Partners in the Gospel
January 26, 2023
Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever ~
Two and three weekends ago I wrote pastor’s columns on how special this parish is. If you missed them you can still read them by visiting our website. What those pastor’s columns presumed as good (or even great), were things that are relative. Relative to other parishes in America today, we’re doing awesome. Compared to the early 1960’s not so much.
Over the past 60 years the trend line for religious practice in this country has been going down. People attending religious services or even identifying with a religion has fallen dramatically during that time. In 2019, the last year we have statistics for this kind of thing, 1500 Protestant churches closed – and that was before the pandemic! In the early 1960’s at least 67% of Catholics attended Mass on any given Sunday, that number is less than 10% today. We all have Catholic family members who no longer attend Mass, in most families the majority of Catholics don’t attend Mass. Every category of religious practice has seen steep declines. Mass attendance, baptisms, confessions, confirmations, marriages in the Church, ordinations to the priesthood, etc., have seen huge declines. Here’s a shocker: 67% of parishes and missions in Western Washington aren’t meeting their budget through ordinary income. Yet the Church in Western Washington is still structured and largely functioning as if its’ still the early 1960’s; with roughly the same number of parishes and missions today as then, with less than half as many incardinated, assigned parish priests. This will begin to change in the summer of 2024.
Last weekend, throughout the parishes and missions of Western Washington, the Archdiocese of Seattle rolled out what will ultimately be the largest reorganization in our history. For over 50 years, the status quo has been failing the Church in Washington and it must change.
In the summer of 2024 most parishes and missions in Western Washington, that aren’t already grouped with others under one pastor, will be grouped together in regional clusters called “families”. Each of these families of communities will form one parish with a pastor, with usually a second assisting priest (parochial vicar) and in some rare cases, two. This spring the priests will see the first draft of these parish families and give feedback, culminating in a formal draft that will be presented to everyone a year from now. Then from the summer of 2024 until the summer of 2027 the communities within these families will discern together, with the aid of a delegate from the Archdiocese, the most effective means of becoming one parish. I’m hopeful that in the coming years all our parishes throughout Western Washington can develop the kind of vibrancy that we are blessed to have here at Holy Redeemer.
Please see the other side of this page for a timeline for Partners in the Gospel. You can visit https://archseattle.org/partners to see a video and seven pages of FAQs about this that the Archdiocese made. You can also find links to these items in the Friday e-mail blast sent out on January 27th. Over the next 4½ years there will be regular communication and dialogue every step of the way between the Archdiocese, myself, and you about Partners in the Gospel. Please keep all of this in prayer.
May Almighty God Bless You,
Fr. Thomas Nathe
