{"id":7713,"date":"2004-03-16T09:44:06","date_gmt":"2004-03-16T09:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/what_cleveland_catholics_want.html"},"modified":"2004-03-16T09:44:06","modified_gmt":"2004-03-16T09:44:06","slug":"what_cleveland_catholics_want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/what_cleveland_catholics_want.html","title":{"rendered":"What Cleveland Catholics Want"},"content":{"rendered":"

A three-year long study draws to a close<\/a><\/p>\n

Diocesan churches serving more than 800,000 Catholics engaged in a lengthy period of self-study and reflection and came up with goals they shared with other churches in their regions.<\/p>\n

The last of 12 major regional confabs involving nearly 2,000 majority-lay leaders was held Sunday, and the 131 ministry teams that were formed out of the process are now working on specific ways local churches can work together. <\/p>\n

Catholics filling out surveys after Sunday Mass or by mail were asked to rate how well their parish was doing in 39 categories. On a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 meaning they were not at all satisfied to 7 indicating the services were very well done, parishioners gave a mean score of 5 or higher in 37 areas of ministry. <\/p>\n

The scores fell below 5 only in the categories of outreach to non-practicing Catholics and educating the flock on other major world religions. <\/p>\n

In relative terms, the surveys exposed some differences between what parishioners want most and what the church is doing especially well. <\/p>\n

For example, the two areas of ministry most important to parishioners were having spiritually moving Masses and a supporting, caring environment in their churches. But churchgoers ranked those areas 18th and 21st respectively in evaluating their church’s performance. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There you have the problem: Lengthy periods of self-study. Endless meetings to reflect on ourselves. How about this: study the Gospels. Then do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A three-year long study draws to a close Diocesan churches serving more than 800,000 Catholics engaged in a lengthy period of self-study and reflection and came up with goals they shared with other churches in their regions. The last of 12 major regional confabs involving nearly 2,000 majority-lay leaders was held Sunday, and the 131…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Cleveland Catholics Want - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/what_cleveland_catholics_want.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Cleveland Catholics Want - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A three-year long study draws to a close Diocesan churches serving more than 800,000 Catholics engaged in a lengthy period of self-study and reflection and came up with goals they shared with other churches in their regions. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}