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Will San Jose Diocese Plan Rope in Stray Catholics?

By Fred Martinez

On Friday, January 25, Sister Pat Mitchell and consultants representing the diocese of San Jose met with lay and religious parish leaders at Our Lady of Peace in Santa Clara to receive suggestions on a drafted pastoral plan whose purpose is to reach out to non-practicing Catholics. According to the draft's figures, Santa Clara county presently has approximately only 100,000 out of its 600,000 total Catholics going to Mass. The draft projects a ratio of 135,000 out of 800,000 attending Mass by 2020. San Jose diocese spokesperson, Roberta Ward, commenting on the purpose of the plan said, "The bishop wants to look into the continued growth in population and that population's needs."

On January 22, the San Jose diocese newspaper, the Valley Catholic, reporting on the pastoral plan, wrote, "Bishop McGrath has stated that he wants as much consultation as possible in the diocese regarding the planning process." Some lay people who attended this and an earlier meeting claimed their input wasn't heard by the diocesan planning team.

Sister Pat Mitchell has been on the diocesan planning team since 1999. She is the interim director of the office for parish and planning, which has primary responsibility for the diocesan planning process, which was created by the bishop "to guide the whole people of the diocese in understanding the mission of the Church in this valley." The diocesan web site announcing the meetings said, "The process is intended to involve comprehensive study, vision and implementation, seeking input from as many individuals and communities in the diocese as possible."

A layman at the meeting on January 25, whom we will call Dean, spoke on the condition of anonymity. He is an active community and parish leader in the northeast deanery. Dean said, "The meeting was predetermined. They are doing this to make it look like they consulted the laity, so they can tell the bishop the laity was consulted about the pastoral plan." Dean continued, "The problem began when both laity and clergy [at the meeting] started to say the plan needed an emphasis on the liturgy, on prayer, on getting the 5 of 6 Catholics not going to Mass. Sister Pat cut the group off and said that the direction is non-negotiable, these strategic directions are fixed," Dean said. "First, we were asked are these the right goals, then told not to comment on the goals when the group started to question the direction. If these directions are fixed then why ask for input?"

On a Catholic Telemedia Network video from an earlier meeting in November 19, 2000, Sister Pat said of an earlier draft, "While we have some who approach and receive this with great excitement. We also have some who approach and receive this with some hesitation. So, we need to be very respectful of the diversity that we are as a diocesan community. We need to pray ourselves through this process." A participant at this earlier meeting, San Jose playwright Cathal Gallagher said, "The meeting format was flawed. For instance, our table suggested that they send someone to dioceses that are successful in getting vocations. All that our spokesman was able to say was there is a concern about vocations. Regardless of your viewpoint on these issues, you didn't have time to state it. In fairness to Sister Pat, there was a huge crowd and maybe she couldn't allow more time." When asked about the lack of time to speak at this planning meeting, diocesan spokesperson Roberta Ward said, " I was at that meeting. It went on for hours. It was just one of numerous meetings. Every table had time to speak."

One week before the January 25 planning meeting, the draft of Renewing the Church: A Pastoral Plan for the Diocese of San Jose was sent to parishes. The plan has three main goals: "lay leadership," "youth and young adult ministry," and "social justice teaching." The draft's recommended action to achieve these goals are to create "certification programs," providing "cultural sensitivity training", getting the laity involved in public policy and getting young people involved with the homily. The plan also wants to certify youth to "create liturgies oriented to youth and young adults (e.g. music and homilies)," and to provide youth regular opportunities to "to participate in social justice activities." The suggested public policy actions mentioned in the draft were to use parish resources to "expand low cost housing", to work on "justice for immigrants" and to" engage Catholic landlords" for solutions in "housing problems and to "enhance the resources" of the parish to give "a just wages to all paid staff."

The draft also included a general goal of reaching "out to the hundreds of thousands of Catholics who do not presently participate in the life of the Church." Commenting on the number of Catholics not attending Mass, a businessman at the meeting said, "It is shocking that only 1 out of 6 Catholics go to Mass." He suggested the plan needed to have a goal to increase Mass attendance to 1 out of 3 and metrics to measure success. A priest responded "If we have metrics like that, do you want to have to say 12 Masses on Sunday?"

Later in the meeting, another layman said, "I've been to a lot of these meetings. There is no focus on the kingdom of God. There needs to be more of a spiritual focus." After which a young priest said, "After praying on it, it seems this document is missing prayer and spirituality." A layman from Resurrection Church responded, "If we can get doing actions, then maybe prayer will follow."

When asked how the proposal was going to get Catholics to Mass, diocesan spokesperson Ward said, "That's ridiculous. You are going to go to Mass if you want to. But, the youth section gets into the Mass and everything else."

A laywoman and community leader, Mary Claire Robinson, told the Faith, "Why would anyone want to give money to support this program? The program seems to be all process with no compelling result, no compelling reason for people to sacrifice."

According to Dean, during the implementation part of the meeting, a priest asked the diocesan officials, "Are parishes to be denied funds if one of this goals is not implemented? The answer was that they didn't know one way or the other." Then, another person asked, "Are we rushing into this? We just got the draft on January 18." The answer was, "No, because the bishop had already delayed it twice."

When asked about the delays, Roberta Ward said, "I don't know who said it was delayed. The bishop has been very clear that he wants as much consultation as possible. But, as you get into a planning process like this you find you need more meetings. Even this draft is not set."

The northeast deanery meeting, which includes parishes from the general Santa Clara and Sunnyvale area, concluded with no one saying anything. When Sister Pat asked at the end of the meeting whether everyone could support the initiative, the room was quiet, according to Dean.

Sister Pat Mitchell did not respond to either telephone calls or emails for this story. The Valley Catholic reported that Bishop McGrath plans to promulgate the diocesan plan on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph.

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