From Fr Greg's Desk: Sunday 18th August, 2024

Hi everyone!

We still have lots of things going on around our Parish, so I thought I'd highlight three of them for the week ahead.

Seminar on Wills, Enduring Guardianship and Powers of Attorney, Wednesday 21 August from 10 am - 12 pm (SCB Parish Hall)
This Wednesday morning we will be hosting a really helpful seminar on these three topics, which are vitally important issues for many of our elderly parishioners to grapple with. They are also offering a 'complimentary will offer' for attendees, so how could you pass this one up? The presenter will be Cecilia Castle, Principal of Castle Lawyers, with support by lawyers from Khalil Lawyers and JCL Legal and it is being run by the Sydney Archdiocese as a 'pilot programme' with a view to holding the same seminar elsewhere. They will also be on hand to answer your legal questions.

Coffee and hot chocolate will be provided by our own Little Noah's Cafe, along with a complimentary morning tea. Make sure you get in quick to reserve the last places available (we already have 80 participants registered!!) by contacting Tony Maricic on 0422 099 576, or tony.maricic@sydneycatholic.org. See you there!!

RCIA 2024 - 2025 'Expressions of Interest" now up to 15 candidates!!
We are really pleased to see that we now have some 15 people interested in beginning our "Rite of Christian Initiation" programme in October (see info box on opposite page) for people interested in becoming a Catholic. Fr. Dan will be accompanied this year by Fr. Daniele in the presentation of the topics, so we are certainly very keen to invest a lot of 'resources' to ensure it will be an unforgettable experience for the people involved.

If you know of anyone who might be interested in undertaking the course, an information evening will be held this Thursday 22nd August at 7.30pm downstairs in the Mackillop Room of the Parish Centre at SCB. Please contact the office or Frs. Dan or Daniele for more details. Please keep them all in your prayers

Charles Street Side Entrance at SCB Church
The capital works programme of the Parish is also continuing on, and so we apologise for the inconveniences they might cause while we are getting our Parish into shape. As you can see, we are currently working on the side entrance on the Charles Street facade of SCB Church. The need to open up the existing exit of the Church was brought to light with recent revisions of security measures at the Parish, on the back of some highly publicised developments at other Churches in the Sydney area. One of those initiatives is to reverse the inner doors leading to the outside, so that they swing outwards in the case of people leaving the Church in an emergency (when the outer doors are open).

Our maintenance man, Keith Stanshall, has ingeniously found a way to carefully remove the old inner wooden doors and frame, turn them round so that they now open outwards into the little side foyer and fit them in place. There are a few things needed to finalise the work, one being to add little windows to the swinging doors like we did with the inner doors at the Victoria Road entrance, for added safety when entering and exiting the Church on that side.

Hopefully we will have this finished soon so that we can use this side entrance on weekends and with special Masses, as both an additional 'wheelchair access' and 'emergency exit' during highly attended liturgies. We do not envisage using this side door during other times, unless warranted by the size of the congregation or the particular needs of any given liturgy.

We thank our choir members and musicians for their patience with us and their understanding with this change to their respective areas, and for the inconveniences they may experience in having people stream in and out in front of them as they sing (hopefully it might even serve to win some more people to their valuable ministries, as they hear them sing on the way in and out??) We might be able to adjust the position of the AV desk, keyboard and chairs in the near future, so that you are all together in any case, but I will leave that be for a little while.

And that's about it for this week. God bless!!

Fr. Greg