Church steeples and mill chimneys
Our diocese must embrace change to revitalize the Catholic mission in Pittsburgh, writes
When I was growing up as a kid in Ambridge, two kinds of towers embraced our town: church steeples and mill chimneys.
For us Catholics, they were intertwined. When strong arms and backs were needed to stoke fires, ladle molten ore or mend pipes, the steel mills sought workers from Central and Eastern Europe. Many were Catholic. As they settled around the mills, the mines and the railroads, they built churches in which to thank God for their lives and livelihood, and to seek His strength as they raised families. My Dzedo (my Slovak grandfather) and my uncles were among them.
Religious communities of Sisters and Brothers stepped up to the plate to care for these often-disregarded immigrants. They opened schools, built hospitals and even started one of the first major health insurance systems. Our priests stood at the forefront of advocacy for workers’ rights.
Thus, the Catholic faith was woven into the fabric of southwestern Pennsylvania, touching even those who had never prayed the rosary or knelt before an image of the crucified Jesus.
As this region has changed, the church has adapted. In the 1990s, a decade after most blast furnaces had gone cold, our bishop then, Donald W. Wuerl, undertook a reorganization that merged many parishes in neighborhoods that were no longer filled with young steelworkers who wanted Mass in German, Polish, Slovak, Croatian, Lithuanian and other foreign languages. Because of that reorganization, the Diocese of Pittsburgh was able to assign at least one priest to each parish for another 25 years, while parishes without a resident priest became common in many parts of our country.
But to live is to change. And to change is to grow. It is time to transform our parishes to meet new needs because our communities, and the needs of the faithful, are still changing.
Though the Pittsburgh region continues to age, some neighborhoods are filling with newly arrived young people: hipsters, Latinos, techies, African-Americans. How do our parishes make new neighbors welcome?
Each parish must offer its parishioners and the wider community services such as young adult ministry, social-media outreach, quality worship music and Latino ministry. But many don’t have the money: Half of our parishes run a deficit. Many are pouring money into buildings that are underutilized and unneeded. Our resources must shift from maintaining those buildings into missionary outreach to our neighbors.
This is a difficult issue for some. But it is a shift that brings life! It is akin to the transformation in several of our Pittsburgh neighborhoods.
Look at what has happened in the East End of Pittsburgh. The Bakery Square project transformed a beloved 100-year-old cookie factory into high-tech office space with retail outlets and housing. Despite fears of further urban decay when the bakery closed, the neighborhood has been reborn, with an influx of good jobs and young workers. The same transformation has happened on the South Side and is happening in Lawrenceville.
This is the kind of renewal we are pursuing in “On Mission for the Church Alive!” The goal is to mobilize all of our human, material and spiritual resources to carry out the mission Jesus gave his church: to seek the lost and the outcast, to carry out works of mercy and to make the experience of church vibrant and life-changing. We need to help every parish reach out to those who have drifted away, invite them back and offer welcome and worship that keeps them coming back.
One of the realities we must address is that a significant number of our baby-boomer priests are nearing retirement. Currently, we have 216 active diocesan priests for 192 parishes. Despite a steady number of ordinations, by 2025 we expect to have only 112 priests. How do we redesign our parishes so that each will have a priest readily available to celebrate the
sacraments and provide pastoral care?
To keep our parishes vibrant, we need to continue to train and certify lay ministers to serve, as professionals or volunteers, in important areas of church life.
A separate planning process within “On Mission” addresses our schools. In the past, our only solution to a financially struggling school was to close it. In the future, all of the diocesan grade schools within a given region will work cooperatively, supporting each other rather than competing for students, pooling their purchasing power, sharing administration and specialized teachers. Each school will be supported by every parish in its region. All of this is intended to make all our schools stronger and to help them grow.
While the mill chimneys have long grown cold, the church steeples must continue to be a sign of the warmth of God’s ever-present care.
That’s what “On Mission for the Church Alive!” is all about — growing our faith; growing our churches to meet the needs of the people for whom God’s care is great.