Cluster Overview.

Our parish cluster is CURRENTLY made up of six (6) parishes.They are: St. Aloysius Parish (Sauk City), St. Norbert Parish (Roxbury), St.Barnabas Parish (Mazomanie), St. Mary Health of the Sick (Merrimac), St. John the Baptist Parish (Mill Creek - Arena), St. Camillus Parish (Durwards Glen).This is the current status of the cluster, but this configuration is going to change.

The great change.

 What is the change? Are we going to change the names of the churches? NO WE ARE NOT. Each and every church will keep its name...

Are we going to close any of the churches? NO WE ARE NOT. All of the churches will remain open to the extent they are right now. So, what is the change?

The change is that the NUMBER OF PARISHES will go from six(6) to three (3).

How will this take place? Very simple. St. Aloysius, St.Mary Health of the Sick, and St. Camillus will join together to form ONE SINGLE PARISH. This NEW PARISH (with a new name I will soon be able to announce) will have THREE CHURCHES. One single parish with three churches.  So, that's one parish.

St. Barnabas and St. John the Baptist will also join together to form ONE SINGLE PARISH. This new parish will also have a new name which will be promptly announced. So here, in this new parish, there will be TWO CHURCHES, but one parish. That's the second parish.

And what is the third parish? St. Norbert. It will remain the same. So, with this, we have three parishes.

This change has been planned by the Diocese; it is not an initiative of the priests. The reason for the change is that there are not enough priests to attend to all the needs of all the parishes. So to make this possible the diocese has seen it necessary to take this step. Right now, thanks be to God, we have enough priests to take care of all the needs of the parishes of the cluster. Let´s pray that we can continue to do so for a long time. 

 

Merger

This process of bringing two or more parishes together into one parish is called MERGING. So, St. Al's is merging with St. Mary's in Merrimac and St. Camillus. This is the process that we are going through which will bring us together to form one single parish community. When it is all over we will all be members of the same parish, which will have the NEW NAME that the Bishop has chosen (from the list that we presented to him). In coming weeks I will talk about just how this merger works and what it entails.

(This is a re-printof what appeared in the bulletin in early November.)