Pastoral Planning- Father Kevin Louis's Bulletin Column - December 17, 2006
On February 22, 2033, I turn 70 and therefore can request of our Bishop the status of “senior priest.” In other words, on that date I become eligible to retire from pastoral assignment in our Diocese! Why in the world am I thinking about retirement? Recently, a committee of priests established by Bishop Listecki submitted an initial draft of a comprehensive pastoral plan for our Diocese looking ahead to the year 2025 – a mere eight years before my retirement! This first draft of the pastoral plan was presented to all the priests at an extraordinary closed-door meeting held in Tomah on November 9-10. The document is a strategic contingency plan for how to effectively organize pastoral care within the Diocese.
The Bishop directed such a proposal be developed in order to: (1) plan for the future well-being and stability of the Diocese; (2) respond appropriately to demographic and population shifts, both those that have already occurred and those that are anticipated; (3) exercise good stewardship of our spiritual, material, and personnel resources; and (4) plan for the decline in the number of priests. Some of the statistics gathered by the pastoral planning committee are rather sobering. In 1965 there were 310 active diocesan priests serving in our parishes and institutions. Today, that number is 103. The number of active diocesan priests is projected to decline until the year 2025 when it is estimated that that there will be 82. This is expected to be the stable number of priests available for active ministry from that point forward. When you compare the number of priests to the number of parishes, the necessity for reorganization of parishes and redistribution of clergy throughout the Diocese is clear – that is, unless we want to kill off our remaining priests! Currently, there are 165 parishes in our Diocese. The pastoral plan calls for that number to be reduced to 75 by the year 2025.
The November 16 issue of our own Catholic Times carried extensive coverage of the pastoral plan (another reason for every Catholic in our Diocese to subscribe to our paper and actually read it!). In the coming months the draft will be presented to various groups throughout the Diocese affording the committee the opportunity to receive feedback. In early January 2007 the committee will be in Stevens Point to speak with the pastoral staff of the parishes of our deanery as well as members of our parish Pastoral and Finance Councils. By the end of the summer of 2007 the committee will forward to Bishop Listecki their revised and final proposal.
One of the other interesting statistics gathered by the pastoral planning committee was the average Mass attendance in our Diocese. On an average weekend in our Diocese, some 71,000 people participate in the Mass. That means that only 35% of Catholics in our Diocese are attending Mass on a regular basis – a number comparable to the national average. The news at Saint Peter is slightly more encouraging insofar as our average weekend Mass attendance is 945 or 42% of our parishioners. Another good indicator is that in 2006 there have been on average 142 more people participating in Mass each weekend at Saint Peter compared to one year ago.
Please continue to pray for Bishop Listecki and beg the Lord to send the Holy Spirit upon all of us in this Diocese of La Crosse, especially as we plan for the future. In the coming months, we as a parish family must ask ourselves many of the same questions formulated by the diocesan pastoral planning committee. What will Saint Peter Parish look like in 2025? What should it look like as a parish? What resources will be at our disposal in 2025 – spiritual, material, personnel? What will our spiritual and material needs be in 2025, and how will we meet them as a parish family? Now is not the time to be wasting our time and energy as a parish sweating the small things (“Isn’t it awful how that light on the Saint Joseph side illuminates differently from the Blessed Virgin’s side!”). We have much more serious matters to tend to. For example, where each weekend are the other 58% of our registered parishioners and what can we do to welcome them back? With what fidelity and fervor are we living our Catholic faith and what can we do as a parish to strengthen that? What part can and will you play in cooperating with God’s grace to forge the faith-filled future of Saint Peter Parish?
Saint Peter, pray for us! Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!