Diocese of Joliet facing parish closures, restructuring amid falling attendance

Joliet — The Diocese of Joliet soon will be making some difficult decisions about what the city’s Catholic community will look like moving forward as it continues its “targeted restructuring” initiative.

Because of continued declining revenue and attendance in diocese churches and a need for significant work and repairs at many of the older parish buildings, the diocese began the process two years ago of evaluating church assets and trying to formulate a plan to restructure the diocese in a way that improves efficiency and saves money.

In statements explaining the endeavor to the community, Bishop Ronald Hicks compared the restructuring to pruning a tree to ensure better growth.

“Most Catholics want to see a church that is focused on the mission of Jesus Christ and not just on the preservation of buildings,” Hicks said in a recorded statement. “With deep faith in God, we need to prune some of our structured branches now so our church can continue to produce great fruit. I think most of you agree that this process is necessary for the life of the church, though it is not easy.”

After engaging a consulting group to evaluate the churches of the Joliet deanery – 14 of which are in the city of Joliet and two of which are located in Crest Hill – the diocese divided the parishes into three groupings according to geography in the summer of 2022.

The diocese also “got its house in order” last year by reducing its own office staff from 99 to 70 members and restructuring departments to improve efficiency.

Consolidating parishes

Decisions are fast approaching for which parishes will be closed and combined to preserve the financial health of the diocese.

“Because of the density of the Joliet deanery, we decided to do it all at once,” said Maureen Harden, director of implementation for the targeted restructuring committee. “This is the only urban area in the diocese, and there are 16 churches within about four and a half miles of the cathedral. It’s unsustainable.”

Harden said that the groupings were created geographically – one on the west side of the river and two on the east side divided into northern and southern groupings – to simplify potential parish mergers and to avoid issues of churchgoers having to cross the river and deal with bridge traffic on their way to church.

“Because of the density of the Joliet deanery, we decided to do it all at once. This is the only urban area in the diocese, and there are 16 churches within about four and a half miles of the cathedral. It’s unsustainable.”

—  Maureen Harden, director of implementation for the targeted restructuring committee

After meeting with pastors and going over assessments of each parish’s facilities, financial health, attendance and sacramental records, as well as evaluating their distances from other churches, the diocese committee created four potential scenarios for each grouping ranging from what Harden called “very conservative” to “very bold.”

“If we went with the most conservative option in all three groupings, we would be going from 16 parishes to nine, some of which would have more than one worship site,” Harden said. “If we take the boldest, most aggressive approach in each grouping, it would leave four parishes in the deanery, and all of them would have more than one worship site.”

Parishes having multiple worship sites would mean that multiple church buildings would continue to be used for services within the new combined parish, but the management and oversight of both facilities would be consolidated under one pastor and parish staff.

This same approach also could be taken with schools.

Future of the schools

Currently, four parishes in the Joliet deanery have schools associated with them: The Cathedral of St. Raymond, St. Jude, St. Mary Nativity and St. Paul the Apostle.

Harden said that although a separate committee is in the process of the evaluating the enrollment and finances of the four deanery Catholic schools, those results and recommendations will be handed over to the targeted restructuring committee before final decisions are reached.

She said it’s possible that two parishes with schools could be combined and retain both school buildings, as the diocese recently did with St. Dennis and St. Joseph in Lockport.

In that case, the schools were combined and the two buildings have started operating more like a public school district, with younger students attending one building and older students going to school in the other.

All four scenarios were presented to parishioners at two meetings held at each church by the committee throughout September and October.

When asked how the plans were received, Harden said they were met with some resistance.

“Nobody likes change,” she said. “In every parish, people said they understand, but most people say, ‘Just don’t touch my church.’ I’ve tried to make it very clear that every parish will be impacted by this in one way or another.

“Even churches that don’t close will get new people from parishes that did close, and they may need to adapt and bring in new ministries they’ve never had before. We’ve encouraged everyone to have an open mind and an open heart.”

As the committee considers next steps, Harden said parishes and individuals were welcome to submit alternate plans or scenarios that the diocese would review. Those submissions must be sent by mid-November.

The next step in the process is to collect those parish-level suggestions along with the recommendations of the schools committee and review them with the existing data and assessments of the parishes in December.

“At those meetings, we will review the data and the feedback we received,” Harden said. “We will discuss it, mull it over, invoke the Holy Spirit, and make our recommendations to Bishop Hicks.”

Harden said it’s possible that all three groupings will receive different levels of restructuring. For instance, one group may undergo a more conservative restructuring while another could get the most aggressive solution, although Harden emphasized that “at this point, nobody knows.”

The final decisions on the restructuring are expected to be announced in mid-January to February.

Cost of maintaining churches

While many churches may be retained as secondary worship sites in new, larger parishes, it’s possible that some facilities may be shut down entirely, although it’s not clear what will become of the properties.

In a PowerPoint on its website explaining the lack of sustainability of the deanery’s current configuration, the diocese said the 16 churches need at least $8 million in repairs over the next decade, a benchmark deemed impossible to meet with the churches’ current finances, some of which are operating at a deficit.

However, when asked what will become of unused buildings, Harden said “there are no plans to tear down any buildings or sell properties,” adding that the demolition of structures is even more expensive than repairs would be.

“There will be some empty buildings, but they will be managed either by the diocese or by the receiving parishes,” she said.

Receiving parishes will gain the assets of any parishes they absorb. Those funds could be used to pay for maintenance on buildings since operating costs for consolidated parishes, including salaries, will be reduced because of the need for only one set of staff.

Harden said that, as with the diocese offices, “salary, benefits and pensions are an enormous part of a parish’s budget, so when you can reduce staff, you reduce expenses significantly.”

Although the diocese reported that it compensated downsized employees with severance packages when it did its own restructuring, Harden said that it will be up to the individual parishes to decide how employees let go in consolidations will be compensated.

“If a pastor decides to offer severance packages, he’d work with the diocese to coordinate it,” Harden said. “We don’t have any control over that. Parishes are responsible for their own budgets, but we will work with employees who are let go to help them find other jobs within the church.

“Part of the problem is there is a shortage of qualified professionals who want to work for the church. We could help them find positions in other parishes.”

Addressing declining attendance

A lack of interested people is not exclusive to parish lay staff. Part of the reason many dioceses are undergoing restructuring efforts is because of decreasing attendance and a shortage of priests.

According to the diocese restructuring presentation, although the diocese has gained 10 churches since 1970, it also has lost almost 200 priests, including 12 who died in 2021 alone.

Additionally, there are 81.2% fewer seminarians coming in to replace retiring priests and those who die than there were in 1970, with only two new priests ordained in the diocese in 2022. As a result, four priests in the Joliet deanery each are already serving as the pastor for two parishes.

When asked how the diocese is working to draw people back in, both to the priesthood and the church as a whole, Director of Catechesis and Evangelization Justin Reyes said, “We’re holding a lot of prayer initiatives, and we’re reaching out to our youth ministries to encourage involvement.”

Specifically to the point of attendance, Harden partially blamed the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I don’t think we can ignore COVID’s impact. It changed so much for so many people,” she said. “There are a lot of people who would rather stay at home and watch the cardinal on TV for half an hour with a cup of coffee in their hand than get up and go to church, and a lot of parishes are still livestreaming certain Masses, but that’s not what being in a faith community is all about.”

Although both Reyes and Harden specifically noted that members of younger generations such as millennials and Generation-Z have lost interest in the church, they refuted the suggestion that some of the drop-off was a reaction to the priest sexual abuse scandals in the early 2000s.

“There are lots of reasons people don’t go to church that have nothing to do with that,” Harden said. “Across the board, studies have shown that young people are less interested in organized religion, not just Catholicism.

“Some people say that [the priest sexual abuse scandals is the reason], but it doesn’t belong in the same conversation.”

Reyes said that the church has “developed a lot of good protocols since then,” specifically citing the 2002 Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

“I think people need to see the good a healthy church at work can do again,” he said. “The gospel tells us we need to be a light for the world. There is a lot of darkness in the world right now, I think we can show people we can be that light.”

Harden also suggested that church positions on other social issues, including LGBTQ rights and abortion, have alienated many young people who are personally affected by these issues, something that Reyes said the diocese is trying to address by following the example of Pope Francis.

“We are trying to follow the pope’s model of listening to the needs of our people in our diocese,” said Reyes, who suggested efforts to reach out to disengaged Catholics would continue past the efforts to restructure the physical diocese.

“It’s a process, but the church is in a posture of listening to those conversations right now to see how to respond to the needs of individuals. Everything in the church takes time, but it is good because previous popes would never have had these conversations.”

The diocese plans to use its 75th anniversary celebration, which begins Dec. 11, to try to reinvigorate interest in the church as the new plans are unveiled.