On behalf of Bishop Neary, thank you for your love for the Church that brings you here to consider the best structure we can provide, with the help of the Holy Spirit, for the future of Catholic life and ministry in the Diocese of Saint Cloud. As our ancestors did, you are dedicating your time, energy, insight, and experience to strive to listen to God guiding the Church in our 16 counties.
In the course of this time today and in future sessions, we will look objectively at what brings us to this new stage of planning for the next stage of our common mission from Jesus.
Considering our future naturally raises three categories of questions: what are we trying to accomplish? Why are we looking at change? And how will the future look for us?
The “what” is outlined in our Guiding Principles. These are the goals of our planning, what we want to achieve in order to respond to the mission Jesus has given us. The “why” is reflected in the data, both for individual parishes and Area Catholic Communities, and for the Diocese as a whole. The “how” is precisely the work that is before us, beginning now in earnest.
It’s important to remember that the Church is the Body of Christ, alive and vital. Like our own bodies, therefore, the Body of Christ adjusts and adapts to the changes in our environment. When it’s cold, we put on a coat. What it warms up, we take it off. When it’s icy, we walk like a penguin.
It is not that we have ignored planning for the future in the past and thus come to the next steps with a sense of urgency. Rather, new circumstances ask of us new approaches and commitments.
St. John Henry Newman put it succinctly: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” We do not seek change for its own sake, and what is essential in the life of the Church will not change – the Gospel, the sacraments, the Creed, our Communion in Jesus Christ. But as Jesus counsels in Matthew’s Gospel, his followers need to read the signs of the times and, as wise stewards of the gifts entrusted to us, align our resources to new needs.
While change can bring some anxiety with uncertainty and we can easily focus on what might be lost, change can also bring enthusiasm for what can be gained, what can be better and stronger, what can best respond with Catholic faith to what is being asked of us today. The question before us is this: how is Jesus asking us to use the riches we have from God to arrange our Diocese so it will be strong, vibrant, full of faith, hope, and charity for our children and their children and the generations after them?
Every ACC and every parish will be making this journey together. We treasure what God has made possible over the 136 years of our diocesan history, the foundations our ancestors laid in trust so we can be talking about this today. We also want to think of the planners in 25 and 50 and 100 years from now, looking back and saying, we owe so much to the vision of our ancestors in 2025.
It is vital that every parish engage this work with faith in God, openness to the Spirit, and respect for one another, all members of the one Body. Bishop is clear that ALL of us need to do this work. There are no sidelines to stand on.
As the Vicar for Clergy, I look at the number of priests who will be available to serve our parishes even in the next 3 years and see a likely drop of some 20% of available pastors. We have at least 7 priests past retirement age who are still in active ministry in our parishes – that’s over 20 parishes being served. We simply cannot do what we have done in the past and still do justice to the overall health and success of our mission. This is not because we have been doing the wrong things. It’s because the environment has shifted, and so must we in response.
But as a pastor myself, I look at the remarkable generosity, engagement, creativity, and love for Christ in the 16 parishes I have served over the years, and I have every confidence we can rise to this occasion if we listen together to what Jesus desires for his own Church – not just our individual communities, where our hearts and passions rightly focus, but also in every community that is also called to the same life in Christ.
Many of you have probably heard this, but it is worth pondering some words from then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger – later Pope Benedict XVI – way back in 1969 in a radio address called “What Will the Church Look Like?” His words inspire me, but also remind me that what we are facing is the same across our country and the world – a stage in the life of the Body of Christ that is incorporated into the plan of God. It may not be the stage we would have chosen for ourselves, but we have been chosen for this stage.
While Fr. Ratzinger admits that God will always surprise us with graces unforeseen so that all our plans and predictions are subject to that greater mystery, he says:
From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that will become smaller and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. … As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.
… But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical debate.
… When the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritual and simplified Church. The process of crystallization and clarification will cost much energy. The process will be all the more difficult, for narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time.
But people in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole weight of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new to them. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
… What will remain is the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that it once was; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as our home, where we will find life and hope beyond death.
That was in 1969. Here we are in 2025. With God’s help to guide and strengthen us, let us work to make it so.
Father Tom Knoblach is the pastor of Sacred Heart in Sauk Rapics and Annunciation in Mayhew Lake. He also serves as vicar for heath care ethics and vicar for clergy for the Diocese of St. Cloud.
