Welcome
to the
Saints Be Praised
Church of the Irish Penitent
Fr. Pat McCann, Rector
Fr. Phyran Brymstone, Vicar
Welcome to our Church! Please read every page on this site to see what all we have ro say! Learn more about us and our community than you ever wanted to know! Find out what we hold near and dear to our hearts! Then ask God to help you qualify to join us!
Our congregation - folks just like you
When we first moved into out Church building, it was bare of everything except the Baptistry Pool, or whatever you call it, and a pile of stuff like pamphlets, guitar strings, (broken and otherwise), old papers, and other garbage.
The pool was removed by Wey Farere and a crew of his; it is now a koi pond at the Pot-O'-Gold Winery. We kept the folding chairs for a while until we could afford to buy honest pews.
We threw the rest of the stuff away, cleaned, re-painted, and re-decorated the interior (the exterior looked O.K.), and began holding services and recruiting new members.
At first we thought that it would be difficult to get enough parishoners to actually establish a viable Church.
But Rocky O'Leary, the bartender, manager, and owner of O'Leary's Pub, which is adjacent to the Church, came up with a number of good ideas for recruiting members and for helping us get started.
We invited all our friends to come to the Pub where they met and had a few pints with us.
After sampling the food and the drink, they became regular customers of the Pub, and were most amenable to joining with us here at the Church.
Rocky continues to generously volunteer to buy the materials and donate the use of his Mimeograph machine to print the Bulletin for us every Sunday. He also always includes a half-price coupon for the Irish Coffee served following the 11:00 Mass on Sunday. That usually convinces even the hold-outs that membership is a good deal.
Educating our dear sweet children
Our Sunday School for children 12 and under is available on Sundays for the convenience of our parishoners. Drop the little darlings off just before the 9:00 High Mass and pick them up immediately after. (Our Sunday School volunteer teachers can stand only so much ...) We do not do this for the 11:00 Mass because the Pub doesn't want to deal with them either.
Further reading