Renovation Committee Blog
Read the latest news about the St. Julia Renovation Committee's progress! We invite you to add your comments and read the comments of other parishioners. Just click on the blue comments link under each blog entry.
Fri Feb 15, 2008
Repairs for St. Joseph Church and St. Joseph House
We got good news this week that Cardinal Sean and the archdiocesan chancellor, Mr. James McDonough, have provided our parish with very adequate funding to undertake varied major and minor repairs to St. Joseph Church and the adjacent St. Joseph House. Aside from improved interior church lighting, they will not notably change the look of the church, renovated about fifteen years ago after a sanctuary fire. A new church roof and much needed attention to the flat-roofed extensions of the church and the house will be undertaken. Also important to be done are some painting and the reinstallation of church fans (both at places where ceiling mold has grown) and improved basement pumping. This provision of funds respects the reality that the former St. Joseph Parish had sufficient finances for this work before the time of reconfiguration. We should be able to complete these repairs over the next half-year or so. Our work toward settling on renovation plans for St. Julia Church continues. I think it can happen more easily in many respects because of this archdiocesan assistance specifically for our Lincoln buildings.
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Tue Nov 06, 2007
What are the basic ideas which inform our renovation plans, and how do they compare with the current state of our church building?
The St. Julia Church Renovation Committee is basing its recommendations to renovate the church on the liturgical guidelines documented in "Built of Living Stones: Art, Architecture and Worship", compiled by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, published in 2000.
Here are some of the essential premises from that document (all quotations come from “Built of Living Stones”) upon which we, the members of the Renovation Committee, are basing our recommendations:
1. The church building should foster the “full and active participation” of all the faithful. The faithful includes the parishioners assembled, the priest, and all those serving as lay ministers in the liturgy (lector, cantor, choir, altar servers, Eucharistic ministers).
More...
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Why consider renovation at this time? by Michael Glynn
Some may ask why St. Julia Parish is considering a renovation project at this time. “There is nothing wrong with our church. I like it just the way it is.” The truth is we have a very nice church that has served us well since it was renovated and expanded in 1961. Some parishioners have been here since that time and longer, others have moved in and some have moved on. Each parishioner participates in his or her own way. Some are very involved while others come and pray in solitude. There is the guy who likes to enter the church from the back, walks up three pews, worships during the Mass and leaves as soon as the priest leaves the sanctuary. There is the family who comes to Mass, walks down the center aisle almost to the front and participates in singing all the hymns, helps with the offertory and visits with friends after Mass. Some always sit on the left side of the church, others always on the right. We are creatures of habit – whatever makes us feel secure. We are all members of our Catholic Church and we use God’s house in different ways to worship Him. More...
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Mon Nov 05, 2007
Why do we need to renovate St. Julia Church?
The St. Julia church building is in need of repair and refurbishment, both on the exterior and the interior of the church. More importantly, the way Liturgy is celebrated today is vastly different than when this church was built in 1921, and then added on to in 1961. The liturgical changes of Vatican II, in the mid 1960’s, make the current interior design of St. Julia church somewhat obsolete in terms of the way in which we should be celebrating Mass, celebrating Baptism and celebrating Reconciliation – largely because the liturgical changes call for much more active participation of the laity during these sacraments. More...
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Fri Nov 02, 2007
About St. Julia Church Renovation
Every once in a while, I am asked about the progress of the St. Julia Church Renovation project. Our committee of 12 parishioners and staff members is meeting weekly this fall to consider many aspects and possibilities. We aim to preserve the beauty of St. Julia Church, while cleaning it up, brightening it somewhat, and making it more functional for liturgical prayer moments. In turn, these efforts, we hope, will make the life of our Catholic community more vibrant. More...
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Sun Sep 30, 2007
Weekly meetings begin
Our St. Julia Renovation Committee is meeting weekly with architect/parishioner Martin Dermady to do the exciting work of readying possible choices for the restoration and enhancement of our Weston church. When that phase of 12 weekly meetings is done, we will invite the wider parish into the discussion once again, as we did last winter after our early needs-assessment phase finished.
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Sun Sep 09, 2007
Renovation Committee travels
This weekend members of the Renovation committee took a trip to visit a lineup of nearby parish churches whose design after renovation would make them somewhat illustrative of what can be done to preserve the best in a renovated church building and to enhance the liturgical and spiritual life of God's people. Parishioner / architect Martin Dermady spearheaded the committee's tour. More...
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Sun Sep 02, 2007
Renovation Committee Process
Soon our St. Julia Church Renovation Committee begins a new phase: meeting weekly to consider specific possibilities for renovation. Parishioner / architect Martin Dermady will lead us in these explorations. We began to meet a year ago, with the first phase involving our getting to know the universal Church's vision of how a church building should be outfitted. It led us to see some needs that our church building has. More...
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Wed Aug 01, 2007
Martin Dermady hired as Project Architect
The parish secured the services of architect Martin Dermady (one of our parishioners) to work with the Committee to prepare a feasibility study for interior and exterior renovations to St. Julia Church. The study, including cost estimates, is expected to be completed by December, 2007.
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Sun Jul 01, 2007
Early Discussions with Architects
Our Renovation Committee for St. Julia Church has continued to meet. We have conversed with a few architects. We hope soon to engage one architect to bring us all into the process of exterior restoration and interior restoration/renovation. My aim is for us to carry out this process without diminishment of the pastoral work that has to take central place in the life of our parish. It will demand some adjustments, for sure. The work is needed, and putting it off a lot longer would not be the right thing to do. But the life of a parish cannot be reduced to a project, no matter how important it is
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