Greg Daly
Bishop David Zubik Plans to reform an American diocese by drastically reducing the number of parishes could offer a ‘radical’ template for rejuvenating the Archdiocese of Dublin, a priest-author has said.
The comments come following reports that the Diocese of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has announced plans to reduce the current 188 parishes to just 57 over the next few years.
Explaining that current diocesan structures were unsustainable given financial demands and clerical shortages, Bishop David Zubik called for the diocese’s parishes to have a new missionary focus.
“For the past three years, we have laboured to discover how best to position our parishes for the future. We have been called to respond to the reality that populations in our region have shifted, that many Catholics have drifted away from Mass, and that we will have fewer priests,” he said. “These realities are opportunities for us to think about and create new ways to share and mobilise our resources to draw people deeper into the Faith and serve those in need.”
“Ballyfermot has three parishes, but Ballyfermot should be served by one parish,” Fr Joe McDonald of St Matthew’s Parish in Ballyfermot, Dublin, told The Irish Catholic. Maintaining that there are too many parishes in Dublin but that “paralysis” surrounds this issue, he said: “No archbishop wants to be the one who takes on something as radical as this.”
Madness
Pointing out that this is the reality Ireland’s bishops need to face, with Ireland’s vocation numbers being at an all time low, he said: “From any perspective it’s madness to continue doing what we’re doing,” he said. The bishops would be “doing a terrible disservice to the Church and to the people of God by not moving from maintenance mode to the prophetic”, he said.
Donal Harrington, author of Tomorrow’s Parish, said the real problem in this area can be due to “mindset”.
“It’s certainly the way to go, but it’s how to conceptualise it and how to make it more than an administrative thing,” he said.
“Parishes are very slow to do that. Even within a parish, it can be like that where there’ll be three Sunday Masses it’s almost like three different communities, where they don’t know each other and nobody wants their Mass to be the one that goes. Everybody’s just holding on to what they’ve got. It’s a mindset thing.”