Welcome to the new “vibrant” parish of Irondequoit! This Holy Week Fr Tanck invites parishioners to gas up their cars and travel around town to all the various services. To help parishioners find their way around town, a handy map and directions are provided in this week’s bulletin! The parish priests must have gotten tired of moving from church to church so now all the parishioners can have their turn at driving all around town too! The poor parishioners, however, will have to contend with driving in the dark, struggling to find a parking space, and a packed pew (if they are lucky). This is the wonderful change that Fr. Tanck promised them?
Irondequoit Driving Instructions
Fr. Tanck has denied a request by several STA parishioners to have a Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle for Easter. His reason is that offering a Mass there “is returning to the past and is not fostering the new unity of Blessed Kateri.”
What Fr. Tanck conveniently ignores is the fact that there is no unity at Blessed Kateri when 400+ people from STA and St. Salome have decided to worship elsewhere, if at all. However, with 7 Masses instead of 10 (or more), the churches will appear to be fuller, giving the illusion that all is well.
The Triduum Treasure Hunt — an instant tradition.
It is interesting that the priests leaving Irondequoit in June have opted for relatively smaller parishes as a priest pastor. This is the ideal for both priests and parishioners. It was foolish to take the second largest town in Monroe County and make one parish. Nobody wants this – neither the priests nor the parishioners, unless you are the IPPG or Fr. Tanck of course!
Opted?? I thought it was a command performance.
Where was this type of concern for parishioners when they closed their “out of the way” churches in northern Irondequoit, St. Thomas and St. Salomes?
If you want to critique some of the decisions your priest is making, fine.
But come on—people have to drive around in the dark? Ever heard of headlights? People have to look for parking places? What—is it like they never have to look for parking places anywhere else they go?
I have never heard something so lame before!
I’m inclined to agree with Faithful here. This seems like criticism for criticism’s sake. Either that, or I’m missing some piece of info.
Make no mistake, I can’t stand this clustering and left SMM after it was clustered into BKT. But now that they’re clustered, it doesn’t seem out of place to encourage people to check out different locations.
Is it the case that there’s some particular service occurring at only one “worship site” that’s not occurring at the others? I guess I just don’t see what’s being suggested to the parishioners, or what’s wrong with it.
I’m open to elaboration though.
STA’s large parking lot has often been cited here as a reason it was a bad choice for closure.
Nice Map Tanck…who says they didnt use anything from the STA Proposal…? Who are they kidding. The people who have this bulletin, are the same people that know exactly where the other churches are. In two years, we will see a return of this map – complete with two red “x”s over SCC and SMM. Watch out – Tanck is gunning for a TajMahal on Kings’ Highway!
Rich- love the treasure hunt reference- I laughed out loud. 🙂
Jim M. here: Well, LOL, Irondequoit Mom, you’re right! They used the same map that St. Thomas created a year or so ago to show the craziness of closing the two northern most parishes in the cluster! Let’s see now….Holy Thursday at Christ the King, Easter Vigil at St. Maragart Mary’s…right onto Roger’s Parkway…no no…that’s tomorrow afternoon.. that’s Good Friday at St. Margaret Mary’s, Easter Vigil at Christ the King…wait wait…no no.. turn left on Titus, then, right on King’s Hwy….no silly, that’s tomorrow night!! TURN LEFT ON CULVER, THEN OVER RIDGE RD. …..having been in St. Thomas, it doesn’t get any better than this!!
Gasoline must be cheaper in Irondquoit.
My understanding is that irondequoit has quite a few elderly parishioners. It could be hard for many of them to drive around at night and deal with more difficult parking. Many of them have developed familiar routines, traveling to their nearby parish church. My guess is that many will simply not attend the Easter services that are scattered all over the town.
Notice the map is cut-off at about Titus Ave. I guess anybody (St Thomas and St. Salomes) north of Titus Ave doesn’t need directions (or doesn’t matter!).