Winchester Churches To Potentially Merge [Poll]

Struggling with diminished resources, the Boston Archdiocese is continuing to look at various parishes in the region that could be merged into pastoral collaboratives, including the two in Winchester -- and

For the past year, the Archdiocesan Pastoral Planning Commission (APPC) has been working to develop a Pastoral Plan proposal for the Archdiocese of Boston, according to Archdiocese Spokesman Terry Donilon. He said that since December 2011, Boston Catholic Church officials have been consulting with priests and others in area parishes on the next phase of pastoral planning.

"The goal is to move from the current proposal stage to a plan that will guide the Archdiocese in strengthening the Archdiocese’s parish-based ministries, Evangelization efforts and parish staffing," said Donilon. "Eventually the APPC will prepare a final recommendation to Cardinal Seán for his decision. This will take time and will require an extensive consultation that gathers the input of our priests, deacons, religious and laity."

Under the pastoral collaboratives model, groups of parishes would be served by a pastor, who would oversee a pastoral services team. Donilon said that collaboratives such as these would be "centerpieces of a developing recommendation for the strengthening of parishes in the Archdiocese."

However, Donilon said that "a final recommendation will not be made to Cardinal Sean O’Malley for the strengthening of parishes until these ideas have been fully presented and reviewed by the clergy, religious and laity during the current consultation process."

Parishes will be grouped together based on geographical proximity, with many of the parishes in question no more than 1.5 miles away from each other. With many parishes experiencing financial stress, the plan also aims to have the collaboratives generate a combined weekly offertory of more than $500,000 per year, as well as enough income to cover remaining operating expenses - plus a goal that each collaborative would draw at least 1,600 attendees per weekend.

“This proposal hopes that Catholics would come to identify themselves not only as parishioners of their particular parish, but also as members of the ‘Catholic community of their town or region,’” states the document.