5 Catholic parishes may share priests, resources | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

The cluster plan presented to Bishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski at St. Philip Neri Church would allow the parishes to share resources. They currently rely on visiting and resident priests to maintain their Mass schedule.

"In our social environment now many service roles are finding it difficult to recruit people," said the Rev. Bruce Jarboe, acting pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church and Church of the Crucifixion in Glen Burnie.

"It's difficult to find enough teachers, nurses and ministries in the church. It's not limited to Catholic priesthood. Other Christian denominations are finding it difficult to recruit sufficient clergy for a ministry."

The cluster would include Holy Trinity and the other two Catholic churches in

Glen Burnie, the Church of the Crucifixion and Church of the Good Shepherd, as well as St. Bernadette in Severn and Saint Philip Neri in Linthicum. The five parishes currently only have three full-time priests.

The plan calls for a priest to be appointed as pastor of St. Philip Neri and one of Holy Trinity, but a third priest would be shared by the Church of the Crucifixion and the Church Good Shepherd. A pastoral life director would watch over St. Bernadette.

In development for more than four years, the recommendations include possibly cutting the number of Sunday Masses within five years. The report recommended keeping some weekday Masses at each parish.

The recommendations included the creation of a cluster-wide bulletin and Web site and building a sense of community among the five parishes through events. The first of these is an outing to a Bowie Baysox game on Aug. 8.

"We spent the last four years developing recommendations for how we will provide pastoral care for the northern part of Anne Arundel County," the Rev. Jarboe said.

Bishop Rozanski thanked the presenters for their hard work, and said he would forward them to Archbishop Edwin O'Brien for review with his recommendation.

The other priests besides Rev. Jarboe in the area are the Rev. Dale Picarella at St. Philip Neri and the Rev. John Kelley at Church of the Good Shepard. Ann McDonald is the temporary administrator at St. Bernadette.

The report follows Cardinal William H. Keeler's 2002 plan for a series of recruitment and pastoral-planning strategies intended to address the reductions of priests throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The Rev. Jarboe said a large portion of his parish is comprised of senior citizens, but there are also significant numbers of young families. The committee that drafted the report also expects the parishes to grow with the increase in population.

"We want to provide a good level of pastoral care," the Rev. Jarboe said.