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A Message from Fr. Seth & Fr. Elias Geiske
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I think it is applicable for us too, and so I submit it for us to read as well. I have taken out some things for length, but all the words are his. God Bless. – Fr. Seth
You may have heard that some of the pastors in East Duluth made some announcements of coming changes. The purpose of doing this is to move one priest from being assigned in Duluth to another location in the Diocese. I am sure there will be more assignment changes in the near future as we approach the summer months. One of our Seminarians (Deacon Trevor Peterson) will be ordained a priest and it’s likely that at least one of our priests in the Diocese will be retiring. Hibbing and Grand Rapids both are missing an associate pastor. Eveleth and Gilbert are being administered by Fr. Charlie Flynn who came out of retirement to do so. Therefore, this change in Duluth will help cover one of those holes. However, that still leaves us down two priests from our current cluster arrangements in the Diocese. How we will deal with that is unclear at this point. This creates extra strain upon pastors and priests in other places in our diocese who have less priestly presence.
I think this is a factor in why we in Duluth should really work together as the Catholic Community to do ministry. In East Duluth they are working together for their faith formation program, I have been talking with Karen and Fr. Rich about doing this in the western part of the city. It makes sense not to try and duplicate ministries for every parish.
Someone recently said to me, “look at the Vineyard church, they are a big church, they are growing, many former Catholics go there.” While that may be true, if we as Catholics had one church building in Duluth and all the Catholics went there, it would be the biggest church in Duluth, by far. And in reality, we are that big; we just have a bunch of parishes spread out throughout the city. The truth is we have a lot of infrastructure to keep up, and a lot of buildings to maintain. That creates a lot of overhead financial strain on the Catholics in Duluth. When we are in a time of decline, and a time when our faith is being challenged by our culture, it makes more sense (to me) to spend our efforts, energy, and resources on working together as Catholics in Duluth rather than competing against each other for numbers, and programs.
In many ways we have not been willing to do this, and because of that, we end up missing the opportunities for growth, and a healthier Catholic Community. Think about the possibilities of having the Church in Duluth work together to provide daily Mass times, confessions, programs, and faith formation. We might have to drive a bit more to get to an event we are attending, but the quality would be better, the experience would be better, and our understanding of the Church would be richer. We are Catholics in Duluth.
If we only ever react to what is happening, we can never be ahead. We need to look ahead and make decisions on what our current reality is instead of trying to hold onto old models, or a former reality. Our culture is different, our numbers are different, our needs are different, our demographics are different, so why shouldn’t our pastoral plan be different? This is my perspective, it might seem a little drastic or scary to some, but I think if we are serious about accomplishing the mission of the Church rather than just keeping the status quo, we need to think differently about how we organize ourselves as Catholics in the city of Duluth. Change is coming and we can either embrace it and make decisions that can facilitate a healthy Catholic Community, or we can resist every change that comes and be a reactionary, scared, and dying church. We can either choose to make good changes, or we can be forced by circumstances to make changes that we have no choice to make.
I encourage you, do not be afraid. Don’t be afraid of what you might lose. Be excited about what you are being called to do. There are great opportunities if we focus on the mission of Christ. The Lord will not bring growth to the parts of the church that are merely interested in their own projects. It’s a time of pruning in the Church, and the dead branches will fall away. The living branches will be pruned and will bring forth life. Which kind of branch are we?
