Fr. John Gerritts
Pastor, St. Patrick, Hudson

Editor’s note: This is first in a four-article series explaining the Diocese of Superior’s Maintenance to Mission Pastoral Plan.

Our diocese recently released a document titled: “MAINTENANCE TO MISSION PASTORAL PLAN: Recalibrating our Structure to Move on Mission” Work on this document began more than five years ago but halted when COVID-19 shut many things down. About two years ago, work began again.

The Diocese of Superior has released pastoral plans in the past. These focused primarily on the shortage of priests our diocese was facing and how to organize the more than 100 parishes in such a way that they could be served by a dwindling number of priests. Work on this plan began in a similar fashion but then shifted as the committee tasked with developing the plan realized that our diocese was not only facing a declining number of priests, but also a decreasing number of people sitting in our pews and receiving the sacraments.

In his letter introducing the latest pastoral plan, our bishop points out that the earliest missionaries arrived in northern Wisconsin with great zeal, but since that time we have generally become complacent in our faith. The result is we, along with many Catholics throughout the world, became maintenance focused in living out our faith.

Many bishops have responded to the current state of the Catholic Church in their dioceses by closing parishes. With 103 parishes in our diocese, many very small, several not seeing a single baptism in a number of years, and others having few parishioners, this was tempting. Instead, our bishop – with his Pastoral Letter released earlier, and now this Pastoral Plan – is placing his trust in us that we will strive to regain the apostolic zeal that was present in the early missionaries and will move from the work of maintaining our parishes to boldly setting a course of being mission driven.

He acknowledges this will mean we need to embrace changes within our parishes and the Diocese of Superior. Some of these changes have already started taking root, and several are already paying dividends. In the next article, I will talk more about the Pastoral Plan and what we need to do to implement the plan throughout our diocese.