Dear Friends in Christ:
One of the most challenging aspects of being such a large parish as St. John Vianney is dealing with everything on a rather grand scale. There are few things that are small, just look at our parking lot! There are distinct advantages and disadvantages to being a large parish. With nearly 5000 registered households, 15,000 people, thousands of parishioner volunteers, more than 100 full-time and part-time staff, and only 2 assigned priests, things by necessity operate differently. This is not the local Catholic parish of Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way! For both good and bad, times and situations are different. On the good side, we can do a lot more because we have more people and more resources than a small parish. Larger parishes can have programs and ministries that smaller parishes could never even attempt or dream of having. Likewise, in today’s Church, be it a large or small parish, ministry is appropriately shared by all the parishioners and is not just the domain of priests and vowed religious. When parishioners serve in the parish, they are not “helping out, Father.” No, they are living out their baptismal vows as disciples of Jesus Christ! That is a big difference. Even the most casual observer can see that the overwhelming majority of the ministry that takes place in this parish, and most parishes today, is done by the lay faithful. That is a good thing.
On the other side, in all fairness, due to the shortage of priests, parishes in our part of the world are larger. The average Catholic parish in many large cities and suburbs is now a “Mega-Church”. Where once, the average parish in the United States was a few hundred families with two or three priests, today the average parish is around 2,000 families with only two priests. SJV is more than double the national average of households but not priests. That results in priests not being able to be as personally involved in many aspects of parish life as in former times. The priest to parishioner ratio is significantly worse today than in the past. In the last decade, our archdiocese has grown by a million additional Catholics. During the same time, we have ordained only 38 new priests. The number does not take into account the priests who have died or retired.
Among the realities of being a large parish is that we cannot operate like a small, intimate parish. This is a challenge because it can be easy for people to feel lost in the crowd or even alienated in their own parish. To me, this is one of the most dangerous and negative impacts of being a big parish. The good news is that it is totally avoidable and curable. The solution is simple, break the parish down into smaller, more personal and familiar groups. No one can know every one of the 15,000 parishioners here at SJV but all of us can know the people in the pews around us in Mass. We may not ever know all 5000 families, but we can get to know a couple dozen families. None of us can do or be a part of everything in the parish, but all of us can do something in addition to Sunday Mass. The more we connect with others, the smaller the parish becomes. The more we connect with other parishioners, the more our sense of belonging grows. The more we connect with others, the more connected they become to us. If we are the ones to reach out first, we do not have to wait for someone to reach out to us! The greatness and beauty of our parish is our relationship with God and with one another.
In Pace Christi,
Fr. Troy