Five years ago, the Diocese of Madison launched Go Make Disciples, our evangelizing initiative to live the mission of the Church. Two years ago, we launched Into the Deep, our strategic restructuring of our parishes to better utilize our resources in the service of that mission.
A diocesan effort of such magnitude has been visionary, challenging, slow in some ways, rapid in others, bringing both opportunity and change.
We seek to make the diocese well-situated in its leadership, structures, and resources so that our local Church here can thrive and flourish for decades to come, in which increasing numbers of people will hear the Gospel, respond to the call of Christ, receive the sacraments, live holiness and virtue, and embrace their vocation and sanctify the world — disciples forming other disciples.
Blessings and challenges
I see great hope in this pivotal moment.
Mass attendance is slowly increasing. More people are entering the Church. Young families and youth are embracing the faith with fervor and generosity. Priests are working together as teams and finding renewed support with each other.
Family catechesis is enabling parents to catechize their children. Priests, deacons, and parish and school staff heroically strive to serve our people in a consistently changing landscape.
Hispanic Ministry has grown extensively throughout the diocese. Financial and accounting services are streamlined and more efficient.
We will soon have a new cathedral after 20 years of not having one. Evangelization is having an impact in many of our parishes, as we embrace missionary discipleship.
I rejoice in these blessings of new life and growth.
We also face some great challenges.
Merging parishes is a complex process that requires great effort and patience, as we bring together every aspect of multiple parishes’ activities, staff, structures, and finances.
This process has revealed the institutional and financial fragility of many parishes and schools.
Our priests have to travel longer distances, manage more people and buildings, and seek to know more parishioners.
Many parish staff members have retired or left, leaving a great need for qualified lay leadership in many places. Some people find it difficult to adjust to new Mass times, new priests, a rotating team of priests, the need to travel to another parish site, or other changes.
Looking back and forward
In this moment of challenge and opportunity, let us reflect on the legacy of our forebears who built our diocese over the course of the last two centuries.
Struggling with a lack of priests and material resources, and needing to travel long distances by horse or on foot, those early Catholic leaders sacrificed much to lay the foundations of the Catholic Church here in our diocese.
They generously built churches, schools, hospitals, convents, and seminaries, so that we, the future generations of believers, could practice our Catholic faith, fully equipped to flourish and grow in Christ.
Just so, Go Make Disciples and Into the Deep are our long-range initiatives to lay a vital foundation for future generations of Catholics.
Amid the complexity of 21st-century America, we need to think and act strategically, so that our priests, leaders, people, and resources are well-positioned to not only survive current societal and demographic shifts but to actively flourish and grow into the future.
When I think of both Go Make Disciples and Into the Deep, I am thinking 10, 20, or even 30 years out from now. I know it is difficult to focus on such a long arc of institutional development, but we must do so if we seek to be proactive rather than reactive.
Our current initiatives also challenge us to conceive the Church in broader terms than simply our traditional and singular parish, disconnected from everyone else.
The Church is universal in her mission and vision, but also very localized in the life of every diocese.
Theologically, the local Church is the diocese, not just one’s parish. We can no longer afford to stay on our isolated parochial islands.
We are holier, stronger, and more effective together, when we can share resources; eliminate waste and duplication; work smarter, not harder; and start collaborating by no longer competing.
In Isaiah 54, we read “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left.”
The Lord is stretching us in this moment, calling us to amplify our vision, increase both our gratitude and our generosity, to imagine the Church in bigger and bolder ways, and to focus on our relationship with Christ as the meaning, purpose, and inspiration of all we do.
Stretching is painful but healthier. It can leave us sore and bruised, but it also allows us to reach new heights and to build a bright and vibrant future for our beloved diocese, in which every person has the precious opportunity to know Christ and find salvation.
This spiritual vision is the great inspiration which impels us forward!