[Archbishop] Schnurr Gets Started [closing parishes in Cincinnati]

The Pillar ^ | 10/1/21 | JD Flynn

[marshmallow]

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati announced on Friday a restructuring initiative that could eventually close 70% of archdiocesan parishes. The process will begin by clustering the 208 parishes of the archdiocese into 60 “families” of parishes, which will share pastors, staff, and infrastructure, but initially remain canonically independent.

Well beyond Cincinnati, the initiative is worth watching, as its approach may well become a model for institutional downsizing in dioceses across the country, especially in the Northeast and the Rust Belt.

The archdiocese calls its project, euphemistically, “Beacons of Light.” The idea is that clusters of parishes will be identified in November, which will engage next year in planning processes that aim to discern, among other things, which church buildings they can realistically maintain over the long-term. Eventually parishes will be canonically merged.

The idea is probably designed to avoid the kinds of fights that parish closures have prompted in other dioceses.

The project seems intended to allow parishioners to adjust gradually to the idea that they have far more buildings than practicing Catholics need, that priests are stretched thin by driving circuits to service them, and that paying the maintenance and upkeep costs on little used buildings is rarely a realistic long-term proposition.

A rush of defensive sentiment tends to come along with learning a beloved church will be closed, even among people who no longer practice the faith. But experience suggests that after a few years of mourning, most practicing Catholics are ready to face the fiscal realities of the contemporary ecclesial landscape. The archdiocesan plan seems designed to allow parishioners to reach conclusions about church closures at the local level, rather than see them imposed from the top-down.

[Ann Archy]

Cincinnati USED to almost all Catholic!!