Fr. Jan K. Schmidt
Director, Pastoral Vitality
From the beginning of Beacons of Light, it has been important to remind ourselves of WHY the process is necessary. To that end, Parishes were grouped into Families, not only to address changing demographics and to ensure the availability of priests, especially pastors, for the foreseeable future. We have often noted that Beacons of Light is a pastoral planning process designed to best arrange all our resources – our people, our physical assets, and our financial resources – to proclaim the Gospel and make disciples in our particular time and place. While many Families of Parishes have made great strides in addressing the early phases of “Beacons,” it is time to take a bolder step in discerning the ways each Family, and all in our archdiocese, will meet the missionary moment of our time. This is why Archbishop Casey asks every Family of Parishes to participate in a process we are calling Family Unity Discernment.
Through Family Unity Discernment, Families of Parishes will consider, in a synodal way, if they have sufficient resources as well as how best to deploy or reconfigure their resources to foster missionary discipleship and meet the challenge of our apostolic age. Families of Parishes within a deanery will do this at the same time, between April 2026 and June 2027, to explore strengths gained from collaborative relationships within a deanery (geographic region).
Archbishop Casey recently addressed leaders in one deanery in which he explained why Family Unity Discernment is necessary, and why it is so, now.
