News

Symposium focuses on linking of parishes

By Annmarie Edwards
National Association for Lay Ministry

Mark Mogilka, director of Stewardship and Pastoral Services for the Green Bay Diocese, is one of 50 pastors, pastoral leaders, researchers and pastoral planners from 20 U.S. dioceses who met this week in Chicago to study multiple parish pastoring and to plan for the future.

The issue has arisen as an increasing number of Catholic priests hit retirement age and there are fewer incoming priests to replace them. That means more priests are being asked to lead or serve in two or more parishes.

Nearly half of U.S. Catholic parishes already share a pastor with at least one other parish. Less than 10% of dioceses provide formal training for pastoral leaders of multiple parishes, according to research studies conducted in 2005. Those findings were to be presented at the Chicago symposium.

The Feb. 7-9 symposium is sponsored by the Conference for Pastoral Planning and Council Development (CPPCD) and the National Federation of Priests' Councils as part of the Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership Project, funded with a $2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

The symposium will develop guidelines and recommendations on how to provide better training, support programs and resources for those serving linked parishes.

Six national organizations are working together on the effort.

While the number of Catholics in the United States has increased 41% since 1965 and the number of U.S. parishes has grown by 8%, the number of diocesan priests has decreased by 19%.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) reports that there are 42,528 priests in the U.S., nearly 70% of whom are over the age of 55. By 2025, these 29,000 men will be over the age of 75. In that same 20 year period, if the current rate of ordination continues, only 9,000 new priests will be ordained. After accounting for retired priests or those otherwise not active in parish ministry, that would mean an average of only one diocesan priest per parish for the 18,891 U.S. parishes.

But already, for example, there are 80 parishes in North Dakota without a resident priest. And Sr. Katarina Schuth, OSF, a researcher from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., found in a study to be published later this year, that more than 10,000 parishes of the 18,891 parishes in the U.S. share a pastor with one or more parishes.

Meanwhile, church law always has presumed that there is one pastor for one parish.