Cheektowaga, N.Y. (WBEN) - A plan is in place to merge a number of parishes across Western New York as part of the Buffalo Catholic Diocese's "Road to Renewal" program.
As announced by Bishop Michael Fisher and the Buffalo Diocese on Tuesday, following a comprehensive and collaborative planning process, a plan was presented to Family of Parishes priests to merge approximately 34% of the diocese’s 160 parishes.
"The reality today continues to change," said Bishop Michael Fisher during Tuesday's announcement at St. Philip the Apostle Parish in Cheektowaga. "As we know, we continue to be working our way through our Chapter 11 reorganization, and we need to take a harder look at how we're restructuring and rightsizing the diocese here in Buffalo in light of a dwindling population, changing demographics, and fewer resources.
"Our Catholic footprint is no longer what it used to resemble. We are not the church we were 40 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, let alone five years ago. We are a changing entity, and I think that's the nature of church anyway. Every generation has its challenges and its unique opportunities to continue to evangelize."
With this projected merger, it would see the 160 parishes currently moving to a projected total number of parishes of 106. In addition, the projected worship sites would go from 196 to 121 with this merger.
As the diocese looks to the recommendations, they're looking at a number of factors including demographics, financial data, sacramental data, geography, looking at historical properties, architecture, taking into consideration where a parish is needed, and how does the diocese make sure it can fulfill the bishop's mission of governing, sanctifying and teaching in all areas of Western New York.
"What's happening is the Road to Renewal is making recommendations to Parish Families on recommended mergers and closures. These are not final decisions, but it takes the data that I'm showing in parish demographics, financial contributions, sacramental participation, and various regional considerations in our urban environment, suburban and rural, and really taking those into consideration and what's needed in those climates to move forward," said Fr. Bryan Zielenieski, vicar for Renewal and Development. "We're looking at all of these factors to determine what recommendations we're going to make to Families of Parishes, and then we're looking for them to take that information, consult with their leadership, and then either approve the recommendation or make suggested recommendations."
According to the diocese, the actual number of parishes merged will not be determined until the clergy and parish leadership have an opportunity to review recommendations that will be proposed. Those determinations will be made between Aug. 16 and Sept. 1, 2024.
The Road to Renewal in the diocese employs a collaborative model that saw the current 160 parishes grouped into 36 Families of Parishes, which were announced in December 2021. An initial group of six Families of Parishes soon thereafter began the pilot phase.
When the Road to Renewal process began, Renewal staff contacted dioceses throughout the country and 67% of dioceses responding were implementing, or had implemented a collaborative model in their diocese.
Fr. Mark Noonan, pastor of Family 11 in parts of Orleans and Niagara counties, says he's personally found that setup to be way more effective at moving forward in a lot of different areas than prior ways that parishes were structured.
"It's also helped us to organize a lot of our leaders together, and across our Family of Parishes to really bring people together and create a sense of unity and a lot of growth," said Fr. Noonan on Tuesday. "My family of parishes encompasses a very large geographical area, but that hasn't hindered our unity. And these groups working together, these pillar groups has really created a lot of momentum, I think, for our efforts.
"We've certainly encountered a lot of challenges, but it's been exciting. There's been a lot of unifying things that have happened, a lot of practical things. We've unified a lot of our staff and operations, our communications has become unified. We have one family bulletin for our Family of Parishes, we have one website, we have one Facebook page, and a lot of things that we've unified - our faith formation for kids, a lot of our efforts to evangelize - and we've been able to build a lot of unity amongst our people."
Pastors will soon be provided with detailed materials to lead consultations within their Family of Parishes. Once the parishes to be merged are identified and approved, the process to begin merging those identified parishes is expected to begin this fall.
When it comes to how this merger will affect the Catholic schools of Western New York, Bishop Fisher continues to commit to Catholic education being important in the diocese's mission and to the mission of the church.
"As we move forward and we are in the midst of our pastoral planning with our schools, how do they fit within these local families, the parishes? That's being looked at now," Bishop Fisher noted. "We have a committee and a taskforce looking at that, also preparing a pastoral plan there. But we also need to look at how we're doing that in a different way. Our classic schools, where they were attached to one parish, are not working any longer. We need to have more support, whether it's financially, whether it's personnel wise, as well as enrollment. And I think as we look at forming these families and strengthening the Family of Parishes, how do the schools fit into the structure there, as well as how are we delivering education to our people all the way from pre-K to college?
"We have two types of school: We have schools that are maintaining themselves right now, but we also have quite a number of our schools that are in crisis. So we're developing plans, how do we deal with our schools that might be presented with a challenge? Usually, it's either financially or no children in the seats. So we need to do that, but what we're looking at, though, within these families is how do we deliver education in the schools and in a different way? Now, that's not going to be done overnight. We're not quite there yet where we're going to be, but we can assure that come September, again, our parents, we want to encourage them certainly to enroll their children in our schools."
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