New five-year plan shifts future for Catholic churches

The Sioux City diocese bishop recently announced a new five-year plan that would keep weekend mass at Assumption of Our Lady Church in Merrill.

An earlier plan issued by the diocese in February would have ended weekend mass at the Merrill church within 10 years due to a shortage of priests.

"Down the road there could possibly be no Sunday mass there," said the Rev. Armand Bertrand, of Cherokee, who was a member of the task force creating the five-year plan.

"It has to do with local realities," he explained in a phone interview.

The new five-year plan, Bishop R. Walker Nickless wrote in a letter to the diocese, is the result of that task force studying how to match a shrinking number of priests with the churches of the diocese.

The plan links some churches to others, with one church serving as the parish center, having the priest's residence and business offices there.

The plan shifted to keep Merrill's church as a parish center, Bertrand said, because a priest is living there.

Merrill's church will serve as the parish center for St. Joseph at Ellendale, St. Joseph at Struble and St. Joseph at Neptune.

The three rural St. Joseph churches will still have weekend Mass, although the Neptune church might lose weekend mass in future years.

Also in the new five-year plan, both St. Joseph and St. James in Le Mars will serve parish centers, each with its own priest residence and parish office.

At this point, no other churches are linked to either Le Mars church.

That's a change from the previous five-year plan, which linked St. Patrick in Akron to St. James in Le Mars. The Akron church was to serve as a liturgical site, offering weekend and possible weekday mass, but not having a priest residence or parish office.

The new plan keeps St. Patrick in Akron as a parish center on its own.

Still, Bertrand said, the Akron church will likely be linked to St. James down the road.

"It's a very fluid situation," Bertrand said of the five-year plan. "Circumstances could change."

This plan, he said, is actually the fifth draft of the document.

The plan released in February, the fourth draft, allowed the task force to receive input from the people, brining issues to the group's attention, Bertrand said.

The bishop established the study on diocese churches nearly two years ago.

The goals during the study, Nickless stated, were to maintain all parishes that showed viability, safeguard priests from work and stress overload, and streamline parish administration to help priests better minister to the people.

A further 10-year plan is still in the works, Nickless stated.

"Although some of the changes that are coming our way will be painful, we are nevertheless blessed as a diocesan Church with dedicated laity, active priests and deacons, and conscientious religious," Nickless wrote.