This morning when at SS Peter and Paul`s Longbenton, I found a Latin Mass missal belonging to one of our EF regulars. I often find an odd missal or two left in church after an EF Mass. The congregation varies in size between 15 and 40. If the EF really takes off in a big way I would expect that the numbers of missals left behind would also increase. People rarely write their names in their missals but by playing a Catholic equivalent of the TV show `Through the keyhole` where viewers had to guess the celebrity owner of a house by viewing their home and possessions so I often have to try to determine whose missal I`ve found by examining the holy pictures and memorial cards. It does also surprise me that often people don`t always come looking for their missal. I suppose if I had a regular congregation of hundreds of people I`d just have a box at the back of church for lost missals.
In my previous parishes I have always said that one of the advantages of the priesthood is that I need never buy an umbrella as there are normally always a supply from those left behind. Sadly this golden rule doesn`t seem to apply north of the Tyne however. In fact very little is left behind, apart from Latin Mass missals, although I still wonder why no-one has ever reclaimed the mobile phone left in church.
3 comments:
Our pastor quite frequently leaves his cell phone in the purificator drawer and forgets it there. One Sunday he'd come in the sacristy and I said "hey, you left your cell phone again!" and he patted his pocket and said "I wondered why nobody called me today!"
with the Cell phone, you should be able to find out what the number is, and then possibly do a reverse lookup. in the USA it's www.whitepages.com but I expect there might be something similar for the UK.
30 some years ago when the church was cleaning out all the excess of books etc. there were a number of "lost and never reclaimed missals, some in Latin, and since they were going to get 86'd I asked if I could have some of them and acquired some really nice books that are very handy now.
[I was in college then, and had taken 5 academic quarters of Latin, and was a history major, and I instinctively knew the church was nuts for throwing these things out!]
Karen
The problem with the mobile phone (aka cell phone) is that it has no power and I don`t have a charger for it. Thanks for the tip however.
The LMS was appealing for donations of Missals a little while back.
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