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Comment by jdpage | Hacker News Reader

Seminary, then becoming ordained as a priest, at the very least.

Priests usually have to perform multiple masses a day, every day of the week.

They really have Monday morning and Monday afternoon mass? Friday afternoon? This seems like a lot more activity than the Catholic churches that I know.

Growing up, the Catholic church which my family attended, and to which our grade school was attached, held the following masses:

* Wednesday evening mass

* Thursday morning mass (this was attended by the school kids, as well as a collection of retirees)

* Saturday evening mass

* Sunday 7am mass

* Sunday 10am mass

There was also a weekly or maybe biweekly Confession.

That was serving quite a small congregation too, so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that bigger parishes have more frequent masses (although in my experience larger parishes often have more than one priest).

Also, the job of a Catholic priest is definitely not limited to performing Mass. They're essentially on call for Last Rites 24/7, but apart from that there's also just various parish events they'll be involved with.

So anyway, I don't want that job, I want the one where you give out vaguely mystical advice and listen to problems once a week, and then during the rest of the week you're like a cool side character at the local pub.

In some areas, with declining attendance and a reluctance to close any churches, many priests perform mass at multiple churches.

This is especially true in rural areas, where the density of churches was established in the pre-car era.

How does that work? "Sorry this church is closed on Sunday, we hold mass on Monday instead because our priest is shared with a bigger church."?

Could also do a 9AM mass at one church, a (9AM + mass duration + travel time + 30 minutes) mass at another, and so on

I spoke to a priest doing this when a family member passed. He'd perform the early Sunday service in town, then drive 1.5h to the next valley over and do a service there, then drive 45m to a third church before returning to the first for meetings and elderly care visits. Worse, each of these churches had different sermon schedules so he was preparing sermons customized to each on top of his other duties.

Probably depends on the region. In my country, the church i attended to had three masses during the week and i think 6 (back to back all day) during Sundays. This was only one of three churches within a walking distance, and the (mid-small) city probably had around 10-15.

Which is expected, since every adult was expected to go to church every Sunday, and many people, especially elderly, went during the week. Also there were four or five priests, and only Sunday masses has more than one attending at once, so the load probably wasn't that large as I make it sound.

There are also regions where due to diversity of congregations, masses are held in multiple languages at the same church.

Probably depends on the area. Where I am in North Carolina, the local Catholic Church has daily masses.

> They really have Monday morning and Monday afternoon mass? Friday afternoon? This seems like a lot more activity than the Catholic churches that I know.

Yes! For Catholics, there are daily Masses (and the Priest performs them, even if no one shows up!) in addition there is all of the other services they perform: Baptisms, Confessions, etc.

Then there is pastoral administration tasks, writing Homilies, etc.. then you have many important months where additional work is required..

You also have all other programs that Church organizes, including charity works, various community groups, etc..

I can't speak for Protestants however, since I'm a Catholic but if there are any hanging around here, they can clarify.

Protestant churches will vary, but I grew up in the American South, where religion is at least ostensibly important (and a major cultural fixture in the past, though less so today). Usually one or two morning services and some kind of Bible study in the evening on Sunday, and Wednesday nights usually had Bible studies and a sort of mini-service.

Other nights featured smaller study groups, athletic activities (a lot of casual adult sports like softball are organized by churches), or special events like musical performances, choir practice, etc. And then there's the daily pastoral care (officiating funerals, visiting the sick, etc.). But in the absence of Eucharist as a frequent component of worship, and where confession and last rites aren't even considered sacraments, there's little fundamentally different between a well-run Bible study and a full service except the scale. The actual things done aren't really different.

Note: Episcopal services would be much more familiar in structure to a Catholic mass, and I believe Lutherans are similar (but, y'know, not a ton of Lutherans in the South, so I can't speak with any authority on the matter).

Oh, for sure, being a minister of any religion is a tough job that involves a lot more work than many people might assume. That's the role GP was clearly referring to, there, though.

More usefully, GPs point, or something adjacent to it, might be stated like this: in our modern age, certain roles that were previously fulfilled by religious groups are now either being commercialised, taken on by the government, or left to fall by the wayside. As we navigate modernity it's important to understand the larger context so we can make better decisions about how we handle the resulting changes in our social support structure, and what we might need to intentionally add back in.

But yeah, don't become a priest if you're looking for an easy job. I didn't mean to imply that.

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