Bishop: Answers lie within the laity

As Bishop Joseph A. Galante braced for the grief he knew would follow the news that nearly half the parishes in the Camden Diocese would close, he thought often of his brother Bill.

"He and his wife spend time in Naples, Fla.," the bishop said on Friday, a day after he detailed a massive restructuring of the Roman Catholic diocese's 124 parishes.

"And all he talks about is how vibrant the local parish is: the people going to Mass, the wonderful preaching, concerts with sacred music and popular music."

The vitality and community his brother has found in Florida are what he hopes South Jersey Catholics will one day encounter in the 66 parishes that will remain.

On Thursday, he announced a restructuring of the diocese so sweeping, Galante said, that "it surprised even me."

Citing a steady decline in the number of priests, and a 24 percent Mass attendance in the diocese that he called "appalling," Galante told a news conference that over the next two years he would close 30 parishes and turn another 28 into secondary "worship sites" inside newly redrawn parish boundaries.

The secondary sites will be used mostly for Saturday evening and Sunday Masses.

The scope of the closing appears to be the largest ever for any of the nation's 195 Roman Catholic dioceses.

In 2005, Cardinal Sean O'Malley shocked the Boston Archdiocese when he announced he would close about 24 percent of its parishes - then a record. That decision provoked demonstrations, sit-ins, and a legal challenge that the Vatican recently decided in O'Malley's favor.

Galante, a Philadelphia native who took charge of the 500,000-member Camden diocese in 2004, said he was optimistic his reconfigured parishes would emerge as "dynamic" communities that are "reaching out to people all the time, not just Saturdays and Sundays."

Speaking on Friday from his winter home in Florida, Bill Galante - a retired Catholic school teacher and administrator - described St. John the Evangelist parish in Naples as "an amazing, amazing parish."

"It has something for everyone, young and old. . . . I couldn't begin to describe it all."

The thick parish bulletin describes so many events and programs that "it reads like a magazine," said Bill Galante, who, with his wife, Mary Anne, lives in Yardley for most of the year.

Bishop Galante said his plan was "no quick fix" to what ails some of his parishes.

"I don't expect to be around to see the full flowering of what we want to do," he said, observing that he turns 70 in July and expects to retire at 75. "But I hope to see the beginning."

With the number of priests in the diocese projected to be just 85 in 2015 - half what it is now - the Catholic laity must take a greater leadership role, he said.

Today's priests "have to be the enablers, the catalysts who will bring the laity in to share responsibility," Galante said. "I keep telling our seminarians: The major role of the priest nowadays is the formation of his collaborators."

Galante said he hoped the church would be able to serve parishioners on a variety of levels.

"There's a whole panoply of needs people have, and the church on the local level should be responding," he said. "For example, we have tended to look at [religious] formation in terms of children, but it has to be lifelong.

"There has to be good youth ministry - not just CYO or in the classroom, but a whole range of activity," he said. And "there's the ministry to young adults, the forgotten 18-to-35s, who need to be drawn into parish life and eventually into leadership roles."

Galante cited as a goal better ministry to young marrieds, including parish day-care centers for working parents and even sites where at-home parents could leave children for a few hours while they do errands.

"Then there's ministry to the elderly, some of whom need day care, and bereavement ministries. How do we respond to families that suffer losses?

"These are just some of the ministries we need to create community," he said. "Some need to be experienced on the parish level, some in a regional way."

Sister Christina Schenk, executive director of the FutureChurch, a national independent lay Catholic group, said Friday that she "admire[s] Bishop Galante's enthusiasm." But, she said, "I pray for the people of Camden."

A national study of 87 parish closings found that reassigned church members "just drifted away," she said.

Closing parishes is not the answer to the problem of not having enough priests, Sister Schenk said. A better solution, FutureChurch believes, is ordaining women and married men.

Parishes create bonds "that shape and sustain people over many years," she said. "Breaking those bonds is not good for the Catholic community or the life of the church."

Galante said he believed his restructuring plan would strengthen parish bonds with ministries that would lead people also to come for the liturgies.

He said he encountered many energized parishes in the Texas dioceses where he served before coming to Camden.

The cathedral in downtown Dallas attracts 10,000 to 12,000 worshippers every Sunday, he said. Six or seven of the Masses are in Spanish, and a nominally priced breakfast is served in the church hall across the street.

"People were sitting on the floor" at the packed Masses, he marveled. "And this is a downtown church."