By JIM BROOKS
NELSON COUNTY GAZETTE

Monday, March 27, 2006 -- The story above the fold on the front of the March 23rd edition of The Record brought home again the bad news that Roman Catholics in the Archdiocese of Louisville knew was coming but hoped to never read.

Faced with fewer priests and shrinking resources, the archdiocese is taking inventory of its resources -- financial and spiritual -- in a move that will likely end with fewer priests in Nelson County and fewer churches and parish schools across the archdiocese.

At my parish of St. Gregory in Samuels, the Rev. John Schwartzlose used his Sunday, March 26th homily to discuss the Record story and how coming changes will impact the St. Gregory parish.

For starters, St. Gregory will lose the luxury of having a full-time priest. Like many of his fellow priests in rural Kentucky, Schwartzlose will be taking on responsibilities at one -- or more -- other churches. He'll wind up saying Mass at multiple locations each weekend.

"I'll be buying more tires for my car," he joked.

For Catholics my age, this day of reckoning appears to have finally arrived. After many, many years of dire predictions from the archdiocese and even its priests, it appears that it indeed has become time to pay the piper.

But no large organization like the archdiocese would be complete without politics. Schwartzlose said that while the archdiocese will be looking at the "realignment" churches and schools (consultant-speak for "closing"), a few areas of the archdiocese are clamoring to start new parochial schools. He cited Shelby County and Louisville's West End as locations where new schools are being sought.

Ironically, it was the dwindling enrollment that led to the closure of the West End's schools.

But with diocesan resources -- both money and priests -- already spread thin, the archdiocese will wind up moving resources to the areas with greatest need.

For a rural Central Kentucky county, Nelson historically has a high number of Catholic churches. This stands as testimony to the spread of Roman Catholicism west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Nearly 200 years ago, Bishop Benedict Flaget was given a huge territory -- the "New West" -- and told to establish it as a diocese. He eventually landed in Nelson County, setting up shop first at St. Thomas before moving to Bardstown, and establishing this area as the "Cradle of Roman Catholicism" of the West at the time.

The early priests in Central Kentucky didn't have churches in which they could celebrate Mass. They were usually circuit riders -- men who traveled an area by horseback, saying Mass and administering the sacraments along their route.

Ironically, the Central Kentucky Catholic church will be returning to a similar "circuit rider"-style ministry as fewer and fewer priests are available to minister to larger numbers of Catholics.

According to the stories in the Record, the archdiocese will be asking each parish community to make recommendations on how it and other nearby parishes can consolidate and share their resources, both financial and spiritual.

At St. Gregory, Fr. John was frank: Parishioners can embrace the coming changes or be hurt by them. The choice is ours.

At right I've compiled a list of Nelson County area parishes and the number of registrations (families) per church from greatest to least (these figures were compiled from information on the Archdiocese of Louisville's Web site).

As the county's second-largest parish, it's probably very telling that St. Gregory will be losing its full-time priest. A lay parish administrator will probably take charge of the day-to-day operation of the parish, and a priest will serve as the sacramental moderator who will conduct Masses on whatever schedule can be afforded.

St. Gregory will not be closed, though the same can't be said for other parishes in the area. The archdiocese shuttered St. Mark's in the Greenbrier area of Nelson County with little fanfare or explanation more than 10 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if Holy Rosary in Manton or St. Ann in Howardstown, or Immaculate Conception in Culvertown were closed.

It's indeed ironic that the area that nurtured Bishop Flaget and the Catholic Church in the western frontier of Kentucky is today -- 200 years later -- suffering from the same problem Flaget complained about: A lack of priests and seminarians.

The parish planning process heralded by The Record is the beginning of the process that will unveil the archdiocese's plans for a more manageable diocese. Given the fact that the shortage of priests will NOT go away soon, it's time to prepare to embrace the future because like it or not, here it comes.