I am a Roman Catholic, living in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. My pastor for the past 13 years has been a charismatic, dynamic, spiritual, handsome, talented, interesting fellow. He was brought in to build a new church...get the process going, raise the money, and manage the whole thing. It is built. It is beautiful. It is paid for. And then some. New, never envisioned out buildings enhance the whole campus.
He is instituted numerous forms of "outreach," benefitting the poor, elderly, addicted, displaced, and so on. I participate in some of it, in small ways.
The Bishop, confronting declining membership overall, and the projected loss of 40% of the already-short-supply of priests over the next ten years, decided (basically) to consolidate over a hundred "buildings" into 40 or so new parishes, with the structures and clergy to be determined over the next few years. Some churches will be closed, some expanded, who knows? Basically the way it works elsewhere is that a "parish" will not consist of three or four Churches (all retaining their previous names), and each one will have one or two Masses on the weekend, with a main "parish" priest floating from one to another to say the Masses.
And of course, our All-Star paster was sent to New Castle, to oversee 8 or so smaller parishes and manage their reorganization. It makes sense from a Diocesan management standpoint.
I don't know anything about the incoming paster, only that he is thrilled to be assigned to what is a large, growing, dynamic parish that has a hundred different things going on.
We'll see. Lots of people are VERY unhappy with this, but it is actually quite common, historically speaking within the U.S. Catholic Church. The norm used to be pastors moved around every 5 years or so.
I don't know of any other religions that would have a comparable event.
He is instituted numerous forms of "outreach," benefitting the poor, elderly, addicted, displaced, and so on. I participate in some of it, in small ways.
The Bishop, confronting declining membership overall, and the projected loss of 40% of the already-short-supply of priests over the next ten years, decided (basically) to consolidate over a hundred "buildings" into 40 or so new parishes, with the structures and clergy to be determined over the next few years. Some churches will be closed, some expanded, who knows? Basically the way it works elsewhere is that a "parish" will not consist of three or four Churches (all retaining their previous names), and each one will have one or two Masses on the weekend, with a main "parish" priest floating from one to another to say the Masses.
And of course, our All-Star paster was sent to New Castle, to oversee 8 or so smaller parishes and manage their reorganization. It makes sense from a Diocesan management standpoint.
I don't know anything about the incoming paster, only that he is thrilled to be assigned to what is a large, growing, dynamic parish that has a hundred different things going on.
We'll see. Lots of people are VERY unhappy with this, but it is actually quite common, historically speaking within the U.S. Catholic Church. The norm used to be pastors moved around every 5 years or so.
I don't know of any other religions that would have a comparable event.
