Nearly Half US Parishes Share Pastor
Per the Emerging Models of Pastoral Ministry Conference that was held last weekend (and which we were strongly urged to attend but just couldn't manage). From Catholic New Service:
Reported the results of a four-year study conducted in response to ongoing shifts in the Catholic Church. The study, commissioned in 2002 by a coalition of six Catholic national organizations, received a $2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to conduct the study and to assess its findings.
One finding:
With about 28,000 diocesan priests, 70 percent of whom are older than 55, the United States is moving toward clusters of parishes under the care of a single pastor, she said. Indeed, nearly half of all U.S. parishes already share their pastor with another parish or mission.
I've never seen a national figure like this but I'm not surprised.
A number of the dioceses we've worked with are busy cutting the number of parishes in half and twinning or merging communities.
What was announced in the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey three weeks ago (38 merged parishes, three parish clusters (involving six parishes) and 22 stand-alone parishes. The reconfiguration, when fully implemented, will bring about an overall reduction in the number of parishes from the current 124 parishes to 66 parishes.) is already present reality or the immediate future for many other dioceses.
The number of priests in the US will continue to decline until about 2015 when we should bottom out and stabilize.
But bringing the proportion of priest to lay Catholic back up to the pre-Vatican II level seems most unlikely. Yes, a higher proportion of Gen X/Millenial generation are becoming priests and religious - but since only 17 - 19% of those generations attend Mass every week (from which the majority of ecclesial vocations come), our overall numbers are not going to go up much.
This is a totally different model of priestly ministry than our practice and theology has assumed and one of the unintended effects of the fact that our Catholic population continues to grow.
What on earth would we do if the 75% of US Catholics who don't attend Mass every Sunday actually showed up? What if all the adults received at Easter were still there a year later?
Here's the deal. Our individual vocations are a mystery hidden in Christ and revealed through an extended relationship with Christ. Intentional discipleship is the source of all vocations.
If we create a culture of discipleship in our parishes today, we will change our tomorrow.
posted by Sherry W @ 8:48 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
Pope Benedict wants better priests, not necessarily more priests. And supporting our priests, as Carl Anderson suggested, is vital also, not necessarily puffing ourselves up.
When asked during his meeting with American bishops last week to comment on declining vocations and on whether he saw hope for the future, Pope Benedict stressed the importance of prayer. He was not talking about merely praying for vocations, but rather of prayer as a necessary means of discerning our own vocations. He said:
"[P]prayer is the first means by which we come to know the Lord's will for our lives. To the extent that we teach young people to pray, and to pray well, we will be cooperating with God's call. So I think learning prayer, being prayerful people, is an essential point for the living church. Programs, plans, projects are necessary and have their place; but the discernment of a vocation is above all the fruit of an intimate dialogue between the Lord and his disciples."
Well said, Susan.
In the 1996 apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata, John Paul revived the language of higher and lower vocations....Thus the consecrated life is objectively a higher expression of a universal vocation.
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I'll have to read Vita Consecrata again carefully. When I did a search for the words "higher" and "lower", none of the seven hits referred to the expression of the vocation to holiness.
His holiness did write,
"In the unity of the Christian life, the various vocations are like so many rays of the one light of Christ, whose radiance "brightens the countenance of the Church."The laity, by virtue of the secular character of their vocation, reflect the mystery of the Incarnate Word particularly insofar as he is the Alpha and the Omega of the world, the foundation and measure of the value of all created things. Sacred ministers, for their part, are living images of Christ the Head and Shepherd who guides his people during this time of "already and not yet", as they await his coming in glory. It is the duty of the consecrated life to show that the Incarnate Son of God is the eschatological goal towards which all things tend, the splendour before which every other light pales, and the infinite beauty which alone can fully satisfy the human heart. In the consecrated life, then, it is not only a matter of following Christ with one's whole heart, of loving him "more than father or mother, more than son or daughter" (cf. Mt 10:37) — for this is required of every disciple — but of living and expressing this by conforming one's whole existence to Christ in an all-encompassing commitment which foreshadows the eschatological perfection, to the extent that this is possible in time and in accordance with the different charisms. By professing the evangelical counsels, consecrated persons not only make Christ the whole meaning of their lives but strive to reproduce in themselves, as far as possible, "that form of life which he, as the Son of God, accepted in entering this world." By embracing chastity, they make their own the pure love of Christ and proclaim to the world that he is the Only-Begotten Son who is one with the Father (cf. Jn 10:30, 14:11). By imitating Christ's poverty, they profess that he is the Son who receives everything from the Father, and gives everything back to the Father in love (cf. Jn 17:7, 10). By accepting, through the sacrifice of their own freedom, the mystery of Christ's filial obedience, they profess that he is infinitely beloved and loving, as the One who delights only in the will of the Father (cf. Jn 4:34), to whom he is perfectly united and on whom he depends for everything. By this profound "configuration" to the mystery of Christ, the consecrated life brings about in a special way that confessio Trinitatis which is the mark of all Christian life; it acknowledges with wonder the sublime beauty of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and bears joyful witness to his loving concern for every human being." (VC, 16).
At least here, there isn't a reference to "higher" or "lower" vocations, but, as always, complementary vocations, which help us recognize different aspects of the mystery of the incarnation.
The laity, for example, don't take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but in their own ways they are called to consider themselves stewards, rather than owners of what God gives them, they are to live chastely, whether married or single; and they are to discern God's will for their lives and embrace it as their own.
The laity have the responsibility for living in the secular world and reshaping its institutions (politics, business, the arts, medicine, law, etc.) in such ways that they treat human beings with dignity.
Yet religious and their communities also interact with the secular world. The choices that my religious community makes (how to invest, where to shop, do we recycle or not) and that I make (e.g., how do I vote) make an impact (albeit small, given our numbers). The fact that our lives are not secular per se doesn't mean that religious cannot speak to secular institutions. We do so in a prophetic way, as outsiders, whereas the laity can change things from within.
Clerical, lay, and religious life all point to God, but in different ways. They all have points of contact in the secular realm, but in different ways. Each are important, each are challenging. They are all complementary ways of life that touch upon some aspect of Christ the priest, prophet and king.
Maybe Anom. is refering to this:
Truth & Meaning of Human Sexuality
35. Parents should therefore rejoice if they see in any of their children the signs of God’s call to the higher vocation of virginity or celibacy for the love of the Kingdom of Heaven. They should accordingly adapt formation for chaste love to the needs of those children, encouraging them on their own path up to the time of entering the seminary or house of formation, or until this specific call to self-giving with an undivided heart matures."
or this,
Familiaris Consortio,
59"Indeed Christian parents, discerning the signs of God's call, will devote special attention and care to education in virginity or celibacy as the supreme form of that self-giving that constitutes the very meaning of human sexuality."
Just so happen to be reviewing these two documents. I wonder what the Church means by higher and supreme form of self-giving?
Very interesting.
Bobby
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