World News
Rockville Centre Diocese enacts plan to ensure its 'financial health'
Published:
ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y. (CNS) -- To "ensure the financial health" of the Rockville Centre Diocese for the future, the diocese has put in place a strategy to meet a number of fiscal challenges, said Bishop William F. Murphy. The plan includes offering eligible employees an early-retirement package; establishing a shared services center to help make operational functions more efficient and to strengthen financial controls; and expanding a pastoral administrative team to help pastors focus more on pastoral responsibilities. "If we are to pass on a church to future generations that is fiscally sound and adequately ministering both pastorally and spiritually to a growing Catholic population on Long Island, we must act now. And that we are doing," the bishop wrote in his column "Faith and New Works" in the Feb. 3 issue of The Long Island Catholic, the diocesan newspaper. He said several factors are affecting the diocese's ability to meet its obligations "and the needs of the people of God and the broader Long Island community." Chief among them, he said, are steady decreases in Mass attendance over the past 10 years and subsequent decreases in Mass offertory contributions as well as demographic shifts in the communities the church serves, which have increased "the level and scope of services needed." Such factors have put "incredible financial stress" on parishes and schools and they must be addressed now "for the future good of the church and the fulfillment of our mission to bring Christ to the world," Bishop Murphy said.
Copyright (c) Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .
