St. Catherine Church is silent this week. There will be no Christmas Eve Mass, and no service Christmas morning. The doors of the 129-year-old house of worship are locked. Candles won’t be lit in the sanctuary; hymns and carols won’t be sung.
Its modest congregation, many of whom have met and prayed at the church for decades, will go elsewhere to celebrate the birth of Jesus, scattering to Masses in Helena, Whitehall, Butte, and beyond. There are no plans to come together in Boulder.
That prospect has left some dismayed. “It makes you want to lose your faith,” says one longtime parishioner. “I hate to say that. But I put my life into that church.”
