FIFTY YEARS AGO, Arundel & Brighton was part of Southwark diocese. Today we have some 112 parishes in the diocese. Fifty years ago, in the same area of this diocese, there were 73 parishes. In the two dioceses at the time there was a total of 836 priests working (including religious): today there are 466. And numbers were on the rise: in Southwark, in 1954 there were 290,000 Catholics. The following year that had risen to 302,000. And so it would continue for the next 10 years, reaching a zenith in the mid 60s.
Those three sets of figures illustrate part of the challenge facing us. While two of those figures have fallen — the number of Catholics and the number of priests - the number of parishes has risen significantly, from 73 to 112. They are now served by just under half the number of priests.
But numbers can paint a very dull picture, a picture in black and white, or even just grey. What the numbers cannot show is the life and energy of the Catholic Church at the time. The numbers would suggest that there was tremendous energy, but they also indicate great population shifts, lots of people coming into Britain in the post-war boom.
So what we are facing is not anything new, it's something quite old. It's a picture of the Church that existed before that boom, when the numbers of priests and parishes were fewer than today. But the decline reflects the complex structure of society: a falling birth rate means fewer baptisms, a more transient and partial view of life means less willingness to commit to a life-long service in the priesthood. These things may well change again.
What we need to do is to face the challenge of the here and now, neither dreaming of the past nor imagining the distant future. This paper is part of that facing the present. The hard work that has gone into it offers us all an exciting challenge: it's the parable of the talents in the Gospel. Instead of burying the talent in the ground, we need to go and do something with it.
A consultation is not a vote, and in a sense some of this has been decided already, because the number of priests is not negotiable. Nor is there much choice about where they should be. The question of Mass times has not been looked at here. But this is more than just about Mass. The questions to ponder on now in your parishes is how we work with what we have got. This is the picture: how does it fit your image of Church and your view of the complementary roles of lay person, religious, deacon and priest, and indeed bishop? It is something that affects all committed Catholics. We do not have ten talents now, we have five.What are we going to do to make five more?
Bishop Kieran
THE DOCUMENT aims to help us to meet the challenges of fewer priests by:
- making a projection of the likely numbers and deployment of priests in our parishes by 2010,
- guiding decisions concerning the appointment of priests over the next five years;
- proposing a re-structuring of parishes and deaneries which is in line with the expected deployment of priests.
It is not a Pastoral Plan. It merely illustrates the parameters in which our Catholic faith and mission will be lived out within the parishes and other communities of our diocese.
Download the Parishes 2010 document in PDF format here
(webmasters note - in converting the document to PDF format there has been a slight problem with the fonts, which causes some of the text to look 'odd' We will try to resolve this but it is still readable as it is)
