A Message from Fr Alex and Fr Mike 22/3/20
Dear Parishioner of the South Edinburgh Cluster,
We, Fr Mike and Fr Alex, hope that this finds you and your families well. We wanted to make contact with as many parishioners as possible.
Communicating during these challenging times
We have pulled together a list of email addresses for as many parishioners as we have been able to. We would like to use email and our website as ways to keep in touch with parishioners. A new email address has been created for the Cluster for this purpose. The new email address is: southedclust@btinternet.com
Conscious of the need to comply with GDPR, we need to have your consent to contact you by email. If you would like us to continue to keep in touch with you by email, can you please reply to the new email address by Wednesday 25 March at the latest? If we don’t hear back from you, we will ensure your details are removed from this list.
Scottish Bishops’ Statement: 18 March
You may already have seen the statement issued by the Bishops. For those who haven’t, it can be found here.
The main outcome of this is that all our Masses, Services and groups are suspended until further notice.
Over the past few days we have been meeting (by video and phone) with our Parish Coordinators, PPC Chairs and Leadership Team to consider what we can do to reach out to those who are housebound or self-isolating, and how we can keep our community and faith life going without physically coming together.
Reaching out to the housebound and those self-isolating
This is our priority at the moment and therefore the focus of our efforts.
We are currently pulling together lists of people in these groups and establishing what needs there might be.
If you know of anybody we might need to reach out to, or if you would be in a position to offer help – e.g. shopping for somebody – can you please let us know by sending an email to this address as soon as possible?
We are conscious that in many parts of our community (and across the world) people are already helping one another. We hope to complement this and especially to identify anybody whose needs are not currently being met.
Keeping our community and faith life going without physical coming together
A small team has started working on producing some materials that can be used to help adults and children reflect on the Sunday scriptures. They will produce a weekly handout that will be shared on our website and by email. Conscious of those who don’t have internet access, we will produce paper copies. We are giving thought to how to distribute them.
We will also provide details of where those who wish can watch or listen to Sunday Mass.
One or two groups – e.g. one of the SEECAT Lent Groups – are meeting by video. Other groups may wish to consider this, but recognising the major limitation that not everybody has access to internet and technology.
Over the coming days and weeks, we will be working on other ways to keep our community and faith life active. If you have any further ideas about how we can do this, we would love to hear them.
Please feel free to forward this message to any parishioners you are in contact with. All parishioners involved in ministries who have an email address are being contacted.
Let’s all pray for one another and especially those who are experiencing any difficulties during this challenging time. With our prayers, best wishes and blessings.
Fr Mike & Fr Alex