Area Catholic churches await archdiocese plans

Archdiocese of Dubuque leadership will soon release a plan they say will help the church survive into the future amid a dearth of priests and a decline in parishioners. 

The “Journey in Faith” plan was first announced by the archdiocese in 2024. Church leadership held meetings among themselves as well as gatherings in local parishes to discuss the challenges facing the church and to explore the future. The plan includes new pastorate models and the possibility of consolidating the area’s Mass schedule to reduce existing priests’ workloads, church officials said. 

The Telegraph Herald reported that the number of priests serving the archdiocese has declined 44% in the past two decades and is expected to stay on that trendline, and church attendance has dropped 46% in that same time span. Archbishop of Dubuque Thomas Zinkula cited changes in rural Iowa’s population and a more secular culture as additional reasons for the plan’s implementation. 

Area churches in the Archdiocese of Dubuque include St Matthias in Cascade; St. Peter in Temple Hill; St. Luke in Hopkinton; Sacred Heart in Monticello; St. Joseph in Prairieburg; St. Patrick’s south of Bernard; St. Lawrence in Otter Creek; St. Joseph, St. Catherine and Sts. Peter and Paul in Springbrook; St. Joseph in Preston; Sacred Heart in Maquoketa and Sacred Heart in Oxford Junction. 

Church officials solicited feedback over a series of months from church members, priests and other parties. Church leadership now plans to release the contents of the developed plan in a little over a week. 

That plan, according to an email sent to parishioners by Zinkula last week, outlined what will happen going forward. 

“This work has led to the finalization of a new pastorate plan that will guide how our parishes collaborate and how our priests will serve our communities in the years ahead,” Zinkula said in the email.

Zinkula said Mass schedules will remain the same and there will no longer be Mass rotations, which he said taxed resources. 

“Instead of focusing on more important mission-driven endeavors such as ministry and relationship building, those rotations focused on building utilization and depleted necessary human and financial resources. In addition, priests will normally celebrate no more than three Masses on a weekend so they can also devote time to the many other important responsibilities of priestly ministry,” Zinkula’s email said.

The final Journey in Faith plan -- including the pastorate structure and priest assignments -- will be released April 11, the archdiocese said, and all parish priests will provide it to their parishioners over that same weekend in the form of a letter. 

In a video posted to the archdiocese’s Journey in Faith website -- dbqjourneyinfaith.org -- Zinkula said beginning in July, the new pastorate will begin an interim Mass schedule for the rest of the calendar year while parishes determine “how best to work together and thrive as an engaged community.”

“I know this has been a difficult and emotional process for many of you, and that is understandable,” Zinkula said in an address to parishioners. “It has been for me as well. Change often stirs both hope and anxiety. I feel hope when I think about -- and hear from some of you about -- the potential of Journey in Faith to transform our archdiocese into a more vibrant and sustainable faith community of missionary disciples.”