Deachman: Church prays for bylaw not to ticket their cars on Sunday
When you’re down, desperate and despairing — when the light at the end of the tunnel has all but flickered out — to whom do you turn?
For members of Blessed Sacrament Parish on Fourth Avenue in the Glebe, the answer is St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases.
The earthly problem vexing them is the city — specifically the
handing out $80 parking tickets while they (the parishioners, not the bylaw officers) are attending mass and other church functions. There is free parking on the streets immediately surrounding the church, but between 7 am and 7 pm, it’s limited to one hour — almost exactly how long Sunday’s 10 a.m. mass runs. Heaven help any parishioners who arrive at 9:30 am for the pre-mass holy rosary, or stick around after mass to have a coffee and chat with other parishioners.
Months ago, church officials launched a campaign lobbying the city to have the
limit changed to three hours, as is the case in other residential neighbourhoods. They’re not asking for a lot: just some grace and discretion. But their pleas, so far at least, appear to have fallen on deaf ears.
‘I love coming to church, and I leave full of joy,” says parishioner Alex D’Angelo, who has received two such tickets, including one in October. “Then, when I go and see a parking ticket on my car, it’s a mood killer.
“Anywhere you’re going to practise your faith, there shouldn’t be a time limit.”
Another ticketed parishioner, Gabrielle Berard, says the situation has become a source of apprehension among church-goers.
“I think a lot of people have quite a bit of anxiety during mass about whether they’ll squeeze in under that 60 minutes. It’s unfortunate in that it’s Sunday morning and there’s not a huge demand for parking spaces in this area at this time. What you have here is a tremendously vibrant faith community that is gathering in the Glebe and gives back 365 days a year. I think that’s why parishioners find it so discouraging. It feels petty.”
Parishioner Jason Morin says that some church members have dealt with the situation by foregoing mass at Blessed Sacrament altogether, instead finding other venues at which to worship.
Enter St. Jude.
The church recently handed out novena prayer cards to parishioners — novenas, to the uninitiated, are prayers, often with a fixed intention, to be repeated for nine consecutive days.
“The Church,“ this novena reads in part, “honours and invokes you universally, most holy Apostle, St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost hopeless. Please pray for me because I am helpless and alone. Intercede with God for me, that He send visible and timely help where help is almost impossible to come by. Come to my aid in this great need so that I may receive the comfort and assistance of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, especially, That Blessed Sacrament Parish will enjoy unhindered parking during any of our Mass Times, especially on Sundays & Solemnities.”
Parishioner Harold Marcotte has repeated the novena to St. Jude nine times. As an extra measure, he also emailed the mayor’s office, which netted a reply saying his message would be forwarded to the department responsible.
“They seem to be taking joy in enforcing it,” he says. “I know they’re just doing their job, but they’re being told to do that, right? Why can’t they just leave it alone for Saturday and Sunday during this time, so that they don’t harass people going to church?”
Why, indeed? Of course cities need rules. Streets don’t manage themselves, and parking regulations exist for good reasons. But rules shouldn’t replace judgment and discretion. When enforcement becomes so rigid that it undermines community life, something has gone wrong. It’s one thing to enforce regulations, but you’d hope that that could be done with some compassion and grace.
On a recent Sunday, for example, parishioners came out from mass to again find tickets on their cars, this time not for exceeding the one-hour parking limit, but for parking there at all during the city-wide parking ban due to the weather. Guilty as charged, I suppose, but when you consider when the city issued the ban — I received an email notification of it at 8:18 a.m. — it raises the question of whether the goal was compliance or simply issuing tickets.
Meanwhile, and though I strongly lean towards atheism, perhaps the city could find some direction from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus reminds the Pharisees of the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith.
Instead, it stumbles from one miscue to the next, seemingly oblivious to the grey areas between the black and white. Consider the recent donnybrook that erupted between the city and parishioners at St. Patrick’s Basilica on Nepean Street after the city in October began enforcing new regulations requiring paid parking on Saturdays, a policy church members refer to as “Pay to Pray.”
St. Patrick’s rector Father Stephen Amesse has been trying to get the bylaw reversed but so far has been unable to get the city to budge. He worries that it’s just a matter of time before Sundays are added.
“Let me assure you that the only benefit from dealing with the City of Ottawa bureaucracy is that you get less time in Purgatory,” he wryly noted in an October newsletter to church members.
This is, after all, the same city that in August last year ticketed the funeral procession — outside St. Patrick’s — of former Ottawa alderwoman and Liberal MP Marlene Catterall, including the hearse.
And it’s the same bylaw department that, a month earlier and within 24 hours of a tornado touching down in Barrhaven, had officers in the neighbourhood, chalking the tires of residents’ vehicles and roofing companies’ trucks that couldn’t park in driveways because of the debris.
None of this is to suggest malice on the part of the city — only a recurring tendency to mistake rigidity for fairness. So it’s understandable that parishioners at Blessed Sacrament have turned to St. Jude for help. Hopefully he or the city will hear those prayers and show some grace.
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