Sunday, July 22, 2007

all are welcome in this place

The new parish in the diocese is a few weeks old. On Saturday evening, my wife and I went to Mass at St. Albert the Great Parish on Brickey Lane in North Knoxville. All they have so far is a lot of land and a house that serves as the rectory. Mass was held in a downstairs room that could someday make a nice TV room for the priests. The music director recognized my cantor wife and asked if we were moving to the new parish. No, we were only visiting. We wanted to see the property and say hi to their new pastor, Fr. Chris Michelson, who was also the founding pastor of All Saints Catholic Church. Fr. Chris was the celebrant. The deacon was Patrick Murphy-Racey, who recently returned from a round trip to Alaska by motorcycle. He rode about 500 miles a day as a fund raiser for a school in Haiti. The journey is chronicled on his blog. He has now visited all 50 states. How cool. I still have 15 to go. The St. Albert church bulletin (PDF file) lists the number of registered families as 150 after only three weeks. Of those, 46 came from All Saints; 38 from Holy Ghost; 30 from Immaculate Conception; 11 from St. Therese; 8 from Sacred Heart Cathedral; 7 from St. Joseph; 4 from John XXIII and 6 from "other." Inside, Fr. Chris outlines his five priorities for building the new parish community. On the front of the bulletin, a short biography of St. Albert reports that he was a student and teacher of alchemy, chemistry and botany and that "using his knowledge of science, he was an accomplished and sought-after magician."

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1 Comments:

Blogger StephieB said...

I live one street down from the new parish (my house is just behind the trees). Brickey Lane is a horrible place to pull out from onto Cunningham Road. Please warn everyone to be careful. I think there have been some Knox County officers directing traffic the past couple of weeks, but Brickey Lane is sitting on a blind hill and curve. BE CAREFUL! I hear lots of accidents happen already and I know the added traffic will also cause some serious accidents.

7/23/2007  

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