Restructuring in Detroit.

The Archdiocese revealed its plan yesterday, and it's often more a hint-laden puzzle than something you print up on Mapquest. Bottom line: the inner ring suburbs, not Detroit proper, take the hit this time.

To my pleasant surprise, our inner-ring suburban parish was not clustered, but the qualifier appears to be "for now." The AOD also swatted our vicariate (translating for the non-beadsqueezers: a "vicariate" is a regional organizational unit consisting of a number of parishes) for not providing much in the way of real planning on its part. Essentially, our vicariate tried to punt some tough issues back to the Archdiocese, and downtown said "Nuh-uh--do some serious thought on your own."

There is a significant amount of kvetching about this, as the article shows, but actually I like it. It treats us like grownups and forces us to take some ownership in the process. It's far, far better than the top-down debacle in 1989 that drove Cardinal Szoka into retirement. The downside is that there is plenty of uncertainty remaining, but that's pretty much inevitable in this era.