Posted on 08/19/2006 10:19:01 AM PDT by NYer
"In some ways, you can say we're not a dot on the map anymore," said Sister Linda Hogan, CSJ, of her experience with pastoral planning at St. Cecilia's Church in Warrensburg. "We have to connect the dots, to work together."
After working together on a "consuming" five-year pastoral planning process that changed the face of a small North Country church, parishioners and planning teams at St. Cecilia's expect to use lessons culled from their own experience on a larger scale with the upcoming "Called to be Church" process.
"The whole thing was a miracle," said Sister Linda.
Looking ahead
On the retirement of St. Cecilia's priest-pastor in 2001 and the appointment of Sister Linda as parish life director, parishioners decided to embrace a call by Bishop Howard J. Hubbard to look at pastoral planning within parishes.
A planning team began to wade through data regarding priest retirements, local demographics and Mass attendance, and discussed St. Cecilia's priorities and how the church could best serve its population.
"We believed in the statistics and outlook for the future when the Bishop presented them in 2001, so we got right to work," she said.
Given the lack of priests, the planning team agreed that they needed space enough to hold the entire parish for one Mass per weekend, as well as increased handicapped accessibility, adequate meeting space and multiple repairs.
Keys to change
Based on her experience in Warrensburg, Sister Linda said that a planning process should be proactive, as well as "contextual, open, participatory, realistic, responsible, and [belonging] to the parish."
She also believes that lines of communication between planners and parishioners must remain open, and that members of the parish should always feel free to make input into and receive information about what's going on, even if the process is delayed or changed because of it.
The three most important things for any pastoral planning process, Sister Linda believes, are "participation, education and trust."
Furthermore, "absolutely key is making sure God is in it, that it is about the mission of the Church," she added. "It's about clear communication and trusting one another."
Communicating
To increase communication between planning team and parishioners, the parish published the "St. Cecilia's Occasional" newsletter and held meetings every time a large decision needed to be made as well as occasional informational sessions.
Before tackling the nitty-gritty details, the committee decided to discuss their feelings, shared experiences, and the commonalities and differences among them, like their thoughts on change, their hopes for the future, and the tasks they enjoy and dislike. That helped to create a common ground and shared foundation for the team to build upon, Sister Linda said.
Also contributing to that foundation, she added, were parishioners themselves. She invited them to view a video on creativity to encourage them to think of new ideas for the parish. The video was presented 16 times at parish meetings in August and September 2002, and most of the parish attended one of the sessions.
Patience
People who make good planning-committee members are people who share an attribute of "great patience," Sister Linda said. "In this process, it feels like you're not getting anything done for so long.
"It is hard to spend five years in process. But we had great confidence in what we were doing and in how we were doing it, and because we had confidence, the people were able to trust us. We also weren't hiding anything. The trust comes when you know you're part of the process."
She believes that same trust helped the parish get through the 9/11 aftermath and feelings engendered by the clergy abuse crisis.
"It was amazing. [The abuse crisis] was so demoralizing, and yet the people said, 'We are the Church.' We felt like we were punched in the stomach, but we said we're going forward, so we just went forward," she explained.
Decisions
In the end, parishioners raised $450,000 for building renovation on top of other capital campaigns and recently took up a collection to donate $8,000 to the building fund in honor of Sister Linda's 40th anniversary as a religious.
In October, ground will be broken for what will become St. Cecilia's renovated facilities that will allow parishioners to celebrate one Eucharist per weekend in the future.
Regarding "Called to be Church," Sister Linda suspects that "we have done a lot of it. We were not caught off-guard, because we believed [the Bishop] the first time [he asked for planning]!
"This past spring, our cluster went down one more priest, so it is obvious that we have to put our words into action. We cannot wait any longer. We know we're in a process, and we'll be glad when this part is done. But we also know that this is not the end."
In my experience, whenever they leave out the article, you know you're dealing with heretics!
When does Bp. Hubbard retire?
Not for another 6 or 7 years. He and Rochester's Bishop Matthew Clark, fellow seminarians, were both appointed around the same time, 30 years ago!
bttt
Hubbard was born on Halloween, 1938.
The Church has to endure him for about more seven years.
Also, I find it sad that you would expend money to have a larger building so that there is only one mass per weekend. That's a lot of money.
I'm all over parish self_studies and all that stuff. Really. ALWAYS PROVIDED THAT the non-negotiables remain non-negotiable. For most of my allegedly adult life, though, it seems that if one engages in such an exercise, suddenly Humanistic Psychology and Group Dynamics become a supreme value and cultural force, rather than the useful adjuncts they might be if they remained ancillary.
Similarly with wimmins. I have no beef with parish life directors ("directors"? - okay, maybe a little beef)who are women. But it frosts my pumkins when they decide that somehow being female or feminine or whatever gives them a normative insight to which we must all at least conform and preferably offer sacrifices.
Okay, I'm in a grouchy mood today.
Egads. Another "boy bishop."
Yes, I agree that their being women gives them nothing special. And as for "parish life directors," I'm not really sure what they are, but I have a strong feeling they shouldn't exist.
If the diocese needs to appoint an administrator to run the daily things of a parish (such as pay the heating bill, etc.) that may not have a pastor, that's one thing. But the rest of "parish life" should be served by a priest, even if he's in charge of several parishes as a result of years of mismanagement and discouragement of priestly vocations by his bishop.
Yes ... endure ... an apt choice of wording. By then, his work of dismantling the diocese should be nearly complete. What will remain are the women run parishes (he's appointed several people as PLDs - only one man in the group), where a priest drops by on the weekend and the totally priestless parishes where communion is consecrated by a visiting priest during the week and distributed by a EMHC on the weekend.
That is very discouraging.
Our parish has three priests (a monsignor, a younger priest, and a semi-retired priest who is Filipino and runs the Spanish mass.
This is interesting, because central Indiana wasn't originally heavily Catholic. This is the area where the Methodists and Southern Baptists had larger numbers. I cannot help but think that our increasing numbers, plus the number of vocations in our archdiocese, is a result of our Bishop and the efforts of priests who were either JPII priests (our former associate pastor who just got promoted) or people like our Monsignor, who studied in Rome and knew Cardinal Ratzinger.
And we don't have a lot of touchy-feely stuff in our masses. We have a woman who is a parish life director but her major function is coordinating RCIA, various study groups, festival volunteers, etc. She is an organizer and not a policy setter.
At least in Virginia in small churches there are lots of little extra-liurgical things that require some publicizing and coordinating. I'm thinking of how a nearby church does the Stations every Friday in Lent and then we have a pot luck soup and bread supper together. Certainly these things should be run by the official priest in charge and subject to his approval. But the details can be left to a lay person without grave harm.
Livius has a point, seems to me, that much of the parish ministry should be by a priest, especially the Eucharist and Sacraments. Maybe it time to get one of those "rent-a-priests" -not the ones that are heretics but the ones whose only "crime" was to marry a (horrors!) real women. But then for many even the Eucharist is not worth that. Better the women directors passing out left over communion from last week.
1) Buzz-phrases ("Called to be church") which involve bad grammar are bad generally.
2) If a reasonable person can't figure out what the heck the title of a particular office means ("Parish Life Director") or if it just sounds wierd ("Music Minister") it shouldn't exist.
We are called to be saints, following the instruction of Jesus....."you then are to be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect".
The "Church" is the Mystical Body of Christ and we become members when we are baptized.
Called to be "Church" my fanny.........
HEHE CHurch R US!
Do it yourself doctrine.
Five years and they still don't have a pastor?
Oy vey!
One day one of these 70 year old "We Be Church" types was bemoaning the shortage of priests in a group discussion and I proposed that, as a parish, we should be praying regularly for an increase in vocations. Something more than once a year.
He looked at me like I was a totally naive and just shook his head.
Bishop Hubbard gets five pages just for himself and is referenced on another two pages in Randy Engel's newly published exhaustive reference work regarding the Catholic Church!
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