The Catholic Community of Northern Columbia County

Upcoming Listening Session on Clergy, Staff and Volunteer Wellness, including Mass Time Changes – Please Review Before Meeting

As a lifelong member of the Catholic Community of Northern Columbia County, married in one of our churches and now raising my daughters, Anna and Nora, in this faith, I care deeply about the future of our parish family and the Church they will inherit. Today, our community is served by one full-time priest across three churches, and out of love and respect for both clergy and leadership wellness, we must recognize that our current Mass schedule is not sustainable long-term. While no decisions have been made, thoughtful and prayerful conversations are now beginning about what comes next.

To help guide our reflection, we are sharing a series of articles written by Fr. Dan, a former associate here in the CCNCC and now a pastor in Albany, who recently led his own parish community through similar changes. His insights remind us that this challenge is not unique to us, but one faced by many parishes striving to remain vibrant and spiritually nourishing. At its heart, this conversation is about more than scheduling, it is about strengthening our parish life, ensuring our priest can truly know us and walk with us, and creating space for deeper relationships, meaningful worship, and a sustainable future. Change can be difficult, especially when it touches long-held routines, but it also offers an opportunity to grow, to come together more intentionally, and to reimagine how we live our faith as a community.

My hope is that you will take time to read, reflect, and pray on these realities, and most importantly, join us for a Listening Session on April 11 at Church of St. Joseph beginning at 10:30 AM or April 16 at St. James starting at 6:30 PM. Your voice matters. Together, guided by faith and the Holy Spirit, we can shape a path forward that strengthens our community for generations to come.

—Julie (Antonovich) Horn, “Josh’s wife” and “Anna and Nora’s mom”

Bulletin Articles from Fr. Dan Quinn - re mass times are changing in Albany.

Article I – Feb. 14 - 15 From the Pastor’s Desk – New Mass Schedule Starting After Easter – Part 1 of 5

        As everyone may or may not be aware, there are only three priests actively assigned to the parishes of the city of Albany: Fr. Torres is responsible for the four churches downtown, which includes a Mass in Spanish, and Fr. Yusko and I (Fr. Quinn) are responsible for All Saints, Mater Christi, Blessed Sacrament, and the Shrine of Our Lady of the Americas, which also includes a Mass in Spanish, and a Mass in Urdu.  St. Vincent, meanwhile, is taken care of by Mrs. Elizabeth Simcoe and older priests.  Our neighboring suburban parishes also share priests between multiple parishes, in Colonie, Delmar, Westmere, etc.

     Retired priests, and hospital chaplains who have minimal time for parish work, help all of our parishes when the parish priests can't be present.  I'm so grateful that they are all happy to help when called!   But unfortunately, relying on so many priests in their 80s means that we must always be on the lookout for two things: the future priests of our parishes, which come from our families and parishes, and a schedule that doesn’t rely heavily on octogenarians.

     Currently around the city and suburbs of Albany, there are 9 vigil Masses at 4:00.  With just a few parish priests, and just under half of these Masses currently served by priests in their 80s, this is going to be impossible to sustain.  The same goes for Sunday mornings, when the bulk of Masses land within the "Goldilocks Zone" of 9:00-10:30 AM.  Masses that start within these times are generally more well-attended and have a greater variety of people.  This might be because of the type of schedules young families with young children keep, because of the need for some people to ramp up to get going in the morning, or simply because a later time allows people who are up early all week to sleep in a little later.

     And it’s not just the Masses that priests need to attend to; Sundays also have Faith Formation for young people, families, and those joining the Church through OCIA.  Sometimes we get to celebrate a Baptism, or have time for Adoration, or the parish has a reception, or we are burning the palm for the ashes for Ash Wednesday.  In short, there is a way to do Sundays better, so that we can all be together for the Lord’s Day without having to have the priests leave immediately.

     Therefore, a new schedule is being developed for my parishes of Mater Christi, Blessed Sacrament, All Saints, and the Shrine (formerly St. Patrick) that can be handled, if need be, by only the active priests, with minimal help from our senior priests.

     Stay tuned, because there is more to come on this topic next week.

Article II – Feb. 21 - 22 From the Pastor’s Desk – New Mass Schedule Starting After Easter – Part 2 of 5

     Last week, I discussed the difficulties with the current Mass schedule, and why it is being adjusted.  This week, I want to share the process, and the difficulties, in designing a new schedule. It was important to take into consideration the data of current Sunday Mass attendance, demographics, and historical trends, and a few guiding principles: 1) No two Masses should begin at the same time. 2) There should be a variety of options of Mass times, considering not just our own but our neighboring parishes.  3) We should do our best not to disenfranchise groups of people who need specific times or locations.  4) We should allow the priests time to be able to be around before and after Mass for Faith Formation, OCIA, requests for an Anointing of the Sick or for Confession, or simply for conversations.

     5) Another important consideration is that priests and the people ought to be familiar with one another; I want, for myself and for the other priests, to be able to be at each parish regularly, with time enough to get to know people.  We, as priests, with fatherly hearts, want to be able to see and know our people, other than just at baptisms, weddings, and funerals.  We want to be more than functionaries fulfilling the task of showing up for Mass.  We want to fulfill our role in the community as spiritual fathers and evangelizers, not just our function in the liturgies at the altar, and as parish managers at a desk.  The converse is therefore necessarily true: I want all of our parishioners to be familiar and comfortable with us.  This goes for the hospital chaplains as well; when someone is in the hospital and meets one of the priests there, it's comforting when he is already a familiar face.

     Familiarity requires a lot of time.  Fr. Tallman, for one, has been a familiar face as a hospital chaplain and as the Albany Fire Department's chaplain for many years.  That sort of familiarity and care of so many different people in so many situations (firefighters, hospital administrators, nurses, physicians, patients) takes years to grow.  In much the same way, Fr. Sidoti, Fr. Lefebvre, Fr. O'Connor, Fr. Sweigart, Fr. Bradley, Fr. Pape, and Fr. Doyle grew along with the families of their parishes.  It is my hope that we continue to grow, through good times and bad, sickness and health, with our parishes and parishioners, in much the same way.  I have been in Albany now five years, but when I’m only present at a parish every third weekend, it takes three times as long to get to know people.

     Reducing Masses and adjusting start times is necessary, though painful, so that the priests we have can spend their time and attention most efficiently.  The schedule we have devised allows for Fr. Yusko and I, with the help of just one hospital chaplain or retired priest, to make the rounds at our four churches comfortably.  In an emergency situation in which only two priests are available, the Masses can be offered by two priests.

     There is still some more to be discussed next week!  Thank you for your patience!

Article III – Feb. 28 - March 1 From the Pastor’s Desk – New Mass Schedule Starting After Easter – Part 3 of 5

     Every club, a gardening club, a book club, a hiking club, a bowling club, a volunteer organization, or political party needs to have club meetings.  Finding times that work for everyone is one of the hardest parts of keeping everyone organized and while newsletters and other forms of media help, including social media, people have to be in the same room together, see each other in-person in order to build the bonds of the community and accomplish the works of the club, whether it’s bowling, gardening, hiking, or putting together the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

     As members of the Christian family, our most important “family meeting” or “club meeting” is the time we have each week for the Lord’s Day, at the Lord’s Supper.  We're more than a club, we are the church, formed by God as a family, as his children.  We meet regularly on the Lord's Day around His table, for what we describe as the "source and summit" of our faith, the celebration of the Eucharist.  From this flows our strength and our mission and our vision and our context for the rest of our life’s work.  And each week we bring back to that Sunday Eucharist the joys, successes, sorrows, and failures, looking for help, transformation, and the care that comes from Our Father.  So making sure the Mass is a treasured part of our week, and being prepared to do it well, are so important.  This is a bigger movement or mission than any of the rest.  We're involved in helping the salvation of the world.

     To do it properly, we need to have everyone together, from young to old, and we need a priest.  Without enough men taking on the role of a priest, living the priestly life, we have to rearrange our Sundays so that we can do this well.  Of course, the ultimate solution is to grow more priests out of our families.  We all hope and pray that the life and ministry of priesthood is attractive to men, so that God's calling to them to priesthood can be heard and encouraged: by the community, by families, and by the example that our current priests set by their love, service, and self-sacrifice.  It’s very different from other walks of life that can be so attractive, but is nonetheless a fulfilling way of life for those who are called to it.

     Starting the Sunday after Easter (April 11/12), the Mass schedule will be as follows:

All Saints - 4:00 Saturday (Confession at 3:00); in place of two Masses on Sunday at 8:00 and 10:30, there will be one Mass at 10:00.

Blessed Sacrament - 4:00 Saturday moves to 5:00 PM (Confession at 4:00); 9:00 Sunday stays put. 6:00 PM Sunday in the Urdu language for the Pakistani people continues according to the availability of the visiting priest who speaks the language (when he is unavailable, there is a simpler prayer gathering at 6:00, but parishioners attend another Mass time).

Shrine of Our Lady of the Americas - 9:00 Sunday continues only with retired priests; when none are available, parishioners attend another Mass; 11:00 in Spanish.

Mater Christi - 4:00 Saturday moves to 5:30 PM (Confession at 4:45); 8:00 Sunday stays put; 10:30 Sunday moves to 11:00 AM.

     Confession precedes the Saturday Masses, but if a priest is coming from another church, the time for confession may be shortened.  Other opportunities for confession:

• 11:30 AM - M/W/F at St. Mary
• 12:30-1:30 on T/Th at Blessed Sacrament
• 4:00-5:30 PM - Wed at Mater Christi
• 7:30-9:00 AM - 1st Saturdays at Blessed Sacrament

P.S.     When Mass times change at a parish, statistically, people often keep their preferred Mass time rather than their parish.  I find this interesting because I have always thought of a parish as the group, who would stick together no matter what time they would meet for Mass.  Of course, studies have shown that generally people don't think like this, except in small towns or rural areas where there might only be one Mass at a parish anyway.  But apparently, usually, people might drive a little farther to keep the time they like to keep the routine to which they have become accustomed.  A good question for discussion, then, is, how you do think about your Mass time and place?  How do your neighbors think about it?  What are the priorities at play?  I have shared my thoughts for a few weeks now, and I’ll have a little more next week.

Article IV March 7- 8 From the Pastor’s Desk – New Mass Schedule Starting After Easter – Part 4 of 5

     When there is a turnover in pastoral leadership, it's not an easy or quick task to get to know the parishes, the families, the students, the clubs, the hangouts, the homeless.  Much of it only comes with time.  Pope Francis emphasized, in a quippy way, that pastors should "smell like their sheep."  So, like being a husband or father, the role of a priest in relation to the parish isn't only one of fulfilling certain duties or jobs, but of being there, getting to know his kids as they grow, and ensuring they all become adults, particularly in a spiritual sense.  It’s their role to love and sacrifice and play and pray with them and for them all, so that all may come together to resemble the true head of the family: Jesus.  By restructuring our time together on the Lord's Day, I'm hoping we can facilitate improved familiarity between all the people of our parishes in our city: whether they are children or adults or deacons or priests or consecrated religious sisters and brothers.

     It may seem that parishes are the usual place for priests to spend their lives and ministry, with the family that surrounds the neighborhood or village church.  While that is generally true, there are a number of ways that priests may serve.  They work as hospital chaplains, caring for the spiritual needs of the sick in the hospital, as well as for the physicians, nurses, and administrators, and often dealing with the questions of medical ethics that arise.

     Some serve as prison chaplains, serving the particular (and in my opinion, strange) society of prisoners and corrections officers, being agents of heroic forgiveness while operating in a system with mechanisms that operate on a high level of justice and merit.  They work for conversion and metanoia in a place where growth and change may otherwise not be fostered.

     Military chaplains have to be agents of divine peace and order in an environment of conflict, violence, and sometimes chaos.  Being called to be a peacemaker when the work of the organization is to recognize threats can be heroic.

     Meanwhile, some other priests work in academia, teaching at universities and at seminaries, spending their time in studies and in teaching.

     But what all priests hold in common is the offering of the sacraments for the sanctification of the people of God entrusted to their care.  Of all the sacraments, though, what very much defines a priest’s ministry in any of these places?  Sure, in a university there may not be much of a need for the Anointing of the Sick.  In a prison there is not often a need for marriage preparation and the celebration of a Wedding.  In hospitals, there is not much of a demand for academic-heavy homilies when patients and their families are in a more emotional space.  But in all of these places, the priest’s role is to birth new members into the world, and then to gather the family together around God’s table and to feed them with the Bread that comes down from Heaven.

     Therefore, Baptism and Eucharist are, in a way, our primary sacraments, and are the primary concern of priests in whatever milieu we find ourselves.  We prioritize our mealtimes each day, our family feeding times over and above all the other obligations we have, but we must also prioritize the sacrificial meal that we are invited to by our God, recognizing in it a foretaste of the banquet of heaven.

Article V From the Pastor’s Desk – New Mass Schedule Starting After Easter – Part 5 of 5

     I know that this change of Mass times will not be easy for some, and I’m sorry for the need to make adjustments.  However, circumstances are what they are.  I hope that my explanations over the last five weeks have shown how complex the difficulties are.  I know that I see all 10 Masses across the four churches, while most people only see one or two, at their own usual Mass times, and changing our routines can be difficult.  When being tasked with 4 churches and their schools, I also had to greatly adjust the patterns and routines of my life.  And of course there are more considerations, with Masses at the hospital, convent, and other parishes, that I have not gone into.

     As a gentle reminder, not everyone who belongs to our parishes has the luxury to travel, who instead attend their closest church, who walk or use public transportation.  Making sure the Mass schedule takes their needs into consideration was also one of the priorities I had, along with the people who helped me assemble the new schedule.

     As a final note, I’d encourage us all to remember the importance of encouraging serious consideration of the vocations God calls us to.  More and more often nowadays, serious decisions are put off.  While in the past, teenagers were visiting convents, religious orders, seminaries, and then in their 20s made these commitments, these days it’s after university or the beginning of a career that these vocations are being considered.  Marriage, too, is happening later in life, with the result that children are being born parents in their late 20s and 30s.  Add to that the fear that some have to make a commitment because it necessarily involves sacrifice, and all of this contributes to the priesthood not being something men are considering, or see as having much value by contrast to the other good choices out there.  But I guarantee it does.  It has such great value and is such a good life to live, despite it being a different set of sacrifices from those of married life.  So please encourage young men to consider the priesthood, or religious life.  Encourage young men and women to be strong in their convictions to make commitments to each other in marriage, or in the consecrated life as sisters or brothers.

     And it all starts with encouraging them to belong to the church at all, to being baptized and active members of our Church, living the challenge of the Christian life, and the call to holiness that God has for all of us.

Rev. Daniel Quinn

Pastor