Fr Allen's introduction to consultation
​Thank you for wanting to learn more about the consultation.

There are three main things that I am consulting on.

A.The Parish Church
Do please read the background paper regarding the proposed repair and renewal of the parish church. It was circulated some weeks ago and is available here. It includes some images to help some background to what is being proposed and why.

When sharing your response, do try and give some context or reason for your views also. You are also asked to give your name/contact details when you respond. All this is to help us give full weight to your views, and also be able to contact you if there are things it would seem helpful to explore further.
B.The Parish’s Community Centre
The Newman Centre had been let to a charitable trust for many years before returning to parish use in 2020. Our parish itself makes relatively little use of the Centre – although it is the regular meeting place for the parish’s Sunday Friends Group and we hold a number of social events there in the year. The parish also makes the hall available free of charge to the Sutton Coldfield Adventure Unit on Friday evenings through the year.
C.Sunday Mass times
During the COVID crisis, for a brief period, while the numbers permitted to attend any particular Mass were greatly reduced an additional Vigil Mass for Sunday was added at 4pm on Saturday. When this was no longer needed a number of parents of younger children commented how that time was more convenient for their family than either the Saturday 6pm Mass or the Sunday morning Masses. Given that most other local parishes offer a Saturday 6pm Mass, maybe it would be advantageous to families in our parish and more widely to have Mass at 4pm.
To help us best evaluate responses please only answer the questions is Section C if you either attend the current 6pm Saturday Mass, or would be likely to regularly attend a Saturday 4pm Mass.