Decision #8.1 - Sunday Priest Rotation
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The Necessity of Rotation
Parishioner feedback often contains the question, “If we had four priests before Partners in the Gospel, and four priests after Partners in the Gospel, why do our priests need to rotate? Why can’t every church have a stable priest like before?”
The answer is that we have gone from having four Pastors to having one Pastor and three Parochial Vicars.
A Pastor is responsible for the pastoral care of all the people at his assignment. He fulfills that responsibility by knowing and being with his parishioners, certainly, but also through the governance of his community (especially the governance of liturgy, programs, staff, and money).
A Parochial Vicar assists the Pastor in caring for the parishioners. He does so through sacramental and pastoral ministries, but Parochial Vicars do not have the responsibility of governance, except in limited circumstances (like certain presider options at Mass).
At minimum, the Pastor needs to rotate. Proper governance requires making informed decisions, so the Pastor needs to visit, observe, and hear from each church community regularly. Imagine a church that only ever saw a Parochial Vicar who is not allowed to make decisions on behalf of that church. The Pastor would make bad decisions, because he would be disconnected from the people affected by those decisions, and the people would feel powerless because the priest they usually see cannot actually act on their behalf.
If the Pastor rotates, at least one group of churches must have rotating priests. With 4 x Mass groupings and 4 x priests, the only way to have a stable priest everywhere is for the Pastor not to rotate. If the Pastor rotates, then at least one Mass grouping must have rotating priests, who come in to cover the Pastor’s Masses when he is visiting the other locations.
If one group of churches has a priest rotation, it is only fair like all churches share the burden of priest rotation. If rotating priests is considered disadvantageous, then how do we decide who is “stuck” with rotating priests and who “gets” stability?
The exception is specialty Masses. For distinct groups that require a specialist (college Mass, Spanish Mass, maybe Indian Reservation Mass), the specialist priest (college chaplain, Spanish-speaker) needs to be assigned to that specific Mass.
Current Rotation (July 2024 onward)
Whatcom Catholic’s first attempt at a priest rotation attempted two months’ of priest stability at most locations.
Unfortunately, this setup did not achieve its goal of helping vicars feel stable or helping parishioners receive consistent pastoral care. A significant aspect of this failure comes from a location not seeing a specific vicar again for 6 months, undercutting the relationship-building that occurred when that vicar was present for two continuous months.
This system can be changed by extending the period of stability, by maybe assigning a Parochial Vicar to stay in one place for three, four, or even six months. This would improve that Vicar’s relationships with those parishioners. Unfortunately, this also extends the period of time that that “rotating priests” location stays on rotation and significantly worsens the amount of time a location will not see a vicar they had been building a relationship with.
This system can be changed by decreasing or eliminating the period of stability. This increases the chaos of a priest rotations, by denying anyone a “stable” arrangement. But is also guarantees everyone sees each priest equally, so if a relationship has been established with a specific priest, it will not be more than a month before a specific location sees that priest again.
Proposed Rotation
The assignment of a Claretian priest to serve as a Spanish-speaking specialist requires that the Spanish Masses be removed from rotation, similar to how the Viking Catholic Mass is removed from rotation. In order to make this system work, it is also being proposed that the Lummi Mass be removed from rotation and assigned to the Claretians, with the hope that they can serve as specialists for marginalized or minority communities. This change now takes us from 4 x regular Mass groupings to 3 x groupings.
Most people seem to agree that rotating between four priests is too chaotic. However, many parishes in the United States have two priests assigned to one church, and those parishioners find rotating between two priests to be normal and expected. Rotating between three priests is somewhere between terrible and normal, and it is hard to know how it will be received. Nevertheless, the new proposal is to have a regular rotation of three priests for all non-specialist locations.
It is clear that our current system is not working and has been taxing our parishioners’ morale. Even though a three-priest rotation is not a proven solution, it seems urgent that we try something else, and this seems like a reasonable direction for our attempt.
The hoped for benefit is that, from a parishioner perspective, they can look forward to a stable number of priests that they will see very regularly. This should allow them to get to know their priests better and to rely on them more.
