About ten days ago, we hosted a meeting of the parish
councils from the three parishes that are designated as
our future collaborative: St. Michael’s, Immaculate
Conception, and St. Mathias. The speaker was Fr. Paul
Soper who is the Director of Pastoral Planning for the
Archdiocese. He came at our invitation to further
explain and share the process of parishes collaborating
together.

As this planning office looks to the future, it is driven
by some simple statistics. Of those identifying
themselves as Catholics in the country, only 7% now
attend Mass regularly; some 10% sometimes; and
83% less; Combined with the very real shortage of
priest and the inability to staff all the parishes in the
traditional way, some solution has to be forthcoming.
Hence the plan for parish collaboratives was born.

Under this plan every parish will retain its own
identity, property and finances but there will be one
pastoral staff to serve the parishes in each
collaborative. Phase two of several phases has already
begun and the bugs are being worked out.
The time frame for our parish has not yet been worked
out. We have scheduled a second meeting with the
other parish councils in order to begin our own
planning and hopefully will come up with a time
frame.

As you know, several years ago I was the Pastor of St.
Jeremiah’s Parish in Framingham which closed during
the Archdiocesan Reconfiguration. Although the
issues at the core remain the same, I do not anticipate
that this new process will be anything like the former.
We are in charge of the planning and execution and
the end result. Please pray that the new evangelizing
will reach many Catholics and we will thrive in the
future.