DEAR CLONMELIANS,

Thank you for your continued feedback regarding the renderings of the new church. I am pleased with the amount of responses we are receiving and the thoughtfulness and attention to detail each of you are using in offering your feedback.

I would like to issue a reminder that feedback forms are due end of day Sunday, July 18^th. We will have our next Building Committee meeting on Monday and will be going through each feedback form both written and submitted online at that meeting.

If you have not yet, I urge you to take this weekend to review the renderings on our website and submit your feedback so that we can take all your concerns into consideration.

Responses to feedback

I would like to continue to offer some responses to your expressed concerns which I hope will offer encouragement that your input is being heard.

Lighting/Darkness – Feedback on the type of light fixtures in the renderings was overwhelmingly positive. While the light fixtures are not directly sourced as what we will put into the new church, knowing that many parishioners appreciated the traditional look of the lights will help our building committee when seeking out exact lights to purchase.

There were some that expressed concern for how dark the new church might be because of the darkness of the ceiling in the renderings. We do plan to have all lighting on dimmer switches that way we can control the brightness/darkness of the building for different liturgies and events. We can also look at the number of lights we have, and make sure that the light fixtures we choose will shine light both up and down.

Not seen in the renderings is the use of canned lighting in various places in the church including in the sanctuary, transepts, and the potential to have lighting in the soffits around the church that may help reflect light onto the ceiling. This will be an issue we continue to discuss in the Building Committee meetings until we feel it is resolved.

Pews - Many of you noted that the pews in the renderings have a middle divider pictured, and overwhelmingly that was something you did not like. This is an easy issue to fix as we have not yet sourced the exact pews we will use in the new church. I can assure you that the pews in our new church will not have any dividers, they will be one flat bench all the way across. We will also be taking extra care to make sure our pews are well spaced and will try to make sure they are not too low so that feet fit comfortably under the pews when kneeling.

Fr. Joe