Workshop said to be ‘linchpin’ in pastoral planning model

By Terence Hegarty
Catholic Communications staff

SPRINGFIELD – The problems are substantial in both scope and number: a declining number of priests; parishes not working with each other; fewer parishioners participating in their parishes.
But, fortunately for the Springfield Diocese, Father John Bonzagni is a professional problem-solver.
A Springfield diocesan priest and director of pastoral planning for the diocese, Father Bonzagni recently employed his professionalism as part of the latest effort to respond to the need for the diocese to involve its parishes in the process of pastoral planning.
The first-ever diocesan pastoral planning workshop was held July 27 through July 30 at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. The workshop hosted approximately 70 participants.
The gathering was designed to give participants problem-solving and team-building strategies for implementing the process of pastoral planning. Father Bonzagni and another diocesan participant said the workshop was very much a success.
Participants left the workshop, “energized and empowered (and) with a plan to do something in their parishes,” said Father Bon-zagni.
Pastoral planning is, in part, the process of analyzing ways to better utilize the declining number of priests in order to continue to serve the sacramental needs of the faithful. The workshop was open to members of all parishes in the diocese.
“This is the linchpin of the pastoral planning model that I designed,” said Father Bonzagni. “In trying to do anything around pastoral planning, you’re eventually confronted with ‘How do we revivify our parishes?’ And that’s why workshops like this are crucial because you give people the tools to begin to gain control of their own fate.”
Father Bonzagni said the more people who are given these tools, the easier the process of change will be within the diocese. “Instead of me working with 100 people (in any given parish), I can have 10 of us working with 100 people.”
“The way the pastoral planning process is going to unfold is that when we finally have a blueprint in place, people are going to know what their relationships among the various churches are going to be.” He said that leads to developing links between parishes, before these links are mandated through yokings and mergers.
Father Bonzagni said some dioceses have devised a pastoral plan that gets implemented “on a certain date and time. That doesn’t give anybody much time to adjust.”
The method of pastoral planning being implemented in the Springfield Diocese, he said, is “messier and more time-intensive, but it’s the best way.”
“If we have to go through this pastoral planning process, let’s do it in a way that parishes have some skills to deepen their parish life, so that people feel involved in the final product,” he said.
Catherine Farr, director of human resources for the Diocese of Springfield, attended the event. She noted that every participant felt involved and said the workshop “delivered on multiple fronts.”
The days were long, according to Farr, beginning at 7 a.m. and running until 9:30 p.m. “It was not a vacation atmosphere,” she recalled.
But she said the energy level stayed high. “It was a gathering of concerned Catholics, talking about one of the hottest topics (pastoral planning), and praying.”
Even though it has become a “hot topic” recently, Father Bonzagni said he had wanted to help the church with this type of workshop for a long time.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for twenty years,” he said. In 1982, Father Bonzagni and nine others, representing the Lee Public Schools, attended a 10-day workshop on substance abuse.
After being involved in the substance abuse work, he thought the problem-solving strategies were “exactly what we as a church could use.” With another trainer from the original group, Father Bonzagni trained people on substance abuse prevention for the next 15 years.
Referring to the July workshop he said, he took the substance abuse model, adjusted it slightly for a church setting and “Did a ten-day workshop in four days.”
Father Bonzagni was one of the three facilitators of the workshop. Kathleen Bort, of Lee, and Alice Mitchel of Berlin, Conn., joined him.
“The facilitators were fabulous,” said Farr, who attended the workshop with two other diocesan employees. “I left there with a sense of exhilaration, a sense that I’m not alone as a Catholic,” she said.
Father Bonzagni said the workshop was really two workshops in one -- one for parishioners and one for members of the newly-formed pastoral planning committee. The impetus for organizing the workshop, he said, was that members of the pastoral planning committee wanted group formation.
The committee, made up of 11 professionals from throughout the diocese, was formed last winter. It is charged with analyzing pastoral planning data and input from parishes and making recommendations to Springfield Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell, a process Father Bonzagni said will likely take another year.
Farr said the pastoral planning process, even when it involves closing or merging parishes, can be “a celebration rather than a funeral.”
“We need to recognize the special aspects of each parish, the uniqueness that exists in every parish,” Farr said. She said much of the sadness associated with parish changes comes because people don’t know each other.
“There’s a renewed energy (when parishes come together). It can be a life-giving process,” she added.
Participants were divided into groups and were required to come up with a plan that would help solve some of the problems they identified.
“It wasn’t just an intellectual exercise. We left there with a fairly detailed plan and we’re going to present it to each parish,” Farr emphasized. She said her group consists of three Springfield parishes and one in Granby.
The workshop began with a 5 p.m. dinner July 27 and ended with an afternoon Mass celebrated by Bishop McDonnell July 30. A dorm room on campus was provided for each participant.
“At the end of the day, everyone felt they had done some really good work,” Farr said. Father Bonzagni said his office would hopefully facilitate more of these workshops and spread this information to additional parishes. He said St. Anselm College, run by the Benedictine Order, “Bent over backwards to accommodate us. They couldn’t have been better.”