Beacons of light and closing/consolidating of parishes

P

pantherland

Active member
There's been some good
Heard Visi’s pastor sent out a letter to parishioners this week regarding the Beacons of Light. Highlights of the letter

  • Effective date is July 2022 & there will be only 60 Parrish families though it appears there may be a transition period of 5 years (7/2027) when there will be just one parish and one pastor
  • Visi “likely” to be paired with 2 (maybe 3) other Parishes
  • Late September, the Archdiocese will meet with the Pastors to announce the vision and receive comments/questions
  • October – it is announced to the Parrish’s and be able to be viewed online
  • November - final transition plans are announced
  • Priest’s older than 65 will be asked to step down their position but remain as a “senior priest” and be an advisor
  • He was thanking the Parrish for serving them for the past 12 years.
Nothing on what the transition will be to a Parrish Family” or anything about athletics but you would think that is going to be part of this as well.

As the saying goes, Sh..ts about to get real


discussions on other threads. Has anyone heard any updates on what's going on?
 
 
The goal is to get to 60 "Parish Families" within the archdioscese. I wonder how many people will actually be involved and have meaninful insight into this process? Do individual schools even get a vote into what happens?
 
I’m honesty surprised by the lack of interest in all of this. Perhaps people simply don’t care anymore and will just go about their lives and a small majority will be vocal.
 
There’s only 1 r in parish.

It will be interesting what information leaks out of the meeting with all of the priests a few days before the public announcement on October 1.

Has anyone asked their pastor for his thoughts on Beacons? Fr. Hay at St. Jude didn’t seem too enthusiastic about being forced into retirement and/or reassigned to a new parish next summer.
 
UCArch said:
I’m honesty surprised by the lack of interest in all of this. Perhaps people simply don’t care anymore and will just go about their lives and a small majority will be vocal.
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I am surprised as well. I think there are several things going into it.

Attendance to mass is down in general and I don't think it's recovered since covid.

Some friends I have talked to that their kids have graduated and moved on from that parish school and don't really feel a part of the parish or want to be involved anymore.

A lot of people that are catholic I don't think are even aware of what is going on or about to happen.
 
What "inside" information I have can only be classified as hearsay along with some speculative calculations.
  • "Families" will be a merging of 3-5 parishes.
  • All pastors will get new assignments (July 1st ?).
  • Some "families" may not make geographical sense to us.
  • Without counting St. Ignatius and St. Bernard (Taylor Creek) I get 18 currently operating "westside" parishes. Using the 3-5 model that would mean anywhere from 3-6 "families on the west side. My belief is that it will either be 4 or 5 "families".
  • I believe that you will still be free to choose the Catholic Church/School of your choice regardless of who your parish merges with.
From what I understand the release of the initial plan for disseminating the information is for priests to meet September 29th @Good Shepherd, school officials to meet at Good Shepherd on September 30th and online access for everyone will be available on October 1st. Anyone with an opinion should make sure to take the opportunity to comment to the Archdiocese when given the open forum. If you care enough to comment on here you might as well comment on the Archdiocesan forum as well.

EHS if something "leaks" out from the priests meeting will they have to go to confession?
 
EHS 2001 said:
There’s only 1 r in parish.

It will be interesting what information leaks out of the meeting with all of the priests a few days before the public announcement on October 1.

Has anyone asked their pastor for his thoughts on Beacons? Fr. Hay at St. Jude didn’t seem too enthusiastic about being forced into retirement and/or reassigned to a new parish next summer.
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I don't think any priests will "be excited", but most won't complain. Not publically at least. I don't think some of the older priests will like being forced into early retirement either.
 
EHS 2001 said:
There’s only 1 r in parish.

It will be interesting what information leaks out of the meeting with all of the priests a few days before the public announcement on October 1.

Has anyone asked their pastor for his thoughts on Beacons? Fr. Hay at St. Jude didn’t seem too enthusiastic about being forced into retirement and/or reassigned to a new parish next summer.
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Fr. Hay isn't really interested in anything but the parish wine and hasn't been a pastor since I got to St. Al's. He should retire and stop driving families away. Him being forced out is great news.
 
Who would Visi and Jude likely be paired with? Does the 65+ age Priest have to remain a “senior Priest” and advisor?
 
Prof912 said:
What "inside" information I have can only be classified as hearsay along with some speculative calculations.
  • "Families" will be a merging of 3-5 parishes.
  • All pastors will get new assignments (July 1st ?).
  • Some "families" may not make geographical sense to us.
  • Without counting St. Ignatius and St. Bernard (Taylor Creek) I get 18 currently operating "westside" parishes. Using the 3-5 model that would mean anywhere from 3-6 "families on the west side. My belief is that it will either be 4 or 5 "families".
  • I believe that you will still be free to choose the Catholic Church/School of your choice regardless of who your parish merges with.
From what I understand the release of the initial plan for disseminating the information is for priests to meet September 29th @Good Shepherd, school officials to meet at Good Shepherd on September 30th and online access for everyone will be available on October 1st. Anyone with an opinion should make sure to take the opportunity to comment to the Archdiocese when given the open forum. If you care enough to comment on here you might as well comment on the Archdiocesan forum as well.

EHS if something "leaks" out from the priests meeting will they have to go to confession?
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Not making geographical sense concerns me. Not sure why.
 
Visi / St Bernard? / Jude? (They wouldn’t really put Visi and Jude together would they?)

Jude / Als? / Maybe Antoninus? Maybe Lourdes?

Antoninus / Lourdes / Teresa?

Dominic / Victory?

There are a million ways to slice this I guess.

This might end the youth school leagues. Perfect opportunity to start a new football league honestly. No oversight by the schools or the archdiocese - not sure if that’s good or bad.
 
UCArch said:
Visi / St Bernard? / Jude? (They wouldn’t really put Visi and Jude together would they?)

Jude / Als? / Maybe Antoninus? Maybe Lourdes?

Antoninus / Lourdes / Teresa?

Dominic / Victory?

There are a million ways to slice this I guess.

This might end the youth school leagues. Perfect opportunity to start a new football league honestly. No oversight by the schools or the archdiocese - not sure if that’s good or bad.
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I don't think jude and visi merger will make any sense nor would victory and dominic.
 
Not merging Visi and Jude even though the two parishes are a little under 2 miles apart from one another, but merging the two with other parishes might be an example of "not making geographic sense"
 
It would be stupid not to keep St Jude as one of the families. They have over 500 kids currently, have a great basketball gym, and excellent sports fields fields and land to expand in back.
 
Lets say Lourdes, antoninius, and teresa all combine? That would make sense. What school do they combine to?

Lourdes has the biggest school bldg, and a nice gym for hosting events. Teresa has the nicest church, antoninius has nice facilities with Schott field and has the most $$ of the three.
 
pantherland said:
It would be stupid not to keep St Jude as one of the families. They have over 500 kids currently, have a great basketball gym, and excellent sports fields fields and land to expand in back.
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Does St. Jude own any of the land behind the sports fields? I think that's all going to be part of the Trailside Village development--which will only bring more potential parishioners and families for the school.
 
I downloaded the ODE's FY2021 (October 2020 data) for nonpublic enrollment. The enrollment is broken down by male and female by grade level--unless there are fewer than 10 boys or 10 girls in a grade then it's shown as "<10" because "All data that represents less than 10 students is masked to ensure student privacy as subgroup data is presented." As a result whenever the data said "<10" I gave the school the benefit of the doubt and put 9 in for the calculations.

St. Aloysius Gonzaga: 197 students K-8
St. Antoninus: 345 students K-8
St. Bernard: 198 students K-8
St. Catharine of Siena: 184 students K-8
St. Dominic: 358 students K-8
St. Ignatius of Loyola: 1017 students K-8
St. James (White Oak): 536 students K-8
St. John (Harrison): 200 students K-8
St. John (Dry Ridge): 364 students K-8
St. Jude: 466 students K-8
St. Lawrence: 323 students K-8
St. Martin of Tours: 269 students K-8
St. Teresa of Avila: 251 students K-8
St. William: 224 students K-8
Our Lady of Lourdes: 399 students K-8
Our Lady of Victory: 389 students K-8
Our Lady of Visitation: 710 students K-8
Our Lady of Grace: 415 students K-8
Holy Family: 151 students K-8
Resurrection: 114 students K-5 (Resurrection's school is now called Romero Academy at Resurrection School. The school recently received over $1 million in renovations.)
 
I know fans of other GCL schools read this forum. I'd love to know, too, what non-Westside Catholics think about this and what they're being told by their priests.
 
You could cut that list almost in half just by eliminating any school with less than 300 students.

st als, Bernards, Catherines, St Johns harrison, Martins, Teresa,, Williams, Holy Family, Resurrection

There are also church only parishes like St Simon, and St Joes north Bend
 
EHS 2001 said:
I know fans of other GCL schools read this forum. I'd love to know, too, what non-Westside Catholics think about this and what they're being told by their priests.
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There is no way that a school with less than 200 students should continue to exist as a separate entity-- unless the school has some rich benefactor(s) that want to subsidize that level of inefficiency-- and even then, it really makes no sense-- there are no funds (or enough students) for things like various curricular enrichment programs that add special subjects (like foreign languages, or higher level math classes) and there are not enough students to do a good job of fielding extracurricular activities (like Odyssey of the Mind, or Science Olympiad, or Model UN, or more than one sports team in a given season)-- you've got an average of 20 kids (one class) per grade-- and almost no room for error. Much as I have an affinity for Holy Family-- that school has 151 students across 9 grades- do the math: it's less than 17 kids per grade-- there is no way that school can field a football team, let alone compete-- there's likely less than 10 boys in each grade. They'd be lucky to have enough kids for a basketball or bowling team.

You can make the same argument for any school below 300 kids-- it's just less pronounced. If a school doesn't have at least 2 classes per grade (of at least 20-25 kids per class), I think the school is kidding itself about its viability. At 40 kids per grade, that puts the bottom threshold for continued existence at above 350 students-- 360, in fact. That suggests that only 10 or 11 of those schools listed above are even close to viable any more.
 
I could see St Joe's in Cleves being merged into Visitation. They don't have a school and on any given Sunday services are full of people I know from Visitation.
 
How many people say they are "Catholic" but don't go to church weekly? If you go to a school Mass the church is packed, but if you go back on the weekends when the whole family is supposed to go, the church is half full. That is the problem. Fix that and the other problems solve themselves. In other words if you are not in church on Sunday, you are the problem.
 
Vincent and Regina said:
How many people say they are "Catholic" but don't go to church weekly? If you go to a school Mass the church is packed, but if you go back on the weekends when the whole family is supposed to go, the church is half full. That is the problem. Fix that and the other problems solve themselves. In other words if you are not in church on Sunday, you are the problem.
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Welcome to 1981.

If this is your approach to the solution, God help us. Unbelievably myopic.
 
Vincent and Regina said:
How many people say they are "Catholic" but don't go to church weekly? If you go to a school Mass the church is packed, but if you go back on the weekends when the whole family is supposed to go, the church is half full. That is the problem. Fix that and the other problems solve themselves. In other words if you are not in church on Sunday, you are the problem.
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Why are they not coming is a better question. Why is enrollment down in the grade schools overall from 20 years ago. Figure those out.
 
pantherland said:
I am surprised as well. I think there are several things going into it.

Attendance to mass is down in general and I don't think it's recovered since covid.

Some friends I have talked to that their kids have graduated and moved on from that parish school and don't really feel a part of the parish or want to be involved anymore.

A lot of people that are catholic I don't think are even aware of what is going on or about to happen.
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I'm in Cbus, but I can tell you that here the Diocese and the Office of Schools have fostered a fair bit of animosity over various issues. This has been significantly exacerbated by their handling of Covid policies.
 
The people who will complain most will be the ones who stopped supporting the Church years ago, or just used it as a parenting aid when their kids were young.

It is very sad. I hope that these beautiful physical manifestation of faith can be saved in some manner. I look at what happened to St. Michaels in Lower Price Hill (stripped of its beauty and used as a community center) St. George (secularized and used as a coffee klatch church) and St. Bonaventure (torn down and the grounds used as a charter school) and I am not optimistic. I hope gems like St. William and Holy Family can be spared.
 
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Vincent and Regina said:
People forget the school is attached to the church, NOT church attached to the school. Seems like uc doesn't even know what the problem is.
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Newsflash, buddy; even when Catholic schools were doing well 15-20 years ago, a lot of people still viewed it as “the church attached to the school.” My parents made us go to mass most Sundays, to be honest, but the majority of my classmates didn’t go. Now, with rising costs and wages not keeping up with those rising costs, people are going the public route. Anyone could’ve seen this coming.
 
SC10EHS15 said:
Newsflash, buddy; even when Catholic schools were doing well 15-20 years ago, a lot of people still viewed it as “the church attached to the school.” My parents made us go to mass most Sundays, to be honest, but the majority of my classmates didn’t go. Now, with rising costs and wages not keeping up with those rising costs, people are going the public route. Anyone could’ve seen this coming.
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Indeed. And, as others have said, some priests would be happy to see the schools go away.
 
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