clustering part one

In the Archdiocese of Dubuque, there was once a situation in which we had a very large number of priests. I heard that we had, per capita, the largest number of priests in the world. This meant that we had too many priests for the population in Dubuque. One solution among many to this problem was to create more parishes, even ones that served very small communities that were very close to larger towns. In the last thirty years, our priest population has declined making it difficult to maintain all the parishes that we once maintained. This has caused a couple of difficult situations. The first is being forced to close down some smaller communities that can no longer be maintained. The second is something called clustering.

At my parish in Dubuque, Holy Ghost, we have begun the process of planning for future clustering with two other parishes here in the city, Holy Trinity and Sacred Heart. We are still some time away from it actually taking place because of the size of the parishes involved but, in the past several weeks, I've been giving some information about clustering in order to dispel any false rumors that go around and, in the next couple of weeks, I hope to duplicate that information here.

As I said before, part of this has to do with the decline in the number of priests. But, I believe that, even more fundamental than that, clusetering is an exercise in what it means to be Catholic (a word which means universal). In other words, clustering is God's gift to us in recognition that our churches really are connected all over the world. We were not baptized into Holy Ghost church or any particular parish. We were baptized into Christ Jesus who gave us the church as his earthly body.

Many people become afraid when they hear about clustering because they think about other more frustrating situations that have involved consolidation, especially with catholic schools and hospitals. While no one can guarantee that everything will be easy in clustering parishes, there is a HUGE difference between consolidating schools and clustering parishes. You probably already have a sense of the principle behind clustering. Have you ever gone to a different catholic church on a Sunday? If so, you heard the same readings, same prayers, and received the same body and blood of Christ that you would have if you had been at your own parish. There may have been some small differences but, for the most part, Mass is the same in all the churches throughout the world. Yet, your child would not go to a different school expecting that everything be the same there. We who are catholic trust that what happens in our church is what happens, for the most part, in all of them. With God's help, in the coming years, we will model this universality for the rest of the city of Dubuque.