Historical Recap - Part 11

There were a great many pros and cons in our consideration of various parish configurations. In fact, there were several pages. While I cannot reproduce all of those pages in one short paragraph, I can give you some of the more salient arguments for and against. (Remember: at this point we were speaking only of the number of parishes we need, not which parishes.)

• One model was to leave only one parish in the city – pros (sense of unity, consolidating programs and resources), cons (too large and unwieldy, community-building difficult).
• Another model was to leave only two parishes in the city – pros (downtown presence important, proximity to where people live), cons (lopsided population and resources, better but not enough).
• Another model had three or four parishes – pros (puts parishes where the people {and schools} live, better use of remaining priests), cons (collaboration among parishes not assured, how to bolster Cathedral).

Fr. McGuire