Managing Decline?: 2% drop in Mass attendance per parish, per year. Average Sunday Mass is 1/3 full. This has been getting worse - and it's be tracked and known - for 20 years, but no one has done anything. They got used to the decline. They got used to the emergencies without the urgency that crises can motivate. Beacons of Light, criticized by Rod Dreher as trying to put a nice spin on dire circumstances, is also evangelization and discipleship centered.

*What are the Families? *

• 208 parishes under 109 pastors, common pastors but not coming together.
• Some of the 109 pastors are over 70 and some even over 75 (post-retirement)
• Final set of 60 families will be announced this year
• Spring, priests will be announced as pastors - 49 of them will not be pastors, some will finally be able to retire.
• We want Father to lead his new Family- are we ready to lead the New Evangelization? Archbishop Schnurr sees the needs as hyper local, so he’s supportive but leaving the pastors to decide for their own communities…

_Luke's Money Quote: _I don’t think people get how bad it actually is! The Emergencies are everywhere. The Catholic Church is an afterthought!

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Links:

• Beacons of Light - Archdiocese of Cincinnati — Introducing Beacons of Light The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has launched Beacons of Light, a comprehensive process of pastoral planning, to study every aspect of the archdiocese and parishes to determine how to best array our resources – human, physical and financial – to spread the Gospel far and wide.
• Schnurr gets started - by JD Flynn - The Pillar — The Archdiocese of Cincinnati announced on Friday a restructuring initiative that could eventually close 70% of archdiocesan parishes. The process will begin by clustering the 208 parishes of the archdiocese into 60 “families” of parishes, which will share pastors, staff, and infrastructure, but initially remain canonically independent.
• From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age: University of Mary, Prime Matters, Monsignor James P. Shea: 9780998872896: Amazon.com: Books — Every human society possesses a moral and spiritual imaginative vision, a set of assumptions and ways of looking at things according to which life proceeds. This essay is an attempt to contribute effective strategies to engage our own time and culture once more with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and – for a weary world – to awaken the Catholic imaginative vision.