My Lake County Ohio Weal blog is intended as a base to a future Commonweal Local Community here in Lake County. (More about that in Future Posts). Here is one of my recent posts:
Diocese Adopts Deanery Structure
It provides a link to the Decree by the bishop setting up the structure with its cover letter. It also gives my understanding of the document. In the Weal blog I am assuming that the future Commonweal Local Community will include non-Catholics. Betty and I have resumed limited social activity. We have attended the Annual Dinner of the Mental Health Bord, along with worship at our local parish and the local Orthodox parish. All are possible places for inviting people to the blog and eventually a CLC.
Deaneries are provided for by Canon Law, but not in a rigid fashion. How our bishop is setting up the new Deanery structure may not be similar to those in other dioceses.
Do you know if your diocese has a deanery structure? Do you know if your parish is part of a deanery? Is there even anyway to find out if your diocese has deaneries?
When I was active in the Cleveland Voice of the Faithful back in 2002-2009, a priest expert in Canon Law suggested that part of the sexual abuse problem was the Cleveland Diocese (and perhaps other diocese around the country) did not have a deanery system to provide local oversight and support for pastors and their parishes. The bishop and the diocesan bureaucracy were just too far distant to provide either.
The Cleveland Diocese, perhaps like many other large dioceses, has struggled with organization over the past decades. For a while the Diocese had four auxiliary bishops, so the diocese was divided into four sections, each administered by an auxiliary bishop.
The Diocese was also an innovator in reorganizing the bureaucracy folding a large number of diocesan offices into a more manageable system of Secretaries who reported to a Moderator who was usually the Vicar General for the Bishop.
Bishop Pilla put a great deal of emphasis upon planning for future downsizing of parishes. The district structure was formed to facilitated that. Parishes were then further divided into clusters with the idea that those would eventually lead to consolidation of priests, staff, and facilities. Most all of this took place during Bishop Pilla's tenure (1981-2006). He was also president of the Catholic bishops from 1995-1998.
When he resigned, he was replaced by Bishop Lennon (2006-2016) who had been administrator of Boston in the aftermath of Cardinal Law's resignation. Lennon did much arbitrary closing of parishes similar to what he had done in Boston. However, this time his closings were overruled by the Vatican. After his resignation because of declining health, we got Peres for a couple of years (2017-2020) before he moved on to Philadelphia. Our new bishop has moved slowly but surely to change things. Like this move most of the initiatives have been low key but with a potential for change.
The changes might be substantial improvements. I may be biased because Lake County is a large part of the Lake-Geauga deanery which is a very coherent and natural planning area. The Lake County mental health board had a reputation across the state for being very cohesive organizationally with political, nonprofit, and even profit-making organizations working together. The Lake Geauga District of Catholic parishes had a similar reputation. I suspect that other districts like some of our surrounding counties have far poorer reputations for cooperation.
I think forming a CLC to serve Lake County residents will be entering into a favorable local political and church environment. Unlike the Cleveland CLC which met in a parish I hope that we might meet in the mental health board offices or at the local Orthodox parish -both making it more accessible to non-Catholics.
I hope you will discover some useful information nationally that I might be able to post on my website on the broader issue of diocesan restructuring.
We do have deaneries in the Omaha archdiocese. The chairmanships rotate, a several years term, I'm not sure if it is a set time. My husband says there are 16-18 parishes in our group. They used to meet monthly, not sure how often they are able to now with the "family of parishes" thing we have going now.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that they have bent over backwards not to close parishes. Some only have one Mass a week. And some very rural ones are named as "chapels". No scheduled Masses, but they can have weddings and funersls, and private devotions.
New deaneries were established last year in the Lansing diocese. Info was easy to find. https://www.dioceseoflansing.org/office-bishop/10-new-deaneries-diocese-lansing
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how these were sliced and diced outside of obvious geographical proximity. Some of the deaneries represent gigantic, diverse populations. Some very small populations with a homogenous bunch of parishioners.
The local church is officially a chapel attached to the slightly larger parish south of us, but none of the locals accept that status.
No idea if a priest is appointed dean of each group, who it is, what he does, how often the deanery meets, or what they talk about. Everything the diocese does is hush-hush until it's time for an appeal.
I believe Jonathan Swift was known as the Dean of Dublin, so deaneries seem to have been around for a long time, and apparently they still exist, or did some 200-300 years ago, among our sisters and brothers in the Anglican Communion.
ReplyDeleteThe Chicago Archdiocese is subdivided into 6 vicariates, each headed by an auxiliary bishop. And then each vicariate is subdivided into deaneries. Within the last 1-2 years, they reorganized the deaneries, at least in our vicariate - basically, twice as many deaneries now, with half as many parishes in each deanery.
The office of dean rotates every few years among the pastors within the deanery. One might suppose it would be considered a great honor to be designated a dean, but I think the pastors look upon it as just one more d*mn thing on their plate along with everything else they are expected to deal with.
Among the deacons, every deanery is supposed to have a deacon designated as the diaconate office's deanery coordinator. But I've been a deacon for 20 years, and during that time, have never been invited to a single deanery function, event or meeting. Well, there was one time over those twenty years when the deanery coordinator reached out to me, because some generous donor had purchased stoles (part of a deacon's vestments) with the archdiocesan coat of arms on it for all the deacons, and I had to drive to his parish to pick it up. That aside: the fact that we are in a deanery has never made a difference, good, bad or neutral, in my life.
Now, that said: for the deacons, the diaconate deanery coordinator isn't a do-nothing position: he's supposed to be the guy called upon if a deacon is having issues - not getting along with his pastor, has a drinking problem, is accused of doing something wrong, etc. He's part of the archdiocesan management structure. I guess the fact that I don't know who our deanery's deacon coordinator is, and in fact don't even know what deanery our parish is a part of, is an indication that I haven't been a troublemaker (yet).
If the archdiocese ever saw fit to make me the deanery deacon coordinator, and if I ever saw fit to accept the appointment, I'd reach out individually to every deacon and meet with them, either individually or in small groups, to get to know them as persons, learn what ministries they are involved in, and try to assess how they're doing. If half of them accepted my invitation, I'd consider that a success. But that's just me.
Yes, deans in Anglican communion. There's a dean in Trollope's Barchester cycle. He's a kindly and ineffectual man who just wants to play his cello and live with the old geezers in the hospital for aged pensioners. He is hounded by Mrs Proudie, the low church bishop's wife and Church Lady on steroids, who wants to install her partisan as hospital admin. The only person who understands him is his 4-year-old granddaughter. Poor man.
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