With a new year beginning for the Catholic Church, does the movement on the path of renewal go with it?

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Next Sunday is, in the Christian calendar, the first Sunday of Advent. It marks the start of a new year for the Roman Catholic Church. And in Buffalo, this new year could bring some movement in a development plan to help parishes work with fewer resources, in an effort to keep them open.

The so-called Route of Renewal was announced last year by Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, while leading the Diocese of Buffalo as a temporary apostolic administrator. He formed a Diocesan Renewal Task Force, made up of clergy and laity, to study and make recommendations on how the Catholic Church in Western New York State could continue its mission. spiritual while dealing with limited and dwindling resources.

“We have parishes that are in difficulty, we have parishes that are doing well. And I think we need to come together to see how we can support each other in our different ministries and apostolates, ”said Bishop Michael Fisher, head of the Diocese of Buffalo since January 2021, in a recent interview with WBFO.

In recent years, the number of Catholic priests and those attending Catholic churches in western New York has declined steadily, even before challenges such as the COVID pandemic and the diocesan clergy sexual abuse scandal, the latter which led to the deposit of the diocese. for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In the past, the diocese has tackled declining attendance and resources by merging parishes, resulting in the complete closure of many churches.

The goal of Road to Renewal is to prevent more from closing. The strategy recommended by the working group is the implementation of “parish families”, a model whereby groups of three to six parishes would form a cohort and work together to share resources for the benefit of all churches involved.

“You might have a ward in that family that has a very strong youth program, or maybe their formation program, or another ward, maybe they don’t have the kind of resources to. afford, you know, a director of religious education. It’s a way to bring that stuff together, ”said Bishop Fisher.

The initial schedule provided for the unveiling of parish families in the summer of 2021 and the deployment of certain pilot families by September. The bishop says there was instead a desire for more consultation and feedback. He now expects half a dozen pilot parish families to be able to be introduced by mid-December at the earliest.

The division of priests between parishes is not new. In some cases, especially in rural areas of the diocese, a pastor is responsible for several parishes located miles from each other. For example, a priest presides over three parishes in the cities of Belfast, Fillmore and Cuba, with only a retired priest assisting him.

Under a plan for recommended parish families prepared last year, they would remain united. Other parish families would cover up to half a dozen parishes in a defined geographic extent. Urban and suburban parish families could exist in the immediate vicinity, but some of the groups proposed in rural parts would continue to involve long trips back and forth.

The Road to Renewal program, when introduced, made a commitment not to close parishes. Bishop Fisher says they can’t promise this, but if tough decisions need to be made, it should come from the local level, not his office.

“In the past, too many of our programs have always been imposed from the top down,” he said. “Here we have to work with the parish level and the family levels to see how we do it. I mean, you have a priest who takes care of three and four parishes. Something must give way in the mass schedule. We cannot have a 10 hour mass in this parish and a 10 hour mass in the other, and he is unable to handle that. So it will certainly require adjustments and mass schedules and, and within these families. “

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