BISHOP ZUBIK OF PITTSBURGH (AND OTHER BISHOPS) IN A STATE OF DENIAL

On Saturday, April 28, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh announced how its 188 parishes would be grouped into 57 new, multisite parishes. 

The Diocese had originally proposed there would be 48 groupings. The diocese also shared which Priests and Deacons would be assigned to the new groupings. According to the Diocesan press release, the groupings are expected to merge into new parishes between 2020 and 2023. 

A complete listing of parish groupings, Clergy assignments and other information can be found online at onmissionchurchalive.org.

The cause of these drastic changes?

The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh counts 632,138 people as members of its fold, though less than a quarter of those congregants attend Mass weekly. Half of the Diocese’s 188 parishes are running operating deficits. And the Diocese anticipates the number of active diocesan priests to drop 50 percent within seven years, to 112.

How does Archbishop David Zubik interpret these fact?

The Archbishop has stated that he doesn’t take these as a sign of a church in crisis, but rather a side effect of Rust Belt residents moving to other regions.

Not a church in crisis?

Unbelievable!

Talk about spinning a story!

“We really need to come back to take a look at what our mission is. The mission is to help each other get to heaven,” Bishop Zubik said. “Bottom line, that’s what it is. And so, first and foremost, this whole process is around that reality. Evangelization. That's what gives this process its legs.”

As long as Bishops, like Bishop Zubik, continue to bury their heads in the sand and willfully refuse to engage with the Catholic faithful and to share with them the dreadful state of affairs in which the Church finds herself at this moment in its history, reports of church closures and the shrinking communities of Catholic faithful will continue.  

And tragically so.

The crisis (which the Bishop is loathe to admit) is, in his defense, the continuation of a decades-long decline in Catholic practice in Pittsburgh and elsewhere in the country.

Under Zubik’s predecessor, Bishop Donald Wuerl, the Diocese reduced its parishes from 323 to about 225 in the 1990s.

Sadly, Bishop Zubik is following in Bishop Wuerl’s misguided and failed strategy to respond to what is truly a spiritual crisis infecting the Church and treat it as though it was simply a problem of logistics which could be solved by shifting populations and personnel hither and yon.

I fail to understand why the Bishops never call the faithful to a moment of decision and revival.

The Catholic Church in America is on the brink of the same extinction witnessed throughout Western Europe and in many parts of South and Central America.

In a related article I will post tomorrow, we shall see how mergers of parishes and personnel affect the lives of Catholics still trying to hold on to their allegiance to the Church.

It isn’t a pretty picture.

It is essential that God’s People, led by the Bishops, pray for the Church.

It’s the last thing the Bishops appear to understand and encourage.