Simple View
This one-page form is suitable for a "regular" Mass in a familiar location, where there is perhaps one priest, one musician, and one audio-visual person operating a very simple system. It has space for notes about the liturgical and pastoral considerations for the day, and lists the major parts of the celebration.It can be successfully used to plan a Sunday Mass in a small parish (or one where there is a low level of lay involvement), or a regular Mass in a chapel etc.
It probably does not have enough detail for a larger parish Mass, or a special celebration, or a school Mass.
Organiser / Co-ordinator / Event View
This two-page form is suitable for planning a larger Mass, where there are perhaps several priests, a choir plus soloists and several musicians (or some other form of multi-person music group), groups of people involved in various other aspects, and a need to book venues and/or hold separate practices.It may be helpful for priests/pastors planning regular celerations in larger parishes, or for teachers (chaplains, Directors of Religious Studies) planning school or organisation Masses where may people will be involved.
Page 1 has space for notes about the liturgical and pastoral focuses for the day, and to record exactly who is involved, and when the various planning meetings and practice(s) will be. It includes group like car-park attendants, ushers, hospitality teams. It can also be used for notes for things like venues being booked.
Page 2 lists the parts of the celebration in detail, including the "before" and "after" aspects.
Music Planning View
This is very similar to the Organiser view. It is for Directors of Music, music groups or liturgy-planning-teams.Page One records the liturgical and pastoral influences,and has space for recording the director, instrumentalists, soloists, cantor etc. It also has space the technical needs.
Page Two lists the parts of the celebration in detail, including the "before" and "after" aspects. It has extra columns showing, for each item:
- the (relative) importance of singing it (based on the Vatican II documents and various subsequent bishops documents)
- the key selected for it, and
- notes about the performance (eg who, which verses to use, reminders)
Music Team View
This one-page version is suitable for individual music-team members (eg instrumentalists, soloists) who need to be involved in individual parts of the Mass, but who do not need to know all the details because they will be guided by a director/conductor on the day.It includes a note about the practice day/time
Audio-Visual / Technical View
This version combines:- Page One of the music-planning view (with details about soloist, instrumentalists, cantors etc)
- A section for notes about special tech requirements
- Page Two of the organiser view (with equal weight given to each part of the ceremony)
It is suitable for AV (sound) system operators, technical directors, people preparing and running slides with hymn words, etc.
Summary
All versions can be downloaded (Word or Adobe PDF format) from the Catholic Mass Planning templates page.Each template aims to use the minimum number of pages, and to present as much information as possible in a one-page view. Particular emphasis has been put on having the entire list of Mass parts on one page, so that people can easily understand where their role fits into the overall celebration.
If think another view would be useful, please leave a note on the Comments page. Or you can use any of these templates as a basis for your own form, provided it's a non-commercial use and the copyright notice at the bottom is not changed.