Over the past couple weeks, we’ve been in conversations in which we were informed, “well, such-and-such Church is closing!” Imagine our surprise, being told that a church in Penn Hills or Monroeville was closing – you’d think we’d have known about it, wouldn’t you?  In fact,  at this point, there are no decisions regarding church closure for any of the church buildings of Christ the Divine Shepherd Parish.
As we ponder the expressions of anxiety over building closures, it seems that people are looking at our parish’s interim Mass schedule and leaping to the wrong conclusion that “well, if there’s no Mass there now, then clearly the building must be closing!”  Just so that there’s no misunderstanding:  there have been no decisions made to close any church buildings in Monroeville and Penn Hills.
Many have asked why the decisions regarding Mass location were made in the way that they were.  It’s important to share our rationale, especially since – in the absence of any explanation – it’s easy to make up stories out of thin air.  So, let’s review the thought process behind our current (temporary) schedule that has allowed us to re-open for publicly-attended Masses during the pandemic.
A few considerations were deemed necessary, in order to re-open buildings for publicly-attended Masses:

• We wanted to celebrate Masses in both Penn Hills and Monroeville.
• Given the lack of financial resources in the parish, we are forced to minimize the financial impact of the requirement to sanitize our buildings after each Mass.
• Sufficient seating capacity presented a particular problem, since the “six-foot-minimum social distancing” requirement cut our capacity to a fraction of normal size!
• In order to maintain a schedule of live-streamed Masses, church buildings must have a Wi-Fi signal strong enough to allow for a quality video and audio stream.
• Multiple exits (for traffic flow during distribution of the Eucharist) and sufficient vestibule space (for check-in) are required. In addition, at least one entrance without steps was preferred.
• In order to keep the environment safe, sufficient A/C and/or airflow for the church building is necessary.

As we applied these criteria to our church buildings, the following facts came to light:

• Due to the costs of sanitization and the scope of effort involved, we would only be able to begin re-opening by celebrating publicly-attended Masses in two locations.  Therefore, it was decided to use one location in Monroeville and one in Penn Hills.
• In Monroeville, both NAM (40-120 attendees) and St Bernadette (50-170) had sufficient seating capacity to serve the daily and weekend needs of our parishioners, but St Michael (30-90) did not.  In addition, St Michael had no Wi-Fi signal available, and the signal at NAM was weak and had proven to be insufficient to allow for live-streaming of Masses.  Therefore, the building chosen in Monroeville was the St Bernadette location.
• In Penn Hills, seating capacity varied considerably: St Bart’s was at 60-190 attendees, St Susanna at 30-110, and St Gerard Majella was 40-120.  Both St Bart’s and St Susanna had multiple exits, sufficient vestibule space for check-in at entry and an entrance with no steps, but St Gerard had only one exit, no handicapped access, and insufficient vestibule space.   At St Bart’s, the cooling tower is inoperable, so there’s no A/C available in the church, which leads to insufficient airflow for a weekend-sized congregation. In addition, there is no Wi-Fi signal available in St Bart’s or St Gerard; however, Wi-Fi ispresent at St Susanna.  Therefore, the location chosen in Penn Hills was the St Susanna building.
• Since we do not live-stream funeral Masses, and since attendance at these Masses is typically lower than weekend Mass, we decided to utilize St Bart’s as our location for all funeral Masses for our parish.

As you can see, our decisions for building locations during our “pandemic re-opening” were based on requirements that are particular to our current situation during the COVID pandemic and the restrictions that it brings. The decisions have nothing to do with any plans for the future of our church buildings.  A “Task Force” of parishioners is being formed at the present, and they’ll be tasked with collecting data regarding the needs of the parish and the ability of our buildings to meet those needs.  We hope that this process will be completed later this year. However, it’s important to note that,  at this time, we do not expect to close any CDS church buildings in 2020.  In fact, we’re beginning to make plans for the celebration of the patronal feast days at our church locations this year!  (No details are available yet, but please keep watching our bulletin, our web site ( www.cdsmph.org) and our Facebook page ( www.facebook.com/ChristTheDivineShepherd) for information as it becomes available!)

As always, please keep the Christ the Divine Shepherd Parish community in your prayers!