May 5, 2000

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By Jerry Filteau WASHINGTON (CNS) - - Lay ministers now outnumber priests on the staffs of most U.S. Catholic parishes, said the report of a survey released yesterday, May 4. The National Catholic Parish Survey found that laity, deacons and reli g ious holding ministerial positions on parish staffs outnumber priests in parishes b y nearly 2-to-l — by more than 2-to-l if one excludes priests residing in a parish but not part of the staff. The parishes in the survey ranged fro m 23 members to 20,650, but the average parish had about 2 ,800 members and a yearl y budget of about $580,000. More than 90 percent of pastors responding to the survey said they were satisfied with overall parish ministry. Those with large parishes, large staffs and diverse parish programs and outreach tended to express the highest levels of satisfaction. Researchers Jim Castelli , president of Castelli Enterprises , and Father Eugene Hemrick, research director for the Washington Theological Union , conducted the mail survey of pastors in late 1999 and early 2000. From questionnaires sent to a national random sampling of Catholic parishes they obtained 704 usable responses. Many of the questions were designed to provide data that could be compared with findings from a 1982 survey of 1, 100 parishes conducted as part of in the massive Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life. The new survey found th at since 1982: • Average parish size has grown by 23 percent, from NATIONAL STUDY, page 5

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