By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
The pastor of a parish that is somewhat more diminutive in size was visiting a family one evening for dinner. The host family usually attends a parish a few hundred families larger in size. The father of the family turned to the priest at one point during the evening and asked, “Do you even have any teenagers in your parish?” or words to that effect.
Although the priest did not respond such, the best rejoinder probably would have been to pose another question, “What’s your point?” He instead pointed to a strong young adult presence as an indicator of strong parish dynamics of a different sort. Chauvinism is unfortunately just as much a temptation in the approach to the business of parish life as it is anywhere else. For some, worldliness or superficiality does not stop at the church doors. Every parish suffers from a post-Confirmation drain of families and small parishes are no exception to the rule. Size is not everything.
The priest collaborates every month with some families from outside the usual parish crowd to run an inter-parish teen group and most of the teens participating usually attend Sunday Mass elsewhere. The youth group, however, is very effective, attracting 20 teens to a recent event months after it was founded last fall. The endeavor is meeting a need and finding strong support among parents.
Stereotypes are often at work in parish life as much as anywhere else. Parish size measured by how many families are registered is usually balanced by October head-counts each year in my archdiocese. But registrations do not always tell the whole story. Some families register in one place but attend in others. Some never register. Some register but never attend. Size is a moving target. Effectiveness in ministry or outreach, however, is not.
Devastated by the long-term effects of contraception — and abortion, due to the fact that some contraception functions by aborting the child after conception — parishes are largely no longer able to evangelize as they did in the past. Typically as late as the 1970s, the faith was handed on through the parents of intact large families of up to perhaps 14 children. That is the case no more, as increasing numbers of families may have at most two children, and are just as unenthusiastic about attending Mass as a family with both parents as they are about having more children.
Openness to life and openness to the faith go hand in hand.
But back to the parish dynamics of today. Parishes with schools of course have larger numbers of families attending Masses and larger class sizes for sacramental prep, such as First Communions and Confirmations, than do parishes without schools, but these numbers do not tell the whole story.
Sure, new families show up for first grade or kindergarten to register and move their children through the system with graduation and high school in mind. While they progress through the parish and school system, they serve to consistently bulk up the numbers and parish size based on the school student capacity.
But what happens after graduation from eighth grade? Many parishes do not even monitor the situation to find out, probably because they do not want to know or are too busy to bother. All parishes suffer the same proportion of post-graduation and/or Confirmation dropouts. The effect is more dramatic the smaller the parish size and thus more easily targeted as a problem area.
But back to size as an issue in parish activities as a gauge of spiritual health. If that Catholic husband and the priest had spent more time in conversation, the man would have found that there are signs of health. Two young men recently confirmed are still involved in the parish life in other ways, although they are less comfortable doing so in the context of a conventional teen group. One teen faithfully serves at the Saturday evening vigil Mass every week and another lectors at Mass on a regular basis.
Also, that smaller parish has a strong group of single young adults who consistently attend the Traditional Latin Mass. In most parishes young adults don’t show up again at the parishes after Confirmation until they’ve married and need to baptize a child.
Every parish is different and in the business of saving souls size is not an indicator of effectiveness. Larger size can mean that less attention is paid to retention trends and weekly attendance at Sunday Mass. Size can have the effect of encouraging and perpetuating a sense of complacency and result in the loss of an evangelical edge.
One of the most dispiriting experiences in my priesthood was the overwhelming sense of maintenance that came along with helping to pastor a parish of over 3,000 families. Attempts were made to give the experience a more personal touch at weekend Masses as the priests stood by the doors to welcome or bid goodbye to the worshippers before and after Mass.
The difficulty of getting to know more than a few parishioners argued for the wisdom of “breaking it off and making it even,” as we used to describe the manner in the Army of evenly distributing soldiers between the rows of a formation. Founding an additional new parish out of the old one would help.
After almost six years in a small parish I find myself grateful for the intimacy it affords to know people and the sense of community it encourages. Parents who have been brainwashed by the National Education Association into thinking their children need large class sizes to learn when the opposite is in fact the case, or who dream of long columns of children dressed in white on First Communion day, will never be attracted to our small children’s catechesis program.
But the privilege of knowing the names of all of our parishioners and the state of their faith is more rewarding than any worldly sense of importance a pastor may mistakenly imbibe while presiding over parishes of bulkier girth.
As we prepare for our Spring Oyster Fest I also take comfort in knowing that our parish socials will never be a logistical nightmare, always with room for one more unannounced guest and enough food to go around with extra for leftovers. Sounds a lot like the Kingdom of Heaven, doesn’t it?
Thank you for reading. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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(Visit Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick on Facebook and @MCITLFrAphorism on Twitter.)
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