
The ship upon stormy waters is an
ancient emblem for the Church.
St. Hippolytus wrote in the 3rd Century: "The world is a sea, in
which the Church, like a ship is beaten by the waves, but not
submerged."
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After six weeks of using the Roman Missal, Third Edition, with the
newly-translated texts and responses of the Mass, we conducted a survey
of the Cathedral Parish. The survey was e-mailed to all registered
parishioners for whom we have e-mail addresses. In addition, a
link was provided on the Cathedral website. To tabulate the
results, we used SurveyMonkey, a trusted resource for web-based surveys.
About 1,600 invitations to participate in the survey were sent out, and
539 surveys were completed.
Several questions related to the new texts of the Mass. A
significant percentage of parishioners characterized their reaction as
negative (45% selected “Negative” or “Very Negative” to describe their
reaction to the texts, compared to 23.7% who selected “Positive” or
“Very Positive”). However, a majority (51.2%) feel that the parish
in general is neutral. Most respondents felt that the new texts
would not deepen their prayer life over time, with 66.5% responding “not
at all,” and 33.5% responding “somewhat” or “very much so.”
The other questions on the survey related to the learning opportunities
provided by the parish around the new Roman Missal. 87% of
respondents felt the Cathedral prepared them well for the new texts,
with only 2.5% responding negatively. Of the various educational
resources provided, which included bulletin inserts, a lecture series,
post-Mass practice sessions, and website resources, by far the most
useful to parishioners were the bulletin inserts – 85% of respondents
found these helpful. Another question asked about parishioners’
interest in further learning opportunities about the Missal – 69.3%
indicated that they would not be interested in further opportunities.
The report may be
downloaded in PDF format here.
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