St Catherine’s Parish Meeting

Tuesday 18th November 2014 at 7.00 pm

45 Parishioners present and chaired by current Chairman Simon O’Connell

Question raised online by a parishioner.

Where is the money that we put on the ‘plate’ each week banked?

It is banked with the Royal Bank of Scotland. When our funds get to £10,000 it goes into a Central Diocesan Fund. We currently have approx £63,000 with a limit of £5,000 spend before approaching the Diocese for approval.

Church/Presbytery and Parish centre repairs and maintenance.

They are all costly expenditures and are usually managed financially and logistically by the Diocese. It was decided that the parish needs to run their own list of repairs or renovations for regular maintenance and this may be best placed via an appointed Finance Committee (FC). This would be made up of the Parish Priest and several agreed members of the Parish community. The FC should be given the autonomy to ask the Diocese for the cost of work that needs to be carried and how this will be funded and by whom.

Changes to the Sanctuary

There was much discussion around this issue. There had been two open meetings in Church within the last 9 months to discuss the proposed changes and to take them forward and plans were available at the back of church after the meetings. Some parishioners expressed their concern that they were not at the Proposed Change Meetings and were not aware of the full extent of the changes to the Sanctuary and were unhappy about some of the changes, particularly about the placing of the Baptismal font and the creation of a confessional.

Big Lottery Funding for the Parish Centre

Simon gave an explanation of the process required to access funding and where we are up to with this as a Parish. There was a discussion over various issues – Did we have a say over who could use the facilities at St Catherine’s and how they would access them, why do we have to fall back on the Big Lottery when we have money in the Diocesan bank account, Policies and procedures, safeguarding. Simon emphasised that the paperwork put forward in the bid is open to anyone who wishes to see it. We would have to wait to see if we are successful before we can make our next move on this.

Proposal to move 11.15 mass to 10.30 on a Sunday

It has become evident over the last few years that Mass attendance was falling and this may be largely due to the modern demands placed particularly on families attending mass at our current times. It was decided to pull together a ‘Parish Life Committee’ to look at this and how we move forward as a parish and become proactive. It was proposed that John Fegan would lead this Committee.

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

There was a concern that the rota each Thurs for this could be faltering as it was falling to the same people each week. There was a worry that one person on their own in Church could be vulnerable. Ft Thomas agreed to remind parishioners about the times for Exposition to hopefully draw more people into taking part.

Safeguarding

Our new Diocesan Safeguarding Co-ordinator is Andrew O’Brien.

The safeguarding guidance and contact details for the Parish should be displayed in a prominent place in the Church Foyer. We need to put the document in a framed mount and attach it to the wall so it cannot be moved

Madeleine Haines was elected to be the next Chairperson and would take over the role at the next meeting.

Meeting ended at 9.00pm Next Meeting Tuesday 10th March 2015 at 7.00pm