Rural parishes south of metro share strengths, challenges
By Maria Wiering
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Planning process’ regional leadership meetings begin in Northfield
Six miles of field-bordered road separate St. John the Baptist in Vermillion from St. Mathias in Hampton, and it’s the same distance to St. Mary in New Trier. The triangular route between the parishes will be one Father Stan Mader learns well as he pastors the three rural parishes 25 miles south of St. Paul.
St. Mary founded St. Mathias as a mission church in 1900, and the two
have shared pastors for many years. St. John also was initially served
by St. Mary after it was founded in 1882, but in 1891 it was given its
own pastor. That changed on July 1, when Father Stan Mader became
pastor of all three parishes.
Share your planning ideas
Task force members for the archdiocesan Strategic Planning Process for Parishes and Schools want to hear from you. These upcoming eight regional meetings will provide opportunities for Catholics in the archdiocese to share their thoughts on the planning process and hear others’ ideas as well.
• St. Richard, Richfield
Sept. 12, 9:30-11:30 a.m.
• St. Peter, North St. Paul
Sept. 15, 7-9 p.m.
• St. Wenceslaus, New Prague
Sept. 22, 7-9 p.m.
• St. Pius V, Cannon Falls
Sept. 26, 9:30-11:30 a.m.
• All Saints, Lakeville
Sept. 28, 7-9 p.m.
• Holy Spirit, St. Paul
Oct. 1, 7-9 p.m.
• Holy Name of Jesus, Wayzata
Oct. 6, 7-9 p.m.
• St. Timothy, Blaine
Oct. 8, 7-9 p.m.
You can also offer ideas and feedback to the task force in the following ways:
• Mailing address: Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis, PST - Planning Process Comments, 328 Kellogg Blvd. W, St. Paul, MN 55102
“For a parish that’s always been fortunate to have their own priest . .
. this will be a change and a challenge,” said St. John parish trustee
Greg Ries. “It’s exciting at the same time. We’re very fortunate to
have him.”
Although the three parishes are not formally clustered, their region of
the archdiocese is already home to 13 of the 23 parish clusters in the
archdiocese.
More changes are on the horizon for the entire archdiocese as task
force members of the Strategic Planning Process for Parishes and
Schools begin regional meetings with parish leadership.
Held at St. Dominic in Northfield July 7, the first meeting was
designed for parishes in archdiocesan deaneries 6, 7 and 8, which
include parishes in Dakota, Scott, Le Sueur, Rice and Goodhue counties.
The geographical area includes 53 of the 222 parishes in the
archdiocese. About 75 priests and parish leaders attended the meeting.
Parish leaders voiced concerns about declining Catholic school
enrollment, declining parish membership and stretching priests too thin
while serving clustered parishes.
St. John has 275 families, and although it has recently added on to its
church and school, it is almost debt free, Ries said. The
pre-kindergarten to fifth-grade school has more than 120 students and
is growing.
Yet, St. John — like other parishes in the area — is looking for ways
to engage teenage parishioners and build a financial reserve, Ries said.
Projections regarding the whole archdiocese’s future show more
Catholics but fewer priests, and task force members are asking
Catholics for input on how best to manage financial, personnel and
structural resources in their regions. The task force will make
recommendations to Archbishop John Nienstedt, and he will confirm the
final plan.
Statistics show that by 2019, the number of archdiocesan priests
eligible to be pastor will decline by 19 — from 182 to 163 priests. At
the same time, both the general and Catholic population in the
archdiocese is growing, and the Catholic growth is almost exclusively
attributed to immigrants, said task force member Jim Lundholm-Eades.
In the archdiocese as a whole, many parishes have been living beyond
their means, he said. For fiscal year 2006, the cash to debt ratio was
0.7, meaning that for every dollar that was spent overall, only 70
cents were actually in the bank.
“The financial condition in the archdiocese . . . existed prior to the
economic downturn,” Lundholm-Eades told parish leaders. “The downturn
just exacerbated and exposed the existing problem.”
At the same time, the distribution of debt and operating loss among
parishes and schools is not evenly spread throughout the archdiocese,
he said.
Another issue for parishes throughout the archdiocese is Mass
attendance. Of registered Catholics in the archdiocese, only 34 percent
are estimated to attend Mass regularly, which aligns with the 36
percent national average estimated by the Center for Applied Research
in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Catholic education
Religious education enrollment is declining, showing a significant
drop-off after confirmation. Roughly 38 percent of children baptized
between 1993 and 1999 are not served by any religious education program
or Catholic school in the archdiocese, Lundholm-Eades said.
Parish schools are also increasingly difficult to financially support, he added.
“Very few individual parishes can comfortably support a Catholic school on their own,” he said.
Parishes south of the metro have watched Catholic schools close; in
May, St. Mary in New Trier held class for the last time after 144
years. Only 17 students were enrolled.
When he was named pastor, Father Mader called former St. Mary principal Pat Ziegenbein to offer condolences.
“I grew up in a place where a school closed; I’ve attended schools that
have closed, and I know how difficult that can be. There’s a lot of
that identity there,” he said.
Over the last five years, tuition at St. Wenceslaus in New Prague has
risen from $1,790 to $3,250 for its pre-kindergarten to eighth-grade
school, said parish business administrator Peter Guzulaitis.
The increase made it possible for the parish to better fund other areas of its ministry, including faith formation, he said.
However, enrollment has declined in the kindergarten to eighth grades,
Guzulaitis said, which reflects the trends Lundholm-Eades described.
Yet, “the school is very much embedded in the fabric of the community,
both in the parish and New Prague as a whole,” Guzulaitis said.
Ries also pointed to St. John’s school as a community unifier.
“That’s the great thing with these schools — people are involved and
they’re volunteering and they’re there,” he said. “It’s a sort of a
community process of raising these kids.”
Changing a community
St. Wenceslaus has 1,440 families, many of whom have parish roots
several generations deep. The town is transitioning from an agrarian
community to a Twin Cities bedroom community, although farming remains
strong, Guzulaitis said.
Some young families return to New Prague to raise their children, he added.
The parish and town’s tight-knit nature mean that members know who needs help, prayers and support, Guzulaitis said.
“There’s a general sense of care and compassion within the community that is a real strength for us as a parish,” he added.
Father Mader has more weddings on the calendar and hears more
confessions in his new parishes than at his previous assignment, which
was a larger parish, he said.
“What keeps a parish going isn’t necessarily a school or the number of
people, but the liveliness of it,” Father Mader said. “What I see in
these parishes right now is a strong devotional life and a sincere
faith. . . . In some ways, you see more of a sacramental life.”
Importance of lay leadership
Father Kevin Finnegan, task force member and pastor of Divine Mercy in
Faribault, was encouraged by the conversation at the meeting because he
heard people share from their hearts, he said.
“I’m impressed with the breadth and depth of lay leadership in our church,” he added.
“There were a lot of people who came from all kinds of parishes, large
parishes and small parishes, and their presence simply expressed a
willingness to talk to each other, and that’s tremendous.”
It’s important for priests and lay people to talk about how to carry out the work of Christ today, he said.
“I thought [the meeting] was a wonderful opportunity for us to get
together and have that kind of conversation . . . on a more local
level,” he said.
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