I attended an Easter service here as a guest of friends and was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed the service.
I was expecting something formal ---but in fact it was quite relaxed--- not quite "contemporary"---- but "comfortable" --- with a lot of pleasant music, a lot of congregational singing, an excellent cantor, and a short but sweet homily from the priest about how Pope Francis recently told a grieving child that he would see his dead dog in heaven ---- so now apparently dogs DO go to heaven --- and we can apply what we love about dogs and how they love us back, to our own faith. Some good jokes. A perfect short and sweet kid-friendly sermon for Easter.
It's a large, airy bright contemporary space (think mini-arena seating) with contemporary stained glass panels. It was packed and people seemed really nice and they had not one but TWO places in the service where you greet your neighbors. I felt very sincerely welcomed, and saw a lot of smiles.
So, the high attendance tells me they're meeting the needs of their congregation quite well at St Ann's. It was definitely a "feel-good" service.
My friend was telling me as well that this local parish is in (or grew out of) the same Catholic order as Father Damien of Molokai, the "Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary", which is a missionary religious order.
Now in the worldwide Catholic church at large (I'm not speaking about St Ann's specifically here, having had no conversations with their priest on this subject), apparently we've finally got dogs into heaven, which is progress, now all we need is equality for women and the LGBT community. Women should be ordained; we all know there's a long history of closeted gay priests, how about letting them live honest authentic lives? How about letting all priests marry? It seems like this will all happen inevitably; it would be nice if the pace of progress was less glacially slow. If it's going to happen in 30 years how about just pressing the fast forward button and dealing with it openly and honestly now, instead of waiting for the people who are against it to die off, which seems to me to be the main strategy? Oh, I forgot, because change is hard, and older people who have money to give, might stop giving money. I forgot about that for a moment. The Vatican is expensive.
I'm also a fan of open communion. St Ann's does not offer open communion, you must be confirmed in the Catholic Church before you can receive communion, otherwise you are instructed to cross your arms over your chest and they will only offer you a blessing but not give you bread and wine. There's a clear distinction in this 1700-year-old bureaucracy whether you as worthy or not, if you are "in" or "out." So now we've got dogs going to heaven--- but as a Christian from another denomination I couldn't be served bread and wine at Easter. What would Jesus say about this? I think he probably would have grabbed the bread and wine from the server and taken them out to the sidewalk and served them to anyone who wanted to stand up and follow Him. Just my opinion I guess.
Anyway, that's enough ranting about the institutional politics of the Catholic Church at large---- locally, I found the service, facilities, and people at St Ann's in Kaneohe all quite pleasant.
One final suggestion for the local congregation---- when you project the words of the worship songs for the congregation, please figure out a way to project the musical notation as well. Looking at the hymn book and figuring out how to sing hymns was one of the main ways kids learned to read music. When you only offer the words on a screen and not the music notation you are really "dumbing down" the future musical abilities of your children. read more