2. You might want to read Herbert Gutmans’ “Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America 1815-1919″ http://journeytohistory.com/History1B/Articles/Work_Culture_Society.pdf

He addresses this need by industry to break every new wave of immigrants of their bad religous habits.

“Slavic and Italian immigrants carried with them to industrial America subcultures quite different from that of village Jews, but their work habits were just as alien to the modern factory. Rudolph Vecoli had reconstructed Chicago’s South Italian community to show that adult male seasonal construction gangs as
contrasted to factory labor were one of many traditional customs adapted to the new environment, and in her study of South Italian peasant immigrants Phyllis H. Williams found among them men who never adjusted to factory labor. After “years” of “excellent” factory work, some “began . . . to have minor accidents” and others “suddenly give up and are found in their homes complaining of a
vague indisposition with no apparent physical basis.” Such labor worried early twentieth-century efficiency experts, and so did Slavic festivals, church holidays,
and “prolonged merriment.” “Man,” Adam Smith wisely observed, “is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported.” That was just as true for these Slavic immigrants as for the early nineteenth-century native American factory workers. A Polish wedding in a Pennsylvania mining or mill town lasted between three and five days. Greek and Roman Catholics shared the same jobs but had different holy days, “an annoyance to many employers.” The Greek Church had “more than eighty festivals in the year,” and “the Slav religiously observes the days on which the saints are commemorated and invariably takes a holiday.” . .”

I was with you, Morning’s Minion, until this.

Why is the starting point someone else doing something?

Let the starting point be me praying the Liturgy of the Hours today. Or fasting on July 21, St. Mary Magdalene’s Eve. Or someone else fasting on August 5.

As Kurt says, “Start with the people.” Start with us.

We got a group off the ground in our parish a couple years ago to say Vespers two nights a week in English and one night a week in Spanish. It’s doable, and it’s got a loyal following of a half dozen people or so, but it’s hard to build large amounts of interest in going down to the parish for something that only takes about fifteen minutes in the slot right after work.

Yes it is a great idea; no, we don’t need to get the Pope behind the idea. That has been the problem — waiting for some top down decree. We need to get the lay faithful behind the idea — start with the people not the prelates.

Exactly. I have work at 8:30, so there’s no way to do a 8 am or 9 am mass. I could try a 7:30 mass, but it’s so far from my work that with traffic it’d get to work on time about 50% of the time. There are no post 5:00 masses until LSU starts back again, when the campus church has 6 pm mass again.

Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. I can think of a few things (not move Holy days of obligation to Sundays, encourage parents to celebrate the feast day of their child’s namesake, encourage Sunday as a day of rest and a feast day, encourage more Mass attendance during the week by making sure the Masses are at times for people working) but that seems like a small step but it could be a first step. Is there anything else that you can think of to move towards a more liturgical life for Catholics?

I agree 100%. Good points Andy.