Still Running Off at the Keyboard

A dramatic change is in the offing for Buffalo area Catholics. Parishes will merge, realign, cluster, consolidate. They might share a pastor. Some will close.
"It's going to be radical," said Sister Regina Murphy, diocesan director of research and planning.

She was referring to Bishop Edward U. Kmiec's summer announcement that the Buffalo Diocese would restructure the region's parishes and schools.

The process - which Kmiec terms "Journey in Faith & Grace" - began last week when a commission met at Christ the King Seminary in the Town of Aurora.

For many, it is unsettling to think that a church their grandparents helped build and where they made their First Communion may no longer exist. It's where they expected to worship, now and forever. Amen.

"Everybody has an emotional attachment to their own parish, even if they drive past five others to get to it," said Murphy.

But things have to change. There's a shortage of priests, a financial crunch, a population shift from city to suburbs.

"If there's one thing we know, it's that we can't maintain the status quo," said Murphy, who has studied diocesan trends for years.