Parish Manual by Edwin Colaco and Blany Pinto

Frs Edwin Colaco and Blany Pinto are bringing out a rather wonderful and useful parish manual. I have had the privilege of going through at proof stage, and I thought: what a wonderful tool. It lays out, in a very practical manner, all sorts of things that both the priests and the people have to keep in mind while running a parish.

I found the Church Support system especially interesting: in Virar East Parish, practically nothing proceeds without the Church Support card. If you need baptism, you come there with your Church Support Card. If you are getting married, the same. This is a system that is being followed in most North American Parishes. While it might sound somewhat business like, perhaps it is something that makes for smooth functioning of a parish.

Then there is also another card which lists all the groups and activities in the parish, and each parishioner indicates at least one of these, and how much time (min. 1 hour a week) s/he is willing to give to the parish.