Our communion lines seem long and this means the mass is that much longer. Is there any way to shorten the line? Perhaps we can put some Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion towards the center of the church.

Thank you for your question and your suggestion.  The logistics of serving the numbers of people we have been seeing can be daunting.  It does not surprise us that we will need to make some adjustments to our traffic pattern during Holy Communion.  There are guidelines in place In this diocese addressing the manner in which the Faithful are to receive the Blessed Sacrament.  In most of those guidelines it states words to the effect of “when the Faithfull approach the altar”.  Stopping someone at the halfway point and keeping them from coming all the way to the altar is inappropriate.  From a pure logistical standpoint your suggestion makes sense but not from a theological point of view.

We are looking at adding more Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.  We are leaning towards having additional ministers on the south side but still with the rest of the ministers.  We need to look at our available pool of ministers to see the timeframe to implement this fix. We may need to have some more ministers trained before it can be done.