As part of my Annual Catholic Appeal homily this weekend, I will be discussing Partners in the Gospel again, so I figure I should give you a more thorough update here.
At its most basic, Partners in the Gospel is the Archdiocese of Seattle’s attempt to ensure that we are using our resources most effectively for the preaching of the Gospel. As the United States rapidly de-Christianizes, our churches have fewer and fewer resources, in both finances and people, including priests and pastoral ministers. In order to prevent our faith communities from withering on the vine and dying a slow death, we are trying to combine the resources that we still have into larger, stronger communities, so that we can preach the Gospel with strength and, may God allow it, reverse the trend of apostasy. Very practically, that means that we are merging parishes together.
The process is that, on July 1, 2024, nearly every parish in the Archdiocese will be paired with one or more neighboring parishes into a “family”. Over the next three years, these families will engage in a process of discussion and planning on how to combine their resources and begin to work as one unified community. That plan will be submitted to the Archdiocese with the hope that, by or shortly after July 1, 2027, the family will become one canonical (i.e. legal) parish. We should note that parishes are the structure, while church buildings are a physical resource, so what to do with multiple church buildings is part of that process of discussion, and merging parishes does not automatically assume the closure of all but one church building.
At this point, our consulting firm, Partners’ Edge, has provided a detailed analysis of how many pastors they think we will have in 20 years and what families ought to be created given that information, based on geography, attendance, finances, and other data. The Oversight Committee (the consultative body overseeing this process) and the Presbyteral Council (the Archbishop’s “senate”) provided feedback on these draft families in March, and the priests of the Archdiocese provided their feedback on the updated drafts on May 3rd. From here, the priests will provide a 2nd round of feedback in June at Priest Days; the Oversight Committee and Presbyteral Council will discuss and finalize that feedback in July, and a draft of families will be produced for the people of the Archdiocese. The deacons will provide feedback in August, parish staffs in early September, and then all of the people of the Archdiocese in late September. After all of this feedback is compiled, the Oversight Committee and Presbyteral Council will prepare a final recommendation for the Archbishop, who will finalize the families in January 2024. After that, priest assignments to the new families will be finalized.
Having been intimately involved with all of this on the Presbyteral Council, I can tell you two things: first, everything about this process is going to be difficult, but it is also absolutely going to be worth it. Second, all of this feedback matters – the drafts are changing all the time, and we are not barreling towards some pre-determined solution. Everyone has wisdom to offer, and we know that the more feedback we receive, the better a difficult process is going to become.
Fr. Moore 