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Diocese: Priests launch capacity vs. attendance study

Is the fourth Mass exception still valid?

From a recent edition of The Lumen:

As the Diocese of Sioux City continues to experience a decrease in registered Catholics, sacramental participation and active priests, a subcommittee within the Pastoral Planning Committee is reviewing the “four Mass exception” that came out of previous planning efforts.

“When Ministry 2025 came about (in 2017), one of the things that was determined was that some parishes may need an extra Mass on the weekend due to the three Masses a weekend rule,” explained Father David Esquiliano, subcommittee member and Cathedral Parish pastor, noting that diocesan priests are only allowed to celebrate three weekend Masses.

At that time, several pastors requested permission to celebrate a fourth weekend Mass to accommodate the needs of their parishes. Bishop Walker Nickless authorized several of these fourth weekend Masses for a priest to celebrate an additional weekend Mass.

“That’s based on the original idea that most exceptions were based on languages other than English so transitioning parishes wouldn’t lose those Masses, especially Spanish,” noted Father Brent Lingle, former diocesan director of pastoral planning and current pastor of the Storm Lake St. Mary Parish which includes Early Sacred Heart. “We are examining now, four to five years later, are those exceptions still necessary?”

Part of this examination process is to compare Mass attendance to church capacity. For many years, parishes were asked to submit Mass attendance counts in the month of November. By request of the Presbyteral Council, pastors are now asked to record Mass attendance every other month.

“This is a more accurate representation of what’s going on in a parish. If confirmation is held in November, that won’t help as the numbers would be abnormal. When you do that every other month, even with a couple (special) events here and there, the tendency is that you can see the averages,” Father Esquiliano said.

Capturing “a snapshot of what happens in the summers” is helpful, Father Lingle pointed out, noting July Mass attendance is historically quite different from November attendance.

As priests today are generally responsible for multiple parishes, scheduling Masses becomes more complicated.

“We know priests are serving larger areas,” said Father Michael Cronin, subcommittee member and pastor of parishes in Denison, Manning, Manilla and Vail. “Regarding pastoral planning, we have to rethink and reimagine. If we are showing churches having Masses that are not at full capacity, that should impact how we look at staffing our parishes.”

Father Cronin said the group has been studying the Mass counts from November through May and comparing them to a church’s seating capacity. Numbers are also recorded regarding the language spoken at the various parish Masses such as Spanish and Vietnamese.

“We’ve looked at the statistics from November and January and are in the process of analyzing May and March in comparison to previous numbers,” he said. “I’m surprised how many of the Masses in our diocese are at 30% or less capacity.”

Declining Mass attendance
Several diocesan parishes are publishing their regular Mass counts, including the percentage of Mass attendance compared to building capacity. The subcommittee priests noted that tracking the data is helpful for their study and for the faithful.

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“If you sit in front, you won’t see how empty the church is behind you. We also get used to a slow decline that we don’t see the difference,” Father Esquiliano said. “Part of the problem we have is that Catholics are not going to Mass. They may be registered there, they may come to religious education classes or be registered in the Catholic School, but they aren’t coming to Mass on Sunday. If everyone came to Mass that’s registered, we would not have enough Masses and that would be a beautiful problem to have.”

In addition to a historical decrease, Father Lingle noted that he and his brother priests have noticed a decrease in Mass attendance since COVID-19. He has been sharing the numbers in his parish e-newsletter with his parishioners.

“What I’ve heard from people is that it’s helpful to see the numbers,” Father Lingle said. “People are creatures of habit. If they don’t frequent other Masses, they never know what happens at those other Masses.”

Recommending policies
All three subcommittee members explained they will not be making decisions for pastors and parishes or creating a policy through this capacity study.

“We will not make any decision regarding any particular parish. We will recommend policies which will have to be implemented by the bishop and pastors,” Father Esquiliano explained. “What we want to do is submit a proposal to the bishop what a policy may look like and he will decide whether he makes it a rule in the diocese.”

Primary concerns of the bishop and the subcommittee in the capacity study are the well-being of priests and vibrant liturgies.

“We are concerned when we see a priest having three Masses when the church is only 25% full for Mass, which means that priest would hypothetically have one Mass and be free to do ministry for those three hours. …You could be visiting the homebound or could be teaching. That’s where we are and why these numbers are important,” Father Esquiliano said.

The Cathedral Parish pastor explained there is more than an hour of presence for a priest to offer a Mass but also the preparation of the space, homily preparation and the spiritual preparation.

“People get nervous when they see or hear about this kind of work (of the subcommittee),” Father Lingle admitted. “But people don’t see just how necessary it is to the priests’ health and well-being.”

In addition to taxing the time of the priests, low Mass attendance can affect the enthusiasm of the parishioners, including young Catholics.

“Young Catholics feel very disheartened walking into an empty church,” Father Cronin pointed out. “They want to see people they know. They want to be part of a larger group and feel what they are doing has value. If they walk into a church and could fire a cannonball and not hit anyone, that’s disheartening.”

Energized Masses
Father Cronin said he experienced first-hand the benefit of Masses with more of the faithful in the pews when he served as parochial vicar at Storm Lake St. Mary with Father Lingle. In preparation for parish life with one priest, the parish eliminated an English and a Spanish Mass.

“When we combined two Masses to one, it brought a whole lot of energy,” Father Cronin said. “People began seeing parishioners they did not realize were part of the parish.”

He also explained the pool of ministry volunteers grew once the Masses were combined and the fuller Masses were more prayerful. All priests noted it has become difficult to recruit ministers for Masses. For example, Father Cronin said prior to eliminating Masses at St. Mary’s, liturgical ministers had to “serve at every English Mass. One way to alleviate that is to allow our ministers to focus on fewer liturgies.”

“If you can combine resources for one Mass, it would be a more beautiful Mass,” Father Esquiliano added. “There would be more people involved.”

The priests want to assure the diocesan faithful that the focus of the subcommittee is not to “come and say you should close because not enough people attend Mass.”

“This is not about closing or merging. We are just trying to make sure Masses are well-attended and not kill the priest in the process,” Father Esquiliano explained. “We are trying to help the pastor minister better.”

The three priests are also taking into consideration distances to area Catholic churches, and the languages spoken at the Masses when making their recommendations to the bishop.

Shifting mindset
The mindset of priests in the past was to maximize Mass offerings to accommodate the faithful, Father Cronin noted. However, clergy and their parishioners may have to adjust to meet the new reality in the church.

“I think for some priests, the issue of how many Masses you serve becomes a question. As servants of God and a minister of the church you want to make Mass accessible. So, (the thinking was) the more Masses you offer, the more there will be to pick from and they will come,” he said.

However, with fewer of the faithful in the pews and fewer priests, fewer Masses offered is likely in some areas. The subcommittee said it could be difficult for parishioners to adjust to a new worship routine.

“The question we raise for the laity – is the Mass and our faith going to take priority? If we have fewer Masses, are we willing to schedule our lives around it?” Father Cronin said.

“We do a lot of things in our lives based on convenience and we do that with faith, too,” Father Lingle said. “If we look for a convenient Mass time and are mobile enough to get here, we think the church should make everything convenient for us. We are not in a position to do that anymore.”

Diocesan priests with decades more of service ahead of them are concerned with the quality of ministry they could provide in the future with the current Mass structure and projected number of active priests.

“The younger priests discuss that none of us are interested in spending a life in ministry in a car simply to celebrate Mass,” Father Lingle said.

“We do a lot of things in our lives based on convenience and we do that with faith, too,” Father Lingle said. “If we look for a convenient Mass time and are mobile enough to get here, we think the church should make everything convenient for us. We are not in a position to do that anymore.”