Seattle Archdiocese: Western WA Catholic parishes could be halved in upcoming mergers

In the face of declining membership and fewer men entering the priesthood, Catholic parishes in Pierce County and across western Washington will merge in 2024, the Seattle Archdiocese announced Sunday morning to its members.

After the mergers are complete, the Seattle Archdiocese estimates it will have 66 parishes, down from its current 174.

“We fully anticipate people are going to be very shocked,” said Seattle Archdiocese spokesperson McClenahan. “Grieving ... anytime there’s changes, these are natural feelings. And if they didn’t have them, I think we should be worried because they don’t care.”

Why merge?

“We have fewer registered households, fewer Catholics going to mass, fewer Catholics celebrating the sacraments,” McClenahan said. “We have fewer people going into the priesthood, and fewer lay leaders.”

Those factors lead to financial constraints, particularly when it comes to older buildings, like Tacoma’s Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, with merged with another parish in 2021. Its crumbling church was deemed too old to repair.

“We have multiple parishes that are old and are in need of repair or great maintenance and we just don’t have people to fill them,” McClenahan said.

The mergers aren’t new in Tacoma, where four parishes were joined together into one super parish in 2022, not without controversy.

The Seattle Archdiocese’s region encompasses all of western Washington from Canada to Oregon.

How it will work

A consulting firm has been hired to examine each church parish and property and formulate a proposal.

After looking at past mergers and mergers from around the U.S. the Seattle Archdiocese has chosen a model called family parishes.

There’s no set number of merged parishes for each family parish, McClenahan said. There could be anywhere from two to five parishes in each family parish.

In some cases, if a parish has a wide geographical spread, it might not be merged with any others, McClenahan said. Other factors which will determine where new lines are drawn will include school sites and the multicultural demographics of each new family parish. It’s unlikely, for example, that a new family parish would have two schools while an adjoining one would be left with none.

Once the parishes are merged into a family, they will have three years to work together to determine how they want to become one canonical parish, she said.

Each new parish will have one diocesan pastor and an assistant priest.

Process

An oversight committee will look at the first draft, probably in March, and make changes. Then, it will get shared with all the priests in the diocese, probably in late spring. After that it gets shared with parish staff and school leadership.

Finally, in fall, the most recent draft will get shared with all parishioners for feedback.

Archbiship Paul Etienne is expected to make the final announcement in January 2024 with the mergers going into effect in July 2024, McClenahan said.

The new mergers will differ from the 2022 Tacoma mergers because it’s affecting the entire archdiocese, a team of liaison will help the parishes merge during the three-year period and it’s up to the parishes to decide what they want to do with their properties.