Naming Some of the Challenges I am Navigating

Throughout the parish-wide consultation process to date, I have done and will continue to do my best to respond to all the different queries and concerns that people have raised – both face-to-face and via email. Some people have expressed their desire that I would rip the band-aid off and announce a new Mass roster, while others have expressed their doubts regarding the consultation process itself, and who believe that I have already decided the Mass roster. In naming these 2 ends of the spectrum, I hope that you can appreciate the enormity and challenge of the task of listening to, and consulting with, as many people as possible in 11 different communities.

A significant two-fold challenge that I am also navigating is how to respond to the thinking that the priests should just do 4 Masses each weekend, and that the Mission is not everyone’s (my) responsibility. While 4 Masses may be the pseudo-norm in some parishes of our Archdiocese, it is certainly contrary to Canon Law, which permits up to 3 Masses if there is a shortage of priests.

My leadership team and I have discussed the best way to break open & explain these related topics and have decided to publish a visual representation from my diary (see the back page). I offer this publicly, not to seek your empathy, but to offer a reason why our Mission is so much more than just Mass. Mass is just one hour out of the 168 hours we are gifted by God each week, and while a priest’s role covers many aspects of our parish’s Mission, we all have a role to play according to the unique gifts God has given us. For a priest, simply doing more Masses is also a workplace health and safety risk.

With Fr Francis departing, we are also losing around 60 working hours per week. The leadership and administration team are working through different options for taking both administration and pastoral ministry that can be done by lay people off a priest’s responsibility. It is certainly not possible for Fr Gerard and I to assimilate all that Fr Francis presently does into our weekly diary. For our parish’s future, and our capacity to engage in our Mission – to be a vibrant community that actively accompanies people to encounter Jesus – this is a much larger discussion than just Mass times. I offer my diary from a busy week in the hope that it may help by way of explanation to this important two-fold challenge. Please note that I have sanitized some of the entries to maintain necessary confidentiality.