The five priests seated with him laughed at this.

But, as the conversation turned to the realities of our failing diocesan infrastructures, the tone became more serious.

Two priests were managing three separate, cooperating parishes, three priests were managing two amalgamated parishes and the Vicar General had one parish.

The six priests around the table were managing thirteen parishes with a total of thirty distinct communities between them, doing the work of ten previous parish priests.

Amalgamation

Amalgamation looks like the solution until you ask what problem it is trying to solve.

The amalgamation of parishes is an attempt to solve the problem of institutional collapse in dioceses in three ways.

• amalgamation solves the problem of too few priests being available to provide sacramental ministry.
• amalgamation presumes that the parish structures are integral to pastoral life.
• amalgamation keeps the civil and canonical framework of parishes as a managerial structure that provides a living for a priest and income for a diocese.

As a diocese's infrastructure of pastoral and sacramental life becomes untenable, the notion takes hold that the problem lies with the parishes when the problem lies in the episcopal mindset.

Having solved the structural problem through amalgamation the newly blended parishes should function happily in this new future designed by others.

However, the gloss of efficient pastoral functioning covers a multitude of unresolved issues, like

• the independence of established communities,
• the lines of communication between previous separate parish groups, and
• the stretch of the clergy who are expected to respond.

The amalgamation of parishes does not ultimately solve the larger organisational and theological questions amongst which are:

• who can preside at the Eucharist?;
• are the laity part of the fabric of parish leadership, discernment and management?;
• are the liturgy, sacraments and priestly ministry just functional elements of diocesan structures?

Social and Cultural Elements of Change

Often the social and cultural dimensions implicit in ecclesial change are forgotten.

Solving the structural problem using clerical and lay workarounds takes little or no regard for the anthropological (human) and social (cultural) dimensions of worship and community.

They often ask fewer people to do more to keep the boat afloat.

Keeping former parishes going with liturgies of Word and Communion on Sundays as a stop-gap for Mass seems a nice alternative. However, it reframes our understanding of the Church by undermining the centrality of the Eucharist.

Eventually, the diocese reframes itself according to what it cannot provide.

Looking for answers among the dead

Many argue the real change will come with lay-parish leadership, lay-led liturgy, replacing the parish with the schools as the "new parish", importing clergy and seminarians, ordaining married men, ordaining women, geriatric men and similar solutions.

The answer might be found in some, or all, of these, but I am reminded of Christ's response in Luke 9:56-62, "leave the dead to bury the dead".

All these suggestions are deeply inauthentic because they do not address the substantive issue; the death of the local churches.

Churches do die; historically, we have only to look at North Africa.

The death of a local church—diocese or parish—is not a comforting experience.

There is a deep sense of loss.

Coming to the end of the present ‘organisational road' begs the question of a new ecclesiology and a new form of ecclesial leadership that isn't restorationist but more deeply missionary.

Pope Francis has offered a missiological vision similar to St Pope Paul IV's in Evangelii Nunciandi: "The conditions of the society in which we live oblige all of us therefore to revise methods, to seek by every means to study how we can bring the Christian message to modern man."

He acknowledged "the split between the Gospel and culture is without a doubt the drama of our time" and that the ‘Gospel must be proclaimed by witness'.

Function and structure play a role in this, but they shouldn't drive the change because we are a theological community and theology immersed in life must lead us in the work of evangelisation and mission.

Downsizing and right-sizing

When people speak of downsizing, often they mean "right-sizing" the house and garden for their current and future needs.

Finding the right size for today's local church means relearning what it means to be a Missionary Church.

The experience of change and diminution will continue; nothing can stop it at this point because the cultural changes influencing contemporary Catholicism are very strong.

The Second Vatican Council sought to provide us with the tools we require to engage with the enormity of the change and reengage with the world as it has become.

What does a diocese or parish look like in the 21 century in a small, secular country like ours struggling to articulate its cultural self-understanding and not possessing a millennial-long shared language of religious institutionalisation?

Integral to this consideration is the emerging new church that is already replacing the church of my consciousness.

It will be different because it already is.

As the Church of my generation and older dies out a new Church may emerge and it will be different.

Then again, without a suitably led ongoing discussion about what it means to be Church and what evangelisation and mission look like today, the church may indeed look very different.=

• Joe Grayland is a theologian and a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North. His latest book is: Liturgical Lockdown. Covid and the Absence of the Laity (Te Hepara Pai, 2020).

The way Catholics live out their faith is what's important, he says. They should trust in God, who always loves and blesses them. They should also try to bring divine love to people around them.

"We should try our best to promote charity work and give witness to the faith in our daily lives," he explained during a pastoral visit to four tiny parishes last week.

"Evangelisation does not mean to do major things but to live a good and simple life."

Build happy families, offer faith education to children, be honest in your livelihood, stay clear of drug abuse and treat drug abusers with love and respect.

Thien is the first archbishop to have visited one of the sub-parishes for a century or more. Welcomed with drums and trumpets, the 160-member Catholic community swelled so much that Thien had to celebrate an open-air Mass: the church was too small to accommodate the hundreds of visitors.

He praised the local people for properly maintaining their faith during decades of hard times and for producing a priest. This is despite hardships such as when their part of Vietnam was under communist control, the land reform system, religious restrictions and the Vietnam War were the order of the day.

"We come here to profess the faith and I am here to encourage all of you to be brave in your life of faith," he said.

Thien's pastoral visits are part of this year's archdiocese-wide programme for "year of evangelisation".

Other plans include introducing the Legion of Mary at parishes. Thien is calling on all parishes to have the Marian association do evangelisation work.

Hanoi Archdiocese, serves 330,000 Catholics out of a population of 10 million.

Source

• UCA News

Cardinal John Dew announced in June that only Featherston's St Teresa of Avila and Masterton's St Patrick's Church would be kept.

The following properties will be up for sale

• The Martinborough, Greytown, and Carterton churches are to be closed permanently, and the property is to be sold. The Carterton and Martinborough churches were closed in 2018 because they were earthquake-prone.
• The centre behind the Featherston presbytery could be retained, "if the parish wishes."
• The Carterton church hall was also to be sold, but there is a possibility of building a smaller multipurpose building closer to St Mary's School for school use.
• Te Ore Ore church land is to be returned to the marae.
• The Lansdowne hall and land are to be sold, and Moore House would be relocated or demolished.
• Research will be carried out on the ownership of St Joseph's Catholic Church in Riversdale and its future discussed with ecumenical partners to see if it should be sold.

The Martinborough parish has the opportunity to put a case forward to keep its hall if it can be repurposed, "as a centre for mission."

If they can repurpose it, the property is to be subdivided and the surplus land to be sold.

Reasons given for the decision to sell were:

• The shortage of priests
• High maintenance costs
• Declining congregations
• Pope Francis' focus more on missionary work

At the time of the proposed closures, the Wairarapa Parish Pastoral Council response to a reduction in parishes was "no".

It lobbied to retain all five churches with a call for leadership on how to achieve this.

The submission said there were examples of where one priest had served five to six parishes.

Source

• times-age.c0.nz
• Image: times-age.co.nz

The group have asked that the current process be re-examined in two three-hours, or three two hour meetings - professionally facilitated and open to all - with the bishop and his team and the council of consulters.

They also want consideration to be given to an alternative plan that they have developed which they have called the Good Plan and to any other alternatives that may be proposed.

Over 100 people from throughout the diocese have attended three "Gatherings".

The group also has an email distribution list of more than 300.

After the three gatherings representatives of the group had 2 meetings with members of the bishop's team and the college of consulters.

The group agrees with:

• A dedication to and expansion of adult education.
• Full laity involvement in ministry and administration.
• Lay-led liturgies, in the absence of a priest, with trained lay ministers.
• Priests living in a community near church and community buildings, supporting, with lay ministers, a hub of smaller churches.

However, they believe that the 9 June proposal presupposes the old clerical priest based model of the church.

This, they say, resulted in the proposal to amalgamate parishes and close churches.

The implication being that some primary schools and currently fully-functioning diverse Catholic communities are disposable.

"We do understand there is a need to address low attendance and 'churches being vacant from Monday to Saturday'."

This then becomes the Mission - to train skilled, community including, religious and lay ministers in every parish in the diocese."

The Gatherings Group think the diversity of peoples, buildings and liturgies are a hallmark of New Zealand catholicism.

They say diverse buildings, small and large, are essential to sustainability and survivability.

Source

• Supplied
• Image: Catholic Diocese of Christchurch

Click here to read the full statement

Two years of death-defying earthquakes then the grief-stricken, the demolition, the dying, the rebuilding aftermath.

Followed by March 15, 2019, with 51 people dying while at prayer in the mosques, and while we are prayerfully and painfully recovering ourselves, we now have, on June 9, 2019, Paul Martin turning up with his Roman-like directions to demolish or sell off seven of Christchurch's 12 Catholic parish community churches that have managed to survive the earthquakes.

All this is not because we don't have enough parishioners in our churches.

Our parishes are full and some overflowing.

It is because he hasn't enough male celibate priests to minister to them.

He is using a North American big church heavily oil-dependent model - parishioners travelling, not the priest.

And because he can't seem to consider the practice that is common in the rest of Oceania, Latin America and Africa - in fact throughout the whole of the Southern Hemisphere, where lay ministers - married folk and women - can minister the liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion, without a priest being present, and the priest can turn up once every month or two and celebrate Mass and support them.

Maybe he sees the writing on the wall for clericalism and wants to finish it all off as quickly and painlessly as he can.

So he looks at the oldest, strongest base community parishes, churches like Sacred Heart Addington, St Teresa's Riccarton, Christ the King Burnside, strong parishes with high daily Mass attendance and university student communities and sells these churches or bulldozes them.

These communities and their attached schools have taken decades to build to the strength they are today.

You don't get rid of the places where your strength lies.

These churches and halls are our marae - the places where we gather to celebrate our births, deaths, weddings, first communions and ordinations. They are like cloaks that support our schools.

They were built with the blood, sweat and tears of our communities over generations.

Consultation?

He has not consulted with the priests, with the staff, nor with the parishioners. He simply announces his plan. He claims it is a proposal.

We are to pray and discuss it, but that his proposal will all be carried out within one year.

Our priests and staff and parishioners should have been consulted, involved and listened to, not just briefed.

Announcing a fixed plan and pretending it is a consultation, when it has been already decided upon, is the practice of clericalism at its very worst.

Shortage of priests

Currently we have 30 ordained priests in the diocese.

In 10 years we will have 12.

What about in 20 years?

In 20 years we will have four priests - if the trend continues. Something needs to be done about this.

Unlike the Anglicans, there is not a shortage of parishioners.

We need lay ministers - married people and women to be able to minister, for the Catholic Church to survive in the Christchurch diocese in 20 years' time.

Ten years is far too short a timeframe.

Knocking down churches and building a few new ones is not going to solve the long-term problem.

We need to be planning for 20, 50 and 100 years' time.

These lay ministers need to be trained and supported in ministry and in preaching and this is the place where our empty seminaries need to be putting their energy.

Working from strength

We need to work from the old strong base hub parishes and support the work the priests do there, with work by lay ministers in the surrounding churches.

In South Christchurch we want none of our four churches to be sold or destroyed.

We have had enough of death, destruction, building, selling and rebuilding.

Sacred Heart, Addington is the oldest and largest parish in our region and the safest church earthquake-wise - it is on good ground that doesn't break open or have springs or liquefaction rise up from below. (It is well worth checking the old black map of Christchurch springs.)

We suggest that Sacred Heart be our hub church.

The other three parish churches can remain having Mass celebrated once a month there by a Priest and a liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion by lay ministers on the other Sundays and days of the week if the community has able lay ministers.

We don't want more church name changes.

Name changes are not new here, they are old hat, we have had enough name and street and church and building changes to last a lifetime.

We want the emphasis to be on strengthening our communities and educating our lay ministers, not on demolishing and erecting buildings.

We want energy to go into how we can minister to one another in the absence of a priest.

We want to know how to be present to each other and to our beloved priests, who have done an amazing job in our parishes of all shapes and sizes through such a long difficult and continuing period of unrelieved upheaval.

• Kathleen Gallagher is a Christchurch author, playwright and film-maker. She is a member of St Peter's Church, Beckenham.
• First published in the Christchurch Press. Republished with permission.

The land for those parishes totals about 8 hectares and has a rateable valuation of about $26.7m.

Bishop Martin said some of those surplus sites could be sold. Read more

The proposed changes were announced at Sunday masses throughout the Diocese via a video message on Pentecost Sunday.

Parishioners have been asked to provide feedback by August 30.

The five new parishes would be Christchurch North, Christchurch West, Christchurch South, Christchurch Central and Christchurch East.

Some churches would be surplus to requirements and would close.

There will be one church in each of the Central and North parishes.

The parishes in the east and the west will each have 2 churches.

Where there are two churches parishioners could choose where they attend mass, Martin said.

The Central Christchurch Cathedral parish would be formed from a merger of the Bryndwr, St Mary's Pro-Cathedral Parishes and Te Rangimarie Maori Community and based either at the Cathedral on Barbadoes St or at a new site.

Martin says he hopes a decision on the cathedral's future will be made by mid-August.

The existing parishes of Riccarton, Sockburn and Hornby would be merged to form the parish in West Christchurch.

It would be based at the Our Lady of Victories, Sockburn site on Main South Road.

The parish in East Christchurch will be based at the St Anne's, Woolston site on Ferry Road.

This parish would result from a merger of Ferrymead and Christchurch East Parishes.

Addington-Beckenham and Hoon Hay-Halswell parishes will be merged to form the parish in South Christchurch.

It would be based at the Our Lady of Assumption site on Hoon Hay Road.

A new Selwyn parish would be based at Rolleston with a newly built church and school.

This parish will be formed from a merger of the existing Akaroa, Lincoln, Leeston and Darfield parishes.

All of those existing churches will be retained.

A merger of Waimakariri and Hurunui parishes into one new North Canterbury parish was being considered.

Some Catholic schools will lose a parish church on the same site, but in those cases, chapels would be built to ensure students could still attend weekday Masses.

Martin said his desire was to make the parishes stronger, able to last into the future, financially viable and able to be staffed by priests and parish teams so they can focus on the mission to spread the Gospel more effectively and to be welcoming to those who have not heard of Christ.

"As a new Bishop to the Diocese, I was familiar with some aspects of the diocese, but not all, so have been able to ask questions about why we do things the way we do.

Martin said that he and his pastoral team have been studying trends here and overseas and they can see, from parishes that are thriving and growing, that part of their success comes from strong leadership and a real desire to work collaboratively with the laity.

"These thriving and growing parishes are also much larger than the parishes that we have now. They have a critical mass of people, less plant, more staff and financial resources that are leading to vibrant and flourishing parishes."

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• voxy.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

The review will identify how many churches the parish needs to cater for its Mass count, taking into account the availability of priests and lay pastoral leaders, and the ideal location of the church or churches.

Provision for the accommodation of priests is part of the review.

In a pastoral letter published on 17 February, the cardinal said the results are to be submitted to him complete with developed proposals, no later than 30 October 2019.

"For most, if not all parishes with more than one church, this will mean reducing the number of churches in the parish," Dew said.

"You need to be prepared to be radical in your thinking and discernment."

The review process will involve collecting and analysing information, and consulting with parishioners.

Pastoral teams and leadership groups have received detailed information and will be meeting shortly to look at how the parishes might carry out this process.

Between 2013 and 2017, the Archdiocese carried out a parish amalgamation process resulting in the reduction of the number of parishes from 47 to 22.

"This means, of course, there are now parishes with two or more churches, more than is necessary for worship and pastoral care," said Dew.

Also, the Archdiocese continues to experience pressures that compound the present situation and carry significant implications for the future:

• Earthquake resilience issues mean unsustainable insurance costs and buildings
  with unacceptable NBS ratings
• Some churches require large sums of money to address their earthquake resilience and general maintenance
• Pope Francis and the recent archdiocesan synod have challenged people to be more outward-looking and to serve those who are marginalised or disadvantaged. These cannot just be add-ons to what is already being done.

"We are called to be "missionary disciples" which, in the words of Pope Francis, makes an attitude of "we've always done it this way" not only damaging to the Church but invalid," Dew said.

"If we are to respond well to present and future challenges, we need to act together in favour of the common good of all parishes and support one another in a process of change. This is not an easy task for any of us.

"Some of you may see this as a threat to the status quo, but I would like you to see our situation as an opportunity to let the Holy Spirit work in our midst to create a sustainable and mission-oriented future."

Source

• Supplied
• Image: nonotone.wordpress.com

He spoke on the topic of Leadership in a Time of Change.

The cardinal said New Zealand Catholics looking for answers to "renewal" took heart from Pope Francis.

"The Pope is encouraging us to go out of our buildings and find those on the peripheries.

"The poor, the imprisoned and the sick are unlikely to come to us," Dew said, quoting from replies that New Zealand parishioners had written during a recent survey.

"We are to see the Lord in the marginalised and serve Him through our service to them. We are to go out and ‘do', not stay in church and write reports," he said.

"It is hard to know where to start, but [it is] not sufficient to stay sitting in pews."

On the conference sidelines, Dew spoke about how renewal or "amalgamation" was being tackled in New Zealand parishes.

He described a system of pastoral teams made up of lay leaders with substantial theological training working closely with priests.

"And most of them are working well together, but it's still taking time to learn how to share responsibility.

"We're really pleased with it," Dew said.

"The next step is to continue an outward push which was a big thing at our synod last year.

"Like here (Proclaim 2018) - there are wonderful people involved.

"So I think the challenge is to make sure that all these people just go that step further and look at how do we move beyond our parish, our own formation and our own ministry activities to what are the needs of the community out there and how do we serve those people."

The conference ran across three days from 12-14 July at The Edmund Rice Performing Arts Centre (St Laurence's College, South Brisbane).

Source

• catholicleader.com.au
• Image: catholicleader.com.au and lismorediocese.org

On April 28 Bishop David A. Zubik announced plans to reduce the diocese's 188 parishes to 57 by 2023.

The parish closings follow years of falling Mass attendance—the diocese reports it is down by more than 40 percent since 2000—and decreased participation in the sacraments.

The number of priests in the diocese is also expected to fall from 200 today to 112 in 2025.

This situation is not unique to Pittsburgh.

The Archdiocese of Hartford is in the process of merging dozens of parishes and expects its 212 parishes to be consolidated into 85 over the next decade.

Last year, the Archdiocese of Chicago, where an estimated 240 priests will be available to serve as pastors in 2030, launched "Renew My Church," a major consolidation and renewal initiative for its 351 parishes.

Parish closures and mergers are painful, as anyone knows who has seen the doors close on the church where they were married or were baptized as a child.

Parishioners feel they have lost their spiritual homes.

But too often, coverage of these plans fails to recognize the severe constraints dioceses confront.

Many of these churches were built at a time when seminaries were full or when it made sense to have clusters of ethnic parishes serving waves of new immigrants.

Today, the church does not have the personnel to staff these parishes or the resources to maintain their properties.

According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, in 1965 there were 1,289 parishioners per priest; that ratio is now 2,600 to 1; 20 percent of parishes lack a resident pastor, compared with 5 percent 50 years ago. (The priest shortage is playing out rather differently in the South and West, where church construction can hardly keep up with growing Catholic populations.)

There is no way to meet the present challenge without a significant degree of real loss.

But that does not mean these decisions have to be pitched as zero-sum battles. Continue reading

• Image: Church Militant

Rising costs and declining church membership have prompted the changes which will see the diocese reduce its 172 parishes to 35.

Judith Rupp, spokeswoman for Germany's western Trier Diocese, says the changes would save time and money on "administration and structural issues" and respond to calls by the pope for "missionary creativity.

"The great challenge for Christians in our own diocese is a pastoral one," Rupp says.

"We want to focus more strongly on people's needs and integrate the charisms of the baptized into church life more than before."

Bishop Stephan Ackermann says local lay councils and expert groups will continue to help with the changes but final responsibility for "such a great reform" would lie with him.

"While the parish has been integral to Western Christian civilization, it's also faced profound and rapid change," he says.

"This has necessitated new models and stronger network systems. We simply cannot continue as in the past."

Some Catholic communities fear the new parishes will lose resources.

Rupp says complaints have been made about "asset management".

She also says a 2016 diocesan synod had incorporated "people from the entire diocese" who would be encouraged to share responsibilities with the diocese's 1,016 priests and deacons and 1,740 religious.

"In each new parish, priests, deacons and pastoral ministers will all work on different issues and tasks.

"Of course, not everyone agrees with our plan — many still need convincing.

"Overall, however, the faithful understand the need for a comprehensive reform," she says.

Rupp says Trier was unusual in convening a diocesan synod to debate reforms.

"We're trying to change the image of the parish more radically than other dioceses by introducing a highly pluralistic pastoral framework," she says.

"Changes are plainly required in the church's life and structures. Whether a diocesan synod is the best forum for identifying and implementing them will be seen in future."

Source

• Catholic Philly
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Catholic Herald