Fr. Reifenberg said the original estimate was that more than 2,200 families would migrate to Nativity of the Lord from those three parishes.
“But that never materialized,” he said. “They ended up starting at about a little over 1,200 families."
While he talks about some parishioners then changing to more convenient parishes, he provides no reassuring statistics on exactly what happened to 1,000 former parish families. Whatever the cost in lost parishioners, Archbishop Timothy Dolan expects this process to go on.
“We don’t have enough priests for neighborhood parishes,” he said. “... Sometimes we are unconsciously, by necessity, buying into the mega-church model."
According to this, we're only getting the disadvantages of that model.
Also interviewed was Fr. Tim Kitzke of Three Holy Women Church, formed from the merger of St. Rita, St. Hedwig and Mary Queen of the Holy Rosary Churches.
Fr. Kitzke said when the three parishes merged, they had about 800 families. Today, there are more than 1,300 families.
... “We’re in a neighborhood that was increasing in population so we added 500 families."
So he attributes parish growth to population growth, rather than evangelization.
P.S. Three Holy Women is in the same 53202 zip code as the Cathedral, leaving unexplained why the latter has almost no local members, let alone local membership growth. And the former is not immediately downtown while the latter is. In his proposal for a Downtown Circulator streetcar, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett says
Recent years have witnessed an incredible revitalization of Milwaukee’s downtown, and now nearly 15,000 people make their home in the growing neighborhood.
I assume that includes thousands of Catholics; if so, what their parish (if any) might be remains unclear.
My guess is that Three Holy Women has grown because Fr. Kitzke (sp?) is a wonderful priest. I wish all priests could be the kind of homilist he is. I also don't think he belongs to MAPA, for what that is worth.
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