Dear Brothers and Sisters,

 

Since the decree for our new parish has been issued, I thought it would be good to use this space to address some questions or comments I have heard about it.
 

As of last weekend, there were two decrees formally listed on the St. Cloud Diocese website, and if you read through both of them you probably noticed that they are very different from each other. I think this goes to show that the diocese is trying to craft these decrees to the specific circumstances and needs of the different communities. The Harvest of Hope ACC is in a very different situation, and I have heard some suggestions that (partly) because they are staffed by religious priests from St. John's Abbey, their final results look different from ours. I imagine if St. John's were to no longer send priests there, or if it were only to have a diocesan priest, their decree would look very different from what it is now. One of the other very notable differences in the two decrees is that ours includes a lot more detail on assets and funds. That was in large part due to my request in conversation with Fr. Crane - the judicial vicar of the diocese who is overseeing the drafting of the decrees - and my desire to be very clear on this particular issue, since I have often heard people speculating that the diocese is just doing this to get money from closing churches. The asset section shows as clearly as I know how to make it, that every asset stays here - nothing is going to the diocese.
 

This, though, led to other questions about what it means to consolidate assets. The extinctive union is in some ways like a marriage. What had previously belonged to separate individuals now belongs to the new union. Just as it would be inappropriate for a newly married husband to look at all the items in his wife's former apartment and say, "This is all mine now," or for him to look at his own personal possessions from before the marriage and forbid his wife from using it, so it would be inappropriate for any parish to act in that way toward "their" possessions from before the merger. The newlywed couple must learn to think as a union - no longer 'mine' and 'yours', but 'ours'. So too must we begin to learn what it means to be one. That being said, we are still tracking everything separately since we are still separate civil corporations. And there still will be many upcoming discussions on how to appropriately use those assets and respect the intentions of those who donated them. This is not a money grab. We must be respectful of what each brings to the table. It would be disrespectful for a husband who enters into a marriage with personal wealth to look down upon his new wife who entered the marriage comparatively poor or to disparage her possessions and force her to get rid of them; or for that wife to act entitled to the wealth without recognizing the need for mutual cooperation and support. We must be respectful to one another. We must acknowledge that we are more than our possessions. We must communicate and cooperate to bring greater unity. And we must always focus first on our mission of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ to all people.

 

Peace in Christ,

Father Timothy