I enjoy going to Mass when I am on vacation but I don’t like trying to locate a nearby church when I am not familiar with the area. Planning ahead can be the answer to a lot of frustration. The four sties below will help you to have a more enjoyable vacation without the guilt of missing Mass. Let your children know ahead of time that attending Mass is on your vacation agenda and they will be less likely to grumble when having to get up Sunday morning. It will start the day right for the entire family with plenty of time left over for other activities. My parents made it part of our vacation plans and we always had our picture taken, usually outside by a statue or fountain on the church grounds.
1. Mass Times is a very easy site to navigate. Next to each church name (in large, bold, letters), you can click on “website” to go directly to that church’s website. Contact information (address and telephone number) can be found in the first column. Daily Mass times are in the second column. The third column, “Other Services”, will give you extra information such as Holy Days and confession times. I typed “St. Pete, FL” in the “search box” at the top of the page and it pulled up all the Catholic churches in St. Pete, Florida with churches in nearby cities (Tampa, Seminole…) following.
2. The Catholic Directory gives you a choice to either click on a state on the map or on the list of states under the map. Then click on the city of your choice (listed alphabetically). I clicked on Indiana and then the city of Anderson which brought up two Catholic churches and one Catholic school. It gave the name and address of each and a sidebar with churches in nearby cities. I then clicked on St. Mary’s which gave me all the information I needed, including the website.
3. Parishes Online allows you to find a Catholic church by Area Code, Zip Code, or Diocese. I was able to do all three easily. If you have only part of the information you need, you can type it in to bring up a list of possibilities. Typing in “holy, tn” got me a list of all the Catholic churches in Tennessee that began with the name, “Holy” with contact information, including a map. A click on “Organization Details” took me to my choice’s website. A quick click on “Map/Locator” on the sidebar (left-side of the page) gave me a map and a list of states below it.
4. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Diocesan Locator is an official Catholic site but is slower to navigate. Enter a zip code or select a state which will take you to the list of each diocese in that state. After clicking on the diocese you need, a warning that you are leaving the website with an option to “cancel” or “continue” will pop up. In my case, I was taken to the website of the Diocese of Knoxville. Under “Parish List” (in a drop-down list). I clicked “Parish Locator” and was taken to a map with a list of churches underneath it. The list of the churches had contact and location information with website and/or directions to each but was not in a helpful order. After typing “Pigeon Forge” in the search box at the left-side of the page, however, I was given the name of the church I was interested in.
