Every reorganisation means a loss of Mass goers. Saint Matthews might be the most drab boring modern structure you can imagine. But its people have been going there for decades and some just won't transfer to St Joseph's five miles away once Saint Matts is sold to make way for a more attractive supermarket.
The immediate need for more priests would dictate a vigorous vocations drive which would yield results on 10 years, as another commentator on this thread noted had achieved results in her diocese. Plus, for the short term, recruitment of priests from Africa or elsewhere. French dioceses have done this to the displeasure of the dioceses back home. No one wants to return to a poverty and corruption ridden failed state after three months in a French suburb. But another commentator noted that the Bishop in Seattle has turned down an offer of 30 religious order priests - I suspect they were the wrong type of Catholic. If that is true, the case is hopeless.
Or, god forbid, we look to the "viri probati" ("proven men") deacons, in long stable marriages, with grown children, retired with pensions and ask them, after a time of discernment and formation (with their wife's blessing) to accept ordination to the priesthood.
There should be plenty of empty rectories for these trained men and their wives to live in. The salaries they would be paid would not break the parishes.
Celibacy or Sacraments?
The loss of members or possibly thriving evangelizing parishes?
Not a panacea but a possible solution in these situations.
The Norbertine canons of St. Michael's Abbey is a vibrant and ever-growing community of about 100+ members (and growing so much that they're making a new foundation in another diocese). They regularly help at parishes in the Diocese of Orange on Sundays.
Great article that captures the sense many of us in the Archdiocese of Seattle have about this. I'm on board with a consolidation process, it desperately needs to happen, and it will be painful no matter what. The chancery is truly receptive to feedback, we've seen changes in the "families" come from priest feedback already. HR has said they'd help match lay staff to jobs across the archdiocese when they're inevitably lost (something the archdiocese wouldn't acknowledge at first). You can always come up with new ministries to run, but a parish can only have so many admin staff, you know? The time from the announcement of this process to the announcement of actual practical realities of it has felt like ages and that's only stoked anxiety. And the priests are right - the formal consultation sessions are just about managing feelings, even though there's evidence the archdiocese actually is receptive to real feedback.
The question I keep seeing is "Why is absolutely nothing being said about vocations?". The impression many of us get is that the tacit expectation is we'll come out of this "journey to vibrancy" as "vibrant parishes" and the issue will solve itself... but vocations take a good ten years or more to cultivate, and we're hearing nothing about plans to start planting those seeds.
I would love a "Pillar Investigates" report into these diocesan consolidation projects. There are a number of angles I have been puzzling over.
What is causing so many diocese to choose this path (seems weird that so many bishops would discern this independently; is there a USCCB/other movement advancing this idea).
How does this impact priestly identity? Seems like it would vastly increase the administrative burden for the pastor (even thinking beyond the implementation phase), while creating a dynamic where many parochial administrators may never become pastors. Do the laity struggle to see the priest as father when there is a rotating schedule of priests and the pastor may therefore seem somewhat distant. Is anybody thinking about the potential impact to vocations of young boys not having as consistent of a relationship with a single priest (or is having a relationship with several rotating priests helpful to vocations)?
What spiritual fruits are born of these projects? Is it just administrative consolidation to achieve economies of scale - I hope not, and Bishops are communicating a broader vision, so would love to see how that plays out.
It's easy to find stories of bishops saying these plans are the fruit of discernment of the Holy Spirit, and it is easy to find stories of the laity grumpy about these plans. But we read The Pillar because you guys get at the meat of the story beneeth those top line narratives.
This is happening at the same time everywhere because 1) the Boomer generation of priests is hitting retirement age at the same time everywhere, and 2) the bishops talk to each other. This reorganization scheme is primarily about 3) ensuring priests are rarely—if ever—living alone and serving their community alone and 4) delaying as much as possible the far more painful decisions to fully close churches, schools, and other ministries. Those latter decisions will eventually be made according to the financial situations of each new parish family; the present decisions are being made primarily according to the sharp decrease in the number of priests over the next decade as the Boomer priests go into full retirement.
It is not just the USCCB - note my comment about my own diocese in southern England embarking on a similar mass contraction plan. They are already selling property. And just about every English diocese I read about is in similar decline.
My brother the priest once lost his parish to an attempt by the diocese to give three parishes to two priests. The bishop there wasn't clear about which one was in charge; I think they were supposed to be equals. My understanding is that by the end of a year they were no longer on speaking terms. So one of the rules must be that only one of them can be in charge and the bishop must be very clear as to who that is.
Missing from this discussion is the power of the Holy Spirit. These men bear the seal of priestly ordination. We must all allow room for the Spirit to work.
To be fair to this reorganization project there's a lot of talk about the Holy Spirit in the materials, and they've been providing prayer intentions for the process for a year.
When my bishop arrived in this diocese in 2010, he asked everybody to pray for vocations. He encouraged us to do this in front of the Blessed Sacrament whenever possible. We get prayer cards with the names of our seminarians, one per day of the month per person, and the rest of the days with first the Pope, then the bishop, and then groups for each of the other days. When he arrived there was talk of consolidating parishes; now there's a fund on Pentecost Sunday to pay for their educations, which became necessary a few years after his arrival. Amazing what prayer for vocations will do.
The diocese I came from has 21 seminarians. From what I have heard and read it did not have the funds to pay for the seminarians education although they had set up a fund for future priests that couldn’t be used until years in the future. I do wonder how many will become priests and how many will drop out. A parish priest has a hard life; sometimes without the support they need.
Pastors have certain canonical rights. One of those is stability of office. In the US, pastors are generally appointed for a 6-year term.
The bishop cannot simply remove a man once he's installed him as pastor. There's a formal process, and it sometimes can take quite a bit of time, documentation, resources, etc. And even then, you can only remove a pastor under certain circumstances.
Therefore, in order to make all these movements for the consolidation program, the archbishop is asking for the voluntary (?) resignation of all his pastors to avoid canonical difficulties.
My question is: what happens if a particular pastor and refuses to tender his resignation? Could the bishop then cite disobedience and move to remove that priest from his office?
Parochial vicars do not enjoy the same rights, so bishops oftentimes move them freely. I know a priest who gets moved to a new parish almost every summer.
Here, several priests were moved this year. Our beloved pastor was only with us for 2.5 years, and he made clear that he did not ask to move. But the bishop made some sweeping reassignments, and it appeared that several priests did not want to move but had to. Many priests were not thrilled with the assignments (and privatelysaid so), and it seemed that there wasn't a real choice in the matter. Hence my confusion
FWIW, we had a variety of consolidations/closures within New York some years back -- and we really needed it. It was completely absurd, having some of the old parishes one block away from each other in Manhattan, which had been related to immigrant groups from over 100 years before. These groups having all moved away decades later.
I know that's not what Seattle is talking about, but it seems reasonable for dioceses to do reviews of their structures regularly. That NY had let some of this slide for so long was not great.
I lived in the Archdiocese of Seattle for 24 years. Where I lived was over 80 miles from the cathedral in Seattle, and still well within the Archdiocese. I think one fact this article fails to convey, especially when it just refers to "Seattle," is that the Archdiocese covers the entirety of Western Washington - all land west of the Cascade mountains, from the Oregon border to Canada - over 24,700 square miles. That's a lot of area to cover for so few priests. Compare that to the state of New Jersey (8,722 sq. mi) and its 6 dioceses - albeit with a larger population, and much larger Catholic population. This is at least noteworthy for such an article.
That’s not unlike most diocese in Australia and finding coverage for people in the back of nowhere parishes is difficult enough before we had a vocation crisis.
I think the challenge with something like this is to avoid an "us vs. them" mentality. It's not the archbishop vs. the people, or the clergy vs. the laity, or the archbishop vs. the clergy, it's just us. And WE, as a Church, have to figure out how to navigate these very difficult situations. Because it's going to happen in most of our dioceses.
We're going through a version of this right now (All Things New) in the archdiocese of St. Louis--fortunately less drastic, but still very painful for many parishes. Our particular parish community, for instance, was deeply and negatively affected by the reassignment of the pastor (something that happens regularly anyway, but was sped up by the ATN consolidations process). As some other folks have said, the episcopacy's urge to do these projects is understandable, given the aging populations both in the pews and on the altar. The former is a financial issue, the latter a staffing one. But. But.
Maybe I'm just being a cock-eyed optimist, but I feel that the dip in Catholic population is going to be temporary, at least in the midwest--being a millennial Catholic with four young kids and a fifth on the way may have something to do with that perception. And I wish, rather than doing the things that are going to close churches, we just reverted some of these to missions--to reopen them as parishes in another generation or two.
I understand that this would require a complex canonical process of its own, and place a lot on priests' shoulders. But I'd rather see a model where (say) two priests live in one rectory and serve three churches (one parish, two missions) even if it means everyone only gets one Sunday Mass. I think that would actually be better at keeping people COMING to Sunday Mass than trying to force parishioners (especially the elderly, who are used to their own parish and may not be able to get around easily) to go do a new parish. Furthermore, there is something to be said for just having more churches open. There is a witness to non-Catholics in seeing St. Cunnagunda's still has the Sunday 10 a.m. and the Lenten fish fry--it's a place to invite them to come, for one thing, and makes evangelization easier than if you have to convince them to drive twice as far to St. Wolfgang's. And there is a negative witness when a church building closes--"another one bites the dust," as it were.
If I understand the Seattle process correctly (I’m a Seattle parishioner), what you are proposing is something the Seattle archdiocese is hoping to try. It won’t be everywhere (some buildings are going to be too old and expensive to maintain), but all the literature seems to say many more priests will be able to live together with a brother priest and that mass and other services within the new combined parish may be at the physical buildings of the pre-consolidated parishes.
While priestly fraternity is an important part of the life of a priest and in the past priests were assigned to live together that is not the experience of many priests today.
Lots of us have lived on our own for many years.
All of the sudden moving priests in with each other will not only be a big adjustment but just because men share the priesthood doesn't automatically mean they can or will live together well.
I hope with the consolidation of parishes and priests the priests might have some say in who they live with.
I have had two parochial vicar in 28 years of priesthood, both for just two years. They were amazing young men in their priestly zeal and in their amicability. I enjoyed serving with them. We shared a common life.
But when this is not the case it affects not just the priests but often spills out of the rectory into the parish.
It is easy to say, "Get over it, Father."
It's much harder to do that in a difficult situation.
I can only speak for myself (and maybe my friends) but all the comments about the priests who don’t trust the process or the archbishop are also my own. This seemed like a forgone conclusion from the start. All the “listening sessions” for the priests and laity to discuss what we should do is cover for what the diocese has decided to do from the very start.
What I don’t understand is why these archdioceses wait till the ship is sinking to make changes. What are the underlying causes of this problem?
It is inadequate evangelization and reverence for many years then top it off with being the first or one of the first dioceses to close all churches during Covid when we needed our faith the most and our churches as our sanctuaries.
You hit the nail on the head with the lack of trust. The choice of vicar, Fr. Lazzeroni, increases this fact. He embodies a hermeneutic of progressivism and all who don't capitulate to his and ++Etienne vision will be left to the outskirts of Yelm. This move to request all resign is a further move to squeeze out traditionists. They are being put on notice, conform or else.
Both hate Latin, altar rails, the St. Michael Prayer, and Marian doctrine. I worked for both so I know intimately how they consider conservatives to be rubes. Under the guise of a vocational crisis, they are moving ahead their political agenda. I know, for a fact, they were offered 30 priests from an another order. ++Etienne declined the offer.
Did not the Rosary Priest go to a Jewish advertising agency on Madison Avenue for that terrific slogan: "The family that prays together, stays together"? Nothing wrong with slogans. It is just that our bishops lack the spiritual substance to back up the words. "Forward in Faith" might have helped my diocese if there was any honesty or intelligence behind it.
Putting a positive spin on something that is not positive is dishonest. Why the need for a slogan at all? Dishonesty is a staple of our hierarchy. I’m surprised they didn’t sloganeer for their scandalous behavior in recycling perverted priests as they all did. Have you read the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report? (I highly recommend it.) Did they? (I doubt it.) It’s all there. The patterns are the same, everywhere.
Priest shortages and empty churches are symptoms of the same disease of corruption. The Church has become irrelevant to increasing numbers. Do our ecclesiastical leaders own their (great) responsibility in that irrelevance?
Agree. A definition of PARTNERS is greatly needed. Until trust is restored all around and especially with priests and Bishops this is all smoke and mirrors. The survey done by priests last year shows drastic mistrust of priests for their bishops. This was glossed over and hardly mentioned in the synodality meetings. Keep your heads in the sand and “ when you always do what you have always done you always get what you always got” ! Think about it.
Every reorganisation means a loss of Mass goers. Saint Matthews might be the most drab boring modern structure you can imagine. But its people have been going there for decades and some just won't transfer to St Joseph's five miles away once Saint Matts is sold to make way for a more attractive supermarket.
The immediate need for more priests would dictate a vigorous vocations drive which would yield results on 10 years, as another commentator on this thread noted had achieved results in her diocese. Plus, for the short term, recruitment of priests from Africa or elsewhere. French dioceses have done this to the displeasure of the dioceses back home. No one wants to return to a poverty and corruption ridden failed state after three months in a French suburb. But another commentator noted that the Bishop in Seattle has turned down an offer of 30 religious order priests - I suspect they were the wrong type of Catholic. If that is true, the case is hopeless.
Or, god forbid, we look to the "viri probati" ("proven men") deacons, in long stable marriages, with grown children, retired with pensions and ask them, after a time of discernment and formation (with their wife's blessing) to accept ordination to the priesthood.
There should be plenty of empty rectories for these trained men and their wives to live in. The salaries they would be paid would not break the parishes.
Celibacy or Sacraments?
The loss of members or possibly thriving evangelizing parishes?
Not a panacea but a possible solution in these situations.
I know of no religious Orders (one or in combinations) who could supply any diocese with 30 priests. Where are these Orders?
The Norbertine canons of St. Michael's Abbey is a vibrant and ever-growing community of about 100+ members (and growing so much that they're making a new foundation in another diocese). They regularly help at parishes in the Diocese of Orange on Sundays.
Looking forward to hearing how this and other consolidation projects go!
Great article that captures the sense many of us in the Archdiocese of Seattle have about this. I'm on board with a consolidation process, it desperately needs to happen, and it will be painful no matter what. The chancery is truly receptive to feedback, we've seen changes in the "families" come from priest feedback already. HR has said they'd help match lay staff to jobs across the archdiocese when they're inevitably lost (something the archdiocese wouldn't acknowledge at first). You can always come up with new ministries to run, but a parish can only have so many admin staff, you know? The time from the announcement of this process to the announcement of actual practical realities of it has felt like ages and that's only stoked anxiety. And the priests are right - the formal consultation sessions are just about managing feelings, even though there's evidence the archdiocese actually is receptive to real feedback.
The question I keep seeing is "Why is absolutely nothing being said about vocations?". The impression many of us get is that the tacit expectation is we'll come out of this "journey to vibrancy" as "vibrant parishes" and the issue will solve itself... but vocations take a good ten years or more to cultivate, and we're hearing nothing about plans to start planting those seeds.
I would love a "Pillar Investigates" report into these diocesan consolidation projects. There are a number of angles I have been puzzling over.
What is causing so many diocese to choose this path (seems weird that so many bishops would discern this independently; is there a USCCB/other movement advancing this idea).
How does this impact priestly identity? Seems like it would vastly increase the administrative burden for the pastor (even thinking beyond the implementation phase), while creating a dynamic where many parochial administrators may never become pastors. Do the laity struggle to see the priest as father when there is a rotating schedule of priests and the pastor may therefore seem somewhat distant. Is anybody thinking about the potential impact to vocations of young boys not having as consistent of a relationship with a single priest (or is having a relationship with several rotating priests helpful to vocations)?
What spiritual fruits are born of these projects? Is it just administrative consolidation to achieve economies of scale - I hope not, and Bishops are communicating a broader vision, so would love to see how that plays out.
It's easy to find stories of bishops saying these plans are the fruit of discernment of the Holy Spirit, and it is easy to find stories of the laity grumpy about these plans. But we read The Pillar because you guys get at the meat of the story beneeth those top line narratives.
This is happening at the same time everywhere because 1) the Boomer generation of priests is hitting retirement age at the same time everywhere, and 2) the bishops talk to each other. This reorganization scheme is primarily about 3) ensuring priests are rarely—if ever—living alone and serving their community alone and 4) delaying as much as possible the far more painful decisions to fully close churches, schools, and other ministries. Those latter decisions will eventually be made according to the financial situations of each new parish family; the present decisions are being made primarily according to the sharp decrease in the number of priests over the next decade as the Boomer priests go into full retirement.
It is not just the USCCB - note my comment about my own diocese in southern England embarking on a similar mass contraction plan. They are already selling property. And just about every English diocese I read about is in similar decline.
My brother the priest once lost his parish to an attempt by the diocese to give three parishes to two priests. The bishop there wasn't clear about which one was in charge; I think they were supposed to be equals. My understanding is that by the end of a year they were no longer on speaking terms. So one of the rules must be that only one of them can be in charge and the bishop must be very clear as to who that is.
Missing from this discussion is the power of the Holy Spirit. These men bear the seal of priestly ordination. We must all allow room for the Spirit to work.
To be fair to this reorganization project there's a lot of talk about the Holy Spirit in the materials, and they've been providing prayer intentions for the process for a year.
When my bishop arrived in this diocese in 2010, he asked everybody to pray for vocations. He encouraged us to do this in front of the Blessed Sacrament whenever possible. We get prayer cards with the names of our seminarians, one per day of the month per person, and the rest of the days with first the Pope, then the bishop, and then groups for each of the other days. When he arrived there was talk of consolidating parishes; now there's a fund on Pentecost Sunday to pay for their educations, which became necessary a few years after his arrival. Amazing what prayer for vocations will do.
The diocese I came from has 21 seminarians. From what I have heard and read it did not have the funds to pay for the seminarians education although they had set up a fund for future priests that couldn’t be used until years in the future. I do wonder how many will become priests and how many will drop out. A parish priest has a hard life; sometimes without the support they need.
I am a bit confused as to why the priests need to resign. Here in Kentucky, our archbishop can and does move priests around if he pleases.
Pastors have certain canonical rights. One of those is stability of office. In the US, pastors are generally appointed for a 6-year term.
The bishop cannot simply remove a man once he's installed him as pastor. There's a formal process, and it sometimes can take quite a bit of time, documentation, resources, etc. And even then, you can only remove a pastor under certain circumstances.
Therefore, in order to make all these movements for the consolidation program, the archbishop is asking for the voluntary (?) resignation of all his pastors to avoid canonical difficulties.
My question is: what happens if a particular pastor and refuses to tender his resignation? Could the bishop then cite disobedience and move to remove that priest from his office?
Parochial vicars do not enjoy the same rights, so bishops oftentimes move them freely. I know a priest who gets moved to a new parish almost every summer.
Here, several priests were moved this year. Our beloved pastor was only with us for 2.5 years, and he made clear that he did not ask to move. But the bishop made some sweeping reassignments, and it appeared that several priests did not want to move but had to. Many priests were not thrilled with the assignments (and privatelysaid so), and it seemed that there wasn't a real choice in the matter. Hence my confusion
FWIW, we had a variety of consolidations/closures within New York some years back -- and we really needed it. It was completely absurd, having some of the old parishes one block away from each other in Manhattan, which had been related to immigrant groups from over 100 years before. These groups having all moved away decades later.
I know that's not what Seattle is talking about, but it seems reasonable for dioceses to do reviews of their structures regularly. That NY had let some of this slide for so long was not great.
I lived in the Archdiocese of Seattle for 24 years. Where I lived was over 80 miles from the cathedral in Seattle, and still well within the Archdiocese. I think one fact this article fails to convey, especially when it just refers to "Seattle," is that the Archdiocese covers the entirety of Western Washington - all land west of the Cascade mountains, from the Oregon border to Canada - over 24,700 square miles. That's a lot of area to cover for so few priests. Compare that to the state of New Jersey (8,722 sq. mi) and its 6 dioceses - albeit with a larger population, and much larger Catholic population. This is at least noteworthy for such an article.
That’s not unlike most diocese in Australia and finding coverage for people in the back of nowhere parishes is difficult enough before we had a vocation crisis.
I think the challenge with something like this is to avoid an "us vs. them" mentality. It's not the archbishop vs. the people, or the clergy vs. the laity, or the archbishop vs. the clergy, it's just us. And WE, as a Church, have to figure out how to navigate these very difficult situations. Because it's going to happen in most of our dioceses.
We're going through a version of this right now (All Things New) in the archdiocese of St. Louis--fortunately less drastic, but still very painful for many parishes. Our particular parish community, for instance, was deeply and negatively affected by the reassignment of the pastor (something that happens regularly anyway, but was sped up by the ATN consolidations process). As some other folks have said, the episcopacy's urge to do these projects is understandable, given the aging populations both in the pews and on the altar. The former is a financial issue, the latter a staffing one. But. But.
Maybe I'm just being a cock-eyed optimist, but I feel that the dip in Catholic population is going to be temporary, at least in the midwest--being a millennial Catholic with four young kids and a fifth on the way may have something to do with that perception. And I wish, rather than doing the things that are going to close churches, we just reverted some of these to missions--to reopen them as parishes in another generation or two.
I understand that this would require a complex canonical process of its own, and place a lot on priests' shoulders. But I'd rather see a model where (say) two priests live in one rectory and serve three churches (one parish, two missions) even if it means everyone only gets one Sunday Mass. I think that would actually be better at keeping people COMING to Sunday Mass than trying to force parishioners (especially the elderly, who are used to their own parish and may not be able to get around easily) to go do a new parish. Furthermore, there is something to be said for just having more churches open. There is a witness to non-Catholics in seeing St. Cunnagunda's still has the Sunday 10 a.m. and the Lenten fish fry--it's a place to invite them to come, for one thing, and makes evangelization easier than if you have to convince them to drive twice as far to St. Wolfgang's. And there is a negative witness when a church building closes--"another one bites the dust," as it were.
If I understand the Seattle process correctly (I’m a Seattle parishioner), what you are proposing is something the Seattle archdiocese is hoping to try. It won’t be everywhere (some buildings are going to be too old and expensive to maintain), but all the literature seems to say many more priests will be able to live together with a brother priest and that mass and other services within the new combined parish may be at the physical buildings of the pre-consolidated parishes.
Interesting. I certainly to get that it's important for priests to have that companionship and support. I hope that works out that way!
While priestly fraternity is an important part of the life of a priest and in the past priests were assigned to live together that is not the experience of many priests today.
Lots of us have lived on our own for many years.
All of the sudden moving priests in with each other will not only be a big adjustment but just because men share the priesthood doesn't automatically mean they can or will live together well.
I hope with the consolidation of parishes and priests the priests might have some say in who they live with.
I have had two parochial vicar in 28 years of priesthood, both for just two years. They were amazing young men in their priestly zeal and in their amicability. I enjoyed serving with them. We shared a common life.
But when this is not the case it affects not just the priests but often spills out of the rectory into the parish.
It is easy to say, "Get over it, Father."
It's much harder to do that in a difficult situation.
I can only speak for myself (and maybe my friends) but all the comments about the priests who don’t trust the process or the archbishop are also my own. This seemed like a forgone conclusion from the start. All the “listening sessions” for the priests and laity to discuss what we should do is cover for what the diocese has decided to do from the very start.
What I don’t understand is why these archdioceses wait till the ship is sinking to make changes. What are the underlying causes of this problem?
It is inadequate evangelization and reverence for many years then top it off with being the first or one of the first dioceses to close all churches during Covid when we needed our faith the most and our churches as our sanctuaries.
You hit the nail on the head with the lack of trust. The choice of vicar, Fr. Lazzeroni, increases this fact. He embodies a hermeneutic of progressivism and all who don't capitulate to his and ++Etienne vision will be left to the outskirts of Yelm. This move to request all resign is a further move to squeeze out traditionists. They are being put on notice, conform or else.
Both hate Latin, altar rails, the St. Michael Prayer, and Marian doctrine. I worked for both so I know intimately how they consider conservatives to be rubes. Under the guise of a vocational crisis, they are moving ahead their political agenda. I know, for a fact, they were offered 30 priests from an another order. ++Etienne declined the offer.
“Partners in the Gospel?!“ Who was responsible for purchasing that slogan? Enough of the spin. Our shepherds are embarrassing.
Did not the Rosary Priest go to a Jewish advertising agency on Madison Avenue for that terrific slogan: "The family that prays together, stays together"? Nothing wrong with slogans. It is just that our bishops lack the spiritual substance to back up the words. "Forward in Faith" might have helped my diocese if there was any honesty or intelligence behind it.
Putting a positive spin on something that is not positive is dishonest. Why the need for a slogan at all? Dishonesty is a staple of our hierarchy. I’m surprised they didn’t sloganeer for their scandalous behavior in recycling perverted priests as they all did. Have you read the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report? (I highly recommend it.) Did they? (I doubt it.) It’s all there. The patterns are the same, everywhere.
Priest shortages and empty churches are symptoms of the same disease of corruption. The Church has become irrelevant to increasing numbers. Do our ecclesiastical leaders own their (great) responsibility in that irrelevance?
Agree. A definition of PARTNERS is greatly needed. Until trust is restored all around and especially with priests and Bishops this is all smoke and mirrors. The survey done by priests last year shows drastic mistrust of priests for their bishops. This was glossed over and hardly mentioned in the synodality meetings. Keep your heads in the sand and “ when you always do what you have always done you always get what you always got” ! Think about it.