By this time next year, religious life will change in some way for almost every Catholic priest, parishioner and student in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
Parishes that have stood on their own for decades or longer will be grouped into “families” overseen by a single pastor. Those new parish families will then revise Mass schedules and locations, combine church programs and activities, and make tough decisions about the future of Catholic schools.
No final decisions have been made about what, exactly, the archdiocese will look like a year from now. But planning for the reorganization, known as “Beacons of Light,” has been underway for months and promises to bring dramatic change.
Church officials declined to discuss their plans until the first draft of the overhaul is released this fall, which also is when rank-and-file Catholics will get their chance to weigh in.
There’s no secret, however, about why change is coming. Documents on the archdiocese’s website single out “declining religious practice,” “demographic changes” and “fewer priests.”
Catholics have been told for months in church bulletins and online updates that the goal of Beacons of Light is to address those problems and make their parishes more stable and vibrant for years to come. In a short video posted on the archdiocese website, Archbishop Dennis Schnurr said the purpose of the reorganization is to equip the church with "everything it needs to lead people to holiness, and through holiness to salvation."
But Schnurr's video is short on specifics, and that has made some apprehensive about what Beacons of Light will mean for their parishes and schools.
For Catholics, parishes often are the center of social and cultural life, not just religious life. Schools, sports teams, festivals, bingo nights, fish fries, Bible study groups and a host of other activities have bound generations of Catholics to their parishes.
Tinkering with that bond is a delicate matter, as church officials have learned many times over the years when merging parishes or closing schools. Doing it across all 19 counties of the archdiocese, as Beacons of Light proposes, will be a heavy lift.
“I see it as being a struggle,” said Janie Allen-Blue, a member of Bond Hill’s Church of the Resurrection, which was part of a four-parish merger more than a decade ago. “I’m not trying to be negative, but parishioners didn’t come up with Beacons of Light.”
Mass attendance and enrollment decline
Like many Catholics, though, she knows the challenges are real.
Nationally, the number of priests has plummeted from 59,200 to 35,500 over the past 50 years, and the number of parishes has fallen from 18,200 to 16,700, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
But the decline isn’t happening uniformly. While new parishes spring up in booming areas such as Atlanta and Dallas, places such as Detroit, Pittsburgh and Chicago have seen Catholics either leave town or abandon neighborhood parishes for the suburbs. As that happened, church officials have tried to adapt, often with structural reorganizations like Beacons of Light.
“It’s very common,” said the Rev. Thomas Gaunt, the Georgetown center's director. “There’s not one way to do this.”
A 177-page report produced this year for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati spelled out what the church here is up against: Mass attendance declined 22.5% between 2010 and 2019, Catholic school enrollment fell 14% over the same period, and the number of priests, which has been tumbling for decades, was projected to drop another 18% by 2031.
Those trends began before the COVID-19 pandemic delivered another body blow to church attendance and forced the cancelation of popular fundraising events, such as festivals.
They also came as the region’s demographics continued to shift unfavorably for the archdiocese. The Catholic population here is getting older – baptisms declined 19% in the past decade – and the Catholic share of the population fell from 14.2% to 11.9%.
The report, which church officials will use to guide their work on Beacons of Light, does not make specific recommendations about how to group the archdiocese’s 211 parishes or whether to close any of its 110 schools. But it does provide a glimpse into the future.
It suggests the archdiocese may not be able to support more than 60 to 65 pastor assignments a decade from now, which, based on the number of parishes today, could leave one priest for every 3.5 parishes.
By 2031, the report predicts, a pastor who serves only one parish “will be an anomaly.”
The archdiocese still has 153 priests, but the report estimates the total will drop to 125 over the next decade. And because half the priests today are over 60, many may be retired or unable to run a parish on their own by 2031.
The report also warns that some Catholic schools, like some parishes, were built decades ago and are no longer located where large numbers of Catholics live, which makes it difficult to maintain and grow enrollment.
The coming changes to parishes, therefore, will also mean changes at schools, some of which are increasingly dependent on millions of dollars from Ohio's Ed Choice vouchers and administrative cost reimbursements from state taxpayers.
“School structure will be impacted by parish structural changes,” the report states.
Will parishes and schools close?
According to Beacons of Light planning documents, this restructuring will be more sweeping than anything the archdiocese has done in decades, if not longer.
Does that mean parishes will close? Details the archdiocese has provided so far don’t come out and say that, but the description of the "families of parishes" model implies that at least some of the original parishes will eventually close.
Those documents, which are available on the archdiocese website, describe the first step as figuring out new Mass schedules and bringing together parish councils and staff. Later, though, the plan is to turn the new families of parishes into something other than a loose association overseen by the same pastor.
The goal is to unite those parishes into a single parish.
“The pace at which parishes join together within the families will be variable and determined by the readiness of the parishes to move forward,” church officials explain on the website.
Gaunt said the reorganization is a critical time for the archdiocese. It’s never easy, he said, to adapt to a changing world while respecting the attachment so many Catholics have to their parishes and schools.
“There’s familial, strong ties to this given church building at this location,” Gaunt said. “One has to address that with great sensitivity because it holds such meaning in families’ lives.”
Allen-Blue knows from experience how difficult that task can be. She had attended St Mark’s in Evanston before it merged with three other parishes to create Resurrection. At the time, she argued against the change.
“When there’s a merger, it’s a loss,” she said. “It took some time.”
Eventually, though, she adapted. She joined the new parish’s finance council, became a catechism teacher and, more than 10 years later, still attends Mass at Resurrection.
She said she’s not sure what to expect from Beacons of Light, since everyone still is waiting for details about what it means for their parishes and schools.
But she said people will be more likely to embrace the changes if they feel they’re part of the decision-making process, so she’s anxious to see what the archdiocese announces next month and how open church officials will be to the views of parishioners.
“No one likes for anyone to say this is how it’s going to be and that’s it,” Allen-Blue said. “It’s important to have input before the fact.”
If the archdiocese sticks to its timeline for Beacons of Light, Allen-Blue and the region’s other half-million Catholics should know by next spring how much say they had in the future of their parishes and schools.
That’s when church officials intend to approve the families of parishes structure and assign pastors to lead them.
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