UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics
Mark Silk | Dec 8, 2014
It’s inside his own church, and here it is in a nutshell.
Last month, the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois released a report commissioned by Bishop Thomas Paprocki examining why attendance at Mass has fallen by 30 percent over the past 15 years. Produced by social scientists at Benedictine University, the report paints a striking portrait of a significant portion of parishioners turned off by unpalatable doctrines, lack of community, and bad priests.
In his response to the findings, Paprocki — one of the American hierarchy’s outspoken conservatives — unsurprisingly showed no interest in reexamining doctrine on such issues as birth control, the marital status of priests, and divorce/remarriage, each of which was cited by over 60 percent of disaffected Springfield Catholics as reasons for leaving or distancing themselves from the church.
To address the challenge of bringing them back, he instead pointed to a talk delivered by a Notre Dame business professor on “a strategy of resource-based analysis that has proved successful in both the business world and the not-for-profit sector” to a priests’ convocation on “Strategic Planning for Growth in the Church.” He also stressed the need to enhance evangelization by developing “communities of missionary disciples” and working to “make disciples of all nations.”
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