "Well, if you're building churches without kneelers, what are you really saying." He said: "Well, I see your point."
Boy, it feels good to get this off my chest!
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