Mass at the Skating Rink

Saturday I went to mass at the skating rink. No, they didn't have couple skate or do the limbo-I guess the skates were retired some time ago. I went to mass at St. Thomas in Long Beach, Mississippi, where the "new" church, put up after Hurricane Camille destroyed the "old" church in 1969, was destroyed (at least the bottom 20 feet of it) by Hurricane Katrina. The Knights of Columbus had been looking for a new hall and right after the Hurricane, purchased the old skating rink in town. The renovated it into a combination church and school, and brought in portable classrooms for more space. It was interesting. The had carpeted the floor and some church somewhere else had donated pews, so those had been put in recently. The altar also appeared to have been a donation. The tabernacle appeared to me to be what was in the church--but it's been a while. There were two sets of Stations of the Cross. One set was obviously made by the school children and was made of laminated construction paper. The other was some sort of metal and was probably donated by some parish that no longer needed them. They had cubicle dividers (you know, the things used in offices to make temporary walls) blocking and making a path to the bathroom (which was on the same wall as the sanctuary). I don't know the cost for the set-up but it was all done in a few months and even if they had bought everything new (which they didn't) I doubt the cost would come close to the over $1,000,000 they are looking at to replace the church. The bishop has yet to decide whether the parish will be rebuilt on the beach, where it has been for over 100 years, or if it will move inland. He has decided that the school will move inland, and to the next town over, to be combined with another school.