Pastoral planning calls for realistic look at archdiocese

In the same issue as the interview with Father Connell on planning, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan addresses the subject in the "Herald of Hope" column in our Catholic Herald.

The church’s sacred mission, faithful to the mandate of Jesus, to teach, serve, and sanctify, requires such ongoing, purposeful, professional planning.

Never-ending planning.

This archdiocese has done so, in a very concerted way, for at least the last 15 years.

It's hard to know where one round of planning starts and another one ends.

...many of the recommendations for our parishes and schools have already been implemented or are in process. Other recommendations await implementation.

It's not that I think process produces an inadequate return on time invested; I suspect the return actually is negative. Planning at St. Al's, at least, was exhausting and demoralizing.

Today I want to talk to you about a heightened, more energetic effort to re-commit ourselves to the process of pastoral planning.

An effort to re-commit to the process of planning. We're four steps removed from actually doing anything.

What is this all about, anyway?

I've been through plenty of it and haven't heard any good answers.

Well, for one, it’s about fidelity to the church’s primary duty of evangelization. Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI all remind us that evangelization in the third millennium calls for new, creative ways to respond to pastoral urgencies that engage us today.

If I wanted to kill creativity and evangelization, I'd be hard-pressed to suggest a better weapon than planning as done in this Archdiocese.

People are looking to the church to be a light to the world, to be proactive,

[sic]

not passive, in dealing with contemporary challenges, and to meet the spiritual needs of her people today as she has in the past.

So let's break out the flip charts and the sticky dots.

Are we evangelizing and living our faith? Are we meeting the spiritual needs of our people? How effectively do we live Jesus’ mission in today’s world? Are we good stewards? These are the questions that pastoral planning confronts.

Seems to me there's been an inverse relationship to how much of those things we accomplish and the size of the planning effort.

Simply put, we have too many parishes, priests, and buildings in areas of southeastern Wisconsin where our Catholic population has shrunk, and not enough where big numbers of Catholics now live.

That assumes he has solid numbers, as does everything else he goes on to discuss.

Simply maintaining the buildings we have, with no energy or resources left for the mission of Christ and his church, is no way to run a railroad!

All right, just show objectively how shuttering those old inner city churches in the 1990s has energized people and advanced the mission.

Does this pastoral planning mean some parishes and schools might merge, move or be served by creative new styles of leadership? Yes.

Except for the creative styles of leadership. Expect instead styles of leadership that make accountability murky.

Does this mean that some new parishes, or re-configurations of current ones, might appear?

And, who knows, some current parishioners might even follow from their closed parishes.

Does this mean that new ministries, new models of schools, catechetical programs, and fresh outreach in evangelization and charity might arise? Yes.

Again, we'll see what this means on accountablility.

Can we continue the mushrooming of central office services that began 15 years ago after the archdiocesan synod?

Mushrooming? Because the synod provided the right growing medium?

Have we kept pace with changes in our parishes and reflected those changes in our central structure designed to support those very same parishes? Have we focused on what’s most important, most helpful, most needed?

How about bringing liturgical design consulting and fund-raising consulting in house, instead of paying consultants. Maybe standardize Information Technology throughout the Archdiocese, and provide central support? In a world of weblogs, text messaging, podcasts, etc., there are parishes with no web site and which struggle with email.

Or, have we continued to try and be all things to all people, as our world and our culture changed around us?

Is trying to be all things to all people undesirable in principle? I haven't seen it as a source of problems here; if anything, staffers have busied themselves on their own agendas and pet projects instead.

All of this work is especially important as we move toward a capital campaign.

What's called planning will apparently involve asking people to donate for Catholic high schools at the same time they're being told there are not sufficient resources to keep their parishes open.

Well, have I made my point? All this planning is crucial! So crucial that it also needs to be full-time.

For someone, anyway.

Thus, I have appointed a much respected pastor, Fr. James Connell, as archdiocesan vicar for planning. ... We know from experience the aggressive planning I have described will take more than one year, but I believe Fr. Connell’s full-time attention, along with the consultation and support of our priest council and pastoral council, will allow us to make great progress and set the course for future implementation.

Does aggresive planning mean anything beyond aggresive closings? If he isn't pointing to any problems in prior planning, then future planning can be expected to be more the same, Why, then, should be expect the results to be anything other than more of the same?

Fr. Connell was also just elected chair of our archdiocesan priest council on a “single-issue” emphasis – you guessed it: pastoral planning!

There's been plenty of emphasis on planning, but not planning the work. There seems to be an idea that if we get the process right, the process will do the work for us. It's like believing in the market without people buying and selling.

With their election of Fr. Connell, our priest council sent a clear, resounding message – we must boldly renew our commitment to pastoral planning, to new models of administration and to new approaches to serving the people of God in southeastern Wisconsin.

A "renewed commitment to pastoral planning" is already an old model of administration in these parts.

We need to dream of what could be and “cast out to the deep,” ...

I've got lots of old parish and archdiocesan planning materials here in the filing cabinet. Maybe it's time to cast them into the deep.