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Home / Together in Faith / Goals
Pastoral Letter: The Journey Before Us
 My Brothers and Sisters in the Lord: This year, our Church of Detroit celebrates 173 years as a diocese. Our roots take us back to the very foundation of Detroit itself, July 24, 1701, when French missionaries established St. Anne Parish in Detroit. From the beginning, a steady stream of immigrants from almost every country of the world has built on the faith foundations of the native peoples, bringing with them the rich treasures of their ethnic, racial, and spiritual traditions.
Through the decades, our Church and metro area have changed enormously. There have been times of tragedy such as the Detroit fire of 1805, the cholera plague of the early 1830s, and civil unrest in 1943 and 1967. Our local Church has also mirrored the economic fluctuations of the automobile industry.
Our Church of Detroit reflects the ever-changing mosaic of Metro Detroit and its cycles of change and transformation. Through all seasons, the Catholic Church has stood strong and remained a faithful voice and presence in every part of our metro area—from the core city to the ring suburbs, outer suburbs and rural areas. We have willingly shared our gifts and resources with and for one another; we have lived out the mystery of beingone body and one spirit in the Lord Jesus, something we celebrate in every Holy Eucharist.
When I arrived in Detroit as your archbishop in 1990, many were still coping with the closing of parishes the previous year. Even then, it was recognized that more transitions were sure to come—not only in the city, but throughout the wider metropolitan area. With ever-shifting populations, diminishing numbers of priests, aging parish plants in many places, and need for new construction in other areas, clearly, we needed decisive andcreative planning.
In 1994, the Council of Vicars and Archdiocesan Pastoral Council chose to make Vicariate Pastoral Planning one of our highest priorities; we saw it as a healthy channel to ensure planning would happen from the parish and vicariate level and not just from "the top down." In 2003, at the suggestion of our priests during our biannual convocation, I endorsed the idea of creating a parish and vicariate-based process to identify priorities for strengthening our parishes and schools. This program was launched in the fall of 2004 under the title Together in Faith. Thousands of people across the Archdiocese took part in parish, school, and vicariate discussions. There were also special focus groups from the Presbyteral Council, the Council of Vicars, and Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, and the Advisory Board of Catholic Education, each addressing questions of growth, decline, development, and realignment of human and material resources from the perspective of their particular competency.
A related concern has been the health and well-being of our priests, especially as they have been shouldering ever more demanding challenges of contemporary pastoral service, often to more than one parish community and sometimes in circumstances requiring sensitivity to bilingual, ethnic andracially diverse needs. Thanks to the creative efforts of many priests andother advisors, the Presbyteral Council developed a Total Pastoral Plan for Priests. As we go forward, the review and consideration of this later plan, along with the implementation of Together in Faith, will be monitored inan ongoing fashion by a newly appointed Archdiocesan Tracking Committee.
We stand on the shoulders of the giants of the past who built, formed, and sustained our communities of faith and the many structures of our Church; over the decades, the bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and lay faithful of the Archdiocese have made this a great and dynamic Church. In recent decades, we can take pride and satisfaction in the way we have implemented the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, especially in forming and educating our lay faithful, revitalizing our liturgical and sacramental celebrations, renewing our catechesis, and calling parishes to greater collaboration and fiscal stewardship.
We can also give thanks to the Lord and one another for the special grace our Church of Detroit experienced through the five-year Jubilee 2000 process of spiritual renewal through parish discussions and reflection groups, a process that culminated in our September 2000 Archdiocesan Eucharistic Congress and the rededication of St. John's Center. Throughout the decades, we have been a strong voice proclaiming the dignity of lifeand have translated our faith into action on behalf of social justice and the common good.
As we go through the necessary changes detailed in this pastoral communication, obviously, there will be some pain for our whole Archdiocesan family. Schools that are closing or parishes that are clustering, merging, or being suppressed (closed) will certainly experience grief; we want to assure them we are grateful for their past witness and service, and we share their sense of loss and hope for new life. We also want to provide a warm welcome in new parish or school settings. With gratitude, we remember the past, and with hope, we look to the future. As Jesus taught in the Gospel, from tiny mustard seeds, great things can happen. While change is painful, it is necessary for growth; it is actually a sign of new life.
Finally, we owe a great debt of gratitude to all who have been a part of the planning process in giving of their time and talent. I especially want to acknowledge our vicars and regional bishops, the members of the Coordinating Committee, thousands of committed lay faithful and religious of the archdiocese who participated in discussions, and staff from Central Services without whom these planning documents could never have been formulated. May God, who has begun this good work, bring it to completion!
Sincerely yours in the Lord,
†Adam Cardinal Maida
Archbishop of Detroit
March 29, 2006
Released Spring 2006
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