Merging Musings

Two years ago today, I wrote an impassioned appeal for the future of our church and our parish of Holy Rosary. The article was called “Holy Rosary, Transitioning Again: a Plea for the Future of our Parish“. In it, I said,

No priest was assigned to Holy Rosary. The Vicar for Clergy Office will be supplying priests to Holy Rosary, leaving us in very much the same situation we had last summer after Father Wagner’s death.

What does this mean?

Does this mean that the Archdiocese has already given up on keeping our parish family together? Or is this just a “holding pattern” until a decision about our future is made? Or are they waiting for the inevitable shuffling of priests following the summer ordinations? Is there some other card that they’re waiting to play?

We don’t know, and nobody can tell us.

The parish community is understandably devastated. We have been walking together in grief for a year now, grief for our pastor Father Wagner, grief at the closing of our beautiful church, grief at the loss of much of our liturgical richness. I know many parishioners have felt abandoned and shepherdless. This will not help the situation.

Now, it seems, that we will continue walking this difficult path for a little while longer, trusting only in the Lord. He must love us very much to give us such crosses to bear!

Now here we are, three years after Fr. Wagner’s death, two years after the church was blocked off, almost a year after our parish was closed and the parishioners told to find a new home. While a number of us are working hard to make the new, merged Parish X a reality, the fact is that many parishioners did go out and find new parishes.

Scatterlings and orphans, finding their own new homes while our parish family tries to build a new home. It’s rough.

In at least one of the merging parishes, virtually no parishioner is moving over. Their parish has simply imploded.

I don’t know if this Herculean effort that the parish stakeholders and the various committees have undertaken will ultimately be successful. That has more to do with God’s work than ours. But however it turns out, I think I will be in mourning for our parish community a little longer yet.

We ran into a Holy Rosary family during the Triduum liturgies at St. Patrick. Their children, once Holy Rosary altar servers, were serving for Holy Thursday. It was so good to see them all! We laughed, and we promised each other hugs after the pandemic was over. I was smiling so wide my face hurt under my mask.

And it breaks my heart that this family, like many other Holy Rosary families, will not be returning to our new, merged community.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.