Partners in the Gospel – Resources
As I dive into some of the reasons for Partners in the Gospel, I want to make sure you know where to find additional information. The main Archdiocese page for Partners is https://archseattle.org/partners/. This page is regularly updated and contains everything publicly announced about the process to-date.
At this point, I would specifically highlight the Current Reality Report Video (English, Spanish [subtitles], Vietnamese [subtitles]), which is what I am going to attempt to summarize over the next few weeks. You can flip through the slides they are using here, in English, Spanish, or Vietnamese.
Partners in the Gospel – Priests
The Problem
On every metric, parishes today have less strength and fewer resources than we did a decade ago, and far fewer than we did multiple decades ago. Partners in the Gospel is looking to consolidate all of these resources so that we can use them more effectively. However, it is the shortage of priests, specifically, that has made this process so urgent.
I regularly tell people that, yes, we have a shortage of priests, but more than that we have a shortage of pastors. More than just celebrate the sacraments, provide pastoral counseling, and show up at parish events, a pastor must set a vision, manage staff, and steward the financial resources of a parish. Not every priest is capable of doing this well, but today nearly every priest in our Archdiocese is asked to serve as a pastor. This mismatch can do significant harm to the priest and to the parish. We are certainly thankful for the missionary priests – often from Latin America, East India, Africa, and the Philippines – who still come here to serve our people, but we also recognize that not all of them can overcome the cultural differences required to govern an American parish. We are also thankful for the men who belong to our archdiocese but who realize after ordination that they fill ill-equipped to serve as a pastor. All of our priests are valuable, but we want to do a better job of matching their gifts to their ministry!
The Reality
Our Archdiocese currently has 161 archdiocesan priests (priests who are governed by the Archbishop of Seattle directly). Of these priests, 62 are retired, 92 are working in parishes, and 7 are on special assignment (e.g. Vocations Director) or are on leave of some kind. Of the 92 who work in parishes, 80 serve as pastors and 12 serve as assistants. These archdiocesan priests are supplemented by 26 extern priests (priests who are governed by a bishop in another diocese, who are on loan to us) and 30 religious order priests (e.g. Jesuits, Benedictines, Dominicans, etc.). Almost all of the extern priests are in parish ministry, and many serve as pastors. Fewer of the religious order priests serve as pastors, my guess is about a third.
These priests are then used to cover 136 current parishes, not counting missions (like Blaine, Deming, and Lummi).
You can see historical trends in our priest numbers at https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dseat.html.
The Goal
The goal for priests, then, is to have every parish governed by an archdiocesan pastor. Again, while we love and deeply appreciate our missionary priests and religious order priests, a man who permanently belongs to this archdiocese has a deeper connection to the people and the parishes than someone who may only be here for a few years. Exceptions will be made for parishes which have historically belonged to a religious order (think St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill in Seattle or Blessed Sacrament near University of Washington), but it is generally in our best interest to ensure that each parish has an archdiocesan pastor. This also frees the missionaries and religious orders to focus on their charisms, which may be ministry to a specific ethnic group or to the poor or to students.
The work of our consultants, then, was to do a demographic analysis to try to determine how many archdiocesan pastors under the retirement age we will have 10 years from now, a number they determined was 60. Then they did two things: (1) they were very conservative, to account for unforeseen deaths, men leaving the priesthood, etc., and suggested we base this consolidation process on about 80% of that number, or 49; and, (2) they added back in the number of parishes run by religious orders or other special circumstances. This gave us the number 57, which is the number of pastors we can reasonably expect to have in 10 years and, therefore, the number of parishes we need to get down to. Because that 57 number includes a few assumptions, it could theoretically go up and down as the Archdiocese receives more feedback on the draft families, but it will not change significantly. As such, particularly because of the shortage of pastors, we are looking to go from 136 parishes to 57 parishes by July 01, 2027. Please remember, however, that a parish and a church are different entities. A parish is a stable community of the faithful entrusted to a pastor, while a church a worship site. Theoretically, a single community could use and sustain multiple worship sites, but those decisions will be made by the new, consolidated community once it is formed.
Fr. Moore 