After consulting with deanery planning representatives, the Planning Commission and the Presbyteral Council, Bishop Galante said a reconfiguration of parishes in the diocese was necessary because of shifts in population, the need to strengthen parishes and revitalize parish life, and to advance the pastoral priorities the people of the diocese told him were most important when they met with him for Speak Up sessions in 2005 and 2006.
He also cited the decline in the number of priests available for ministry in the diocese.
The diocese presently has 162 active diocesan priests. The diocese anticipates that there will be a significant decline in the number of diocesan priests that will be available for ministry in the years ahead, perhaps 85 or fewer by 2015.
The losses through retirement and death, however, are not being offset through new ordinations. From 1997 to 2007, 103 priests died, but only 37 men were ordained priests for the diocese.
“These factors will mean a dramatic reduction in the number of diocesan priests available for ministry, not only in this diocese, but in most Northeast dioceses which are experiencing similar issues. This decline in the number of priests available for ministry is not imaginary, but is a reality that has been confirmed by independent analysis, including surveys conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate in Georgetown,” said Father Terry Odien, Vicar for Clergy for the diocese.
Father Odien also said the diocese has religious order and international priests on loan to augment the present number of diocesan priests in ministry, even as there are no guarantees on their future service. “We are grateful for the service provided by our religious order and international priests and are hopeful that we will continue to have access to these priests to assist in our parishes in the future.”
Given the reduced number of priests available for ministry, deanery planners recommended the merging and clustering of parishes, and, in one instance, placing a group of parishes under the care of a team of priests.
“It is natural to want to retain that which we’ve enjoyed in the past, where we have had a sufficient number of priests to have one pastor for each of the 124 parishes of the diocese. The number of priests that will be available for ministry in the future will make this impossible. The merging and clustering parishes is never easy on priests or the people they serve, but will, over time, be of great benefit to the faith life of the Catholic community in South Jersey.”
While the decline in the number of priests available for ministry is necessitating a change in the way the parishes in the diocese are configured, it also places new urgency on the laity to assume their right and duty to participate in service to the parish community.
“The ordained priest is essential and irreplaceable,” said Father Odien. “The clear distinction between the ordained priesthood and the common priesthood of the faithful is never blurred, yet the challenges the Church faces today will present fresh opportunities for participation and collaboration between clergy, religious and laity, who are called to further the common good of their own individual parishes and the diocese as a whole.”
The change that is ahead, he said, involves thinking beyond current parish boundaries, and considering the needs of the local Church overall, a theme developed in Vatican II’s Aposolicam Actuositatem, which stated, “The laity should accustom themselves to working in the parish in close union with their priests…They should constantly foster a feeling for their own diocese, of which the parish is a kind of cell…indeed, [the laity] should not limit their cooperation to the parish level but expand it beyond that, especially because in modern society, no community can remain closed in upon itself” (10).