Partners in the Gospel Update

August 6, 2023

Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever ~

This is an update on Partners in the Gospel, my second installment on the subject and taken together with the Archbishop, the third time you’ve found a page length or more article in the bulletin on it. A reminder: the Archdiocese of Seattle, or the Church in Western Washington, is going to implement the greatest reorganization of parishes and missions in our history starting in the summer of 2024. This is a brief reminder of why and where the process is at this time.

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 decline, 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. For over 50 years, the status quo has been failing the Church in Washington and it must change and it will begin to in the summer of 2024.

In the summer of 2024 most parishes and missions in Western Washington, that aren’t already grouped with others, will be grouped together in regional clusters under one pastor called “families.” Each of these “families” of communities will eventually form one parish with a pastor and one or more parochial vicars (assisting priests). This September you will be given a chance to see a draft of these parish families and give feedback, culminating in a formal draft that will be presented to everyone in January. 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 effect means of being one parish.

Please see the other side of this page for an update from the Archdiocese of Seattle on Partners in the Gospel. Also, please check out our website’s homepage and click on the Partners tab for much more information on the why, what, how, when and who of it all. Our webpage will be the best place to find current information on Partners going forward. Over the next four 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,