If you don't pay, you don't pray!

I have Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. I am a NATIVE Californian. I attended 12 years of Catholic school. I am on a bucket list trip in our RV through the US and Canada. We've been visiting our daughter in San Diego for over a week and were hoping to visit the mission on our way to see family in San Bernardino County. The first problem we encountered was no parking for our RV. Next, I tried calling the mission to inquire about parking, but their phone number is unattended. If you want to speak to a person, you need to go to their contact us section of the website and call that number. When I did that, it turned out to be the same unattended line that Google Maps had dialed for me. Because all we could find was parallel parking on the street, we could not visit the mission as a couple. My husband did not feel comfortable leaving the RV unattended because it was protruding out onto the street. He asked me to make it a very brief visit for this reason. I had to walk over two blocks from our improperly parked RV to the mission. When I got there, they wanted me to pay over $10 to be able to access the mission and take advantage of the THREE audio tours you get with paid admission. I told them I had only about 10-15 minutes for my visit. That made no difference to them.

All my life I had heard about San Juan Capistrano and had wanted to visit. What a huge disappointment to find all these obstacles and inflexible people. I just wanted to briefly see the mission and the gardens, buy a postcard and refrigerator magnet, and be on my way. I stopped at the pastoral center, and while they did listen to my plight and apologized, it did not change the circumstances of our visit. They offered me the basilica to go pray in. Well, for that matter, i could go to any local Catholic church and do that. I left there wholly frustrated and regretting having gotten off the freeway and wasting my time there. I should not be forced to pay in order to go to the mission to pray The Lord's Prayer and then quickly zip through the gardens and gift shop where I would certainly have spent money. So sad. No wonder the US Catholic church is hemorrhaging members. If it were not for their resettling legal and illegal immigrants with US taxpayers' dollars, I'm sure many more of them would have had to close their doors forever. So sad.