St. James Included in Archdiocese of Detroit Reorganization Plan

A plan presented to Archbishop Allen Vigneron on Wednesday night to address a shortage of priests, along with financial challenges in the Archdiocese of Detroit, includes a proposal to unite in Ferndale with in Berkley and Our Lady of Fatima in Oak Park.

The planning group that devised the proposal (see attached PDF) did not address how the parishes would come together.

The proposal is part of the “Together in Faith” process that began in 2004 and grew to involve approximately 1,500 lay Catholics from the 270 parishes within the Archdiocese of Detroit.

"These recommendations – formed through the parishes themselves, reviewed and amended by a group of mostly lay advisors called the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council (APC) – call for a number of multi-parish efforts in areas ranging from youth ministry to vocations to financial considerations," reads a statement distributed by the Archdiocese of Detroit (see attached PDF). "They also include recommendations to reduce some worship sites by merging and closing parishes."

"Archbishop Vigneron will spend the next several weeks reviewing the recommendations he has received," according to the archdiocese statement. "Based on them, he is expected to put forth an archdiocesan-wide pastoral plan in February of 2012."

However, Berkley's La Salette Deacon Dan Darga said the recommendations are by no means set in stone and that other proposals have been put forward as well, including one from the priests representing the South Oakland Vicariate Planning Group 2 parishes.

St. James parishioner Colleen McCurry Huston, who was married in the church in 2010, told Ferndale Patch via Facebook: "I would hate to see it close. It's a beautiful church!"

Messages have been left for representatives from St. James church in Ferndale.