St Patrick's Dumbarton
Church Re-Opening
I’m sure that you will by now have heard the good news that Churches can reopen for public services from Wednesday as long as we observe correct procedures. In order to make the Church as safe as possible. There are certain regulations we must follow.
- 1. Social distancing of 2m
- 2. Contact details must be provided to enable tracing should the need arise.
- 3. Sanitising hands on entering and leaving the Church
- 4. Face masks must be worn in the Church
- 5. We must ensure the Church is clean and it must be disinfected after each Mass
- 6. Communion only under the form of bread and in the hand only
- 7. No singing.
The 2m restriction means that the capacity of the Church is severely restricted, limiting availability of benches to only 36. Within the 2m restrictions this means – observing social distancing - the capacity of each bench is 2 limiting the church to 72 people.
The middle aisles can sustain 2 + 1 each, or more if it is a family who does not need to social distance. However, to make full use of the capacity and to enable as many people as possible to attend Mass, we would need to allocate seats which means during phase three you may not be able to sit in your favourite seat. Further so that people would not turn up at Church only to be turned away because capacity had been reached, we may need to introduce a booking system of some kind which could be done over the internet and by phone. This has still to be fully worked out. But I will inform you once it has been put in place.
Mass times will be as before the lockdown:
- Monday, Tuesday, Friday: 10.00am and 7.00pm
- Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday: 10.00am. Vigil Mass 6.30pm
- Sunday 10.00am, 12noon and 5.30pm
