Last week, I wrote concerning the need for planning and the need to cultivate a mentality of planning for the foreseeable future in the Archdiocese of Boston. One detail I mentioned was that by the year 2014, it is expected that there will be 294 parishes and 212 priests available to serve those parishes. In fact I believe that the number 212 is optimistic if for no other reason that during the past five years, one half of the men ordained to priesthood for the archdiocese have already resigned from the priesthood. More information is available through the Archdiocese web site-RCAB.orf in the document “A Church Continually being Reborn”
Catholic parishes in Brockton have already begun a process of planning that will eventually include all parish leadership. For the moment there are only two staff persons from each parish meeting monthly, a priest and a lay person. This group is thinking through how we involve all of our parishes in a planning process. We do not have a scheme yet but, we are focusing on 4 do-able and important areas of life: the grieving [we had 267 funerals in our parishes in 2007), Marriage Preparation, Adult and older children preparation for baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, and youth.
Jeanne Lafond is heading up the RCIA planning (baptisms for adults and older children). Fr. Brian Flynn (at St. Edith Stein) is working on a city-wide marriage preparation program. I am getting commitments from people with Bereavement Ministry experience to train teams for each parish in the city. The youth initiative may be led by Fr. David O’Donnell from Christ the King Parish.
In addition, at separate meetings, the priests are meeting to think and pray together on how we priests would function if one or two in the city were reassigned and there was no replacement. How we can work together and support each other is also part of our agenda.
At this point we hope to get some people from every parish involved in training for Marriage Preparation and Bereavement Ministry this summer. So obviously Jeanne Lafond and I will be checking our list of parishioners for good prospects for these two ministries.
The RCIA program for the city led by Jeanne is already in place and working well.
As the summer approaches, there will, in all likelihood, be no opportunity for large group meetings but I think we can expect some of that this fall. This conversation needs to include more and more of us ifwe are to create a church in Brockton that works well in serving our parishioners and our city.