Consolidations may lead to new spiritual life

Submitted on October 27, 2004

Send to friendThe task forces studying the future of parishes in the northeast part of St. Louis County and in South St. Louis have made their recommendations on parish and school mergers and closings. The flight of Catholics from those areas has profoundly affected parishes and has caused the archdiocese to address the resulting challenges. The preliminary recommendations would reduce the 25 parishes in the Northeast Deanery to 10 with an additional parish for Hispanic Catholics. The proposal for the South City Deanery would consolidate 35 parishes into 15 territorial ones and nine for special purposes. Several Catholic schools would be shuttered in both locales. Many Catholics, notably longtime members of parishes who often have valiantly stayed in them, are understandably unhappy with the announced closings. Others, in parishes that will remain open or absorb members of parishes slated for closing, may be breathing a sigh of relief but wondering what another decade might bring. The task forces making the recommendations were made up of clergy and laity with help from the Meitler Group of Wisconsin, which has advised other dioceses on such matters. Their work required many months and was marked by an openness to the parishes in the areas studied. The proposal is to be sent to Archbishop Raymond Burke about Dec. 1. The deans for both areas, Father John Brockland of the Northeast Deanery and Msgr. Dennis Doerhoff of South City, both have said the proposals may be amended before that. But, they have stressed that the proposals stem from a vision for the future that would make the best use of Church facilities in those areas. Alterations to the proposal may very well happen, as planners acknowledged last week after listening to the early response from people in the pews; but changes to the proposals still must comply with that vision for the future of North County and South St. Louis. What’s important now is for the archdiocesan hierarchy, parish priests and the laity in those areas to remember that our Catholic faith can never remain hidden. The attitude must not be that parish membership will continue to decline. Parishes will continue to serve as anchors for neighborhoods. While the number of Catholics may have dropped in those two areas, the overall number of residents has not decreased significantly. This is a prime time for evangelization, of spreading the Good News of our faith to the non-Catholic population living north and south. It’s been said that evangelization is not a strong trait of Catholics; now is the time to prove that adage wrong and to remember that the first evangelizers — the Apostles — had no special training other than their zeal. The proposed north and south consolidations also should serve as a history lesson to those who have moved elsewhere. They should work to ensure that their burgeoning parishes are built on solid spiritual ground.