Thursday, December 08, 2011

Smaller is better

The trend is mega-churches, and that all too often includes making larger and larger Catholic parishes. In the Church, I suppose the purpose is a consolidation of resources-both priests and financial resources. I think this is a mistake.

In a small parish, the priest can be a true shepard to all the flock. The priest really knows his flock, family by family, regardless of whether a particular person or family is involved in numerous committees and activities. I think this is critical to the spiritual welfare of the Church.

Likewise I think there are far too few dioceses. I think they should be smaller and more numerous. Thus the bishop can really get to know his flock.

In SC, the Catholic population is small, but the diocese is large geographically (the entire state.) When Bishop Baker was here, he spent his time tirelessly traveling the diocese and was very accessible. (I make no comment on our current Bishop simply because he hasn't been here very long and I don't know as much about his activities-although he has made the effort to visit every parish-but it took over a year. 90+ parishes over such an area is a tough job.)

Just another instance where I think smaller can be better....

Oremus pro invicem!

2 comments:

ex-mormon said...

So you have 1 bishop per state or per certain amount of parishes?

Anonymous said...

I am not sure how they determine diocese boundries. I suspect it is a combination of the number of Catholics, the number of parishes, and the geographical area.

A large diocese (by population of Catholics) may have a bishop and one or more auxiliary bishops to assist the bishop.

Jim