Can I help to heal a divided church?

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IanAG

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A new priest joined our church a couple of years ago, and made some immediate changes without engaging the congregation.This caused division in the community between people who support the priest and those, not a small number, who feel they can no longer trust him.

I haven’t taken sides, but have friends in both camps. The against camp have accused the priest of lying and of being lazy. The priest has stopped using the help of some other priests who live in our community. And dramatically cut the number of services. Some have actually resigned from the PCC and even threatened to leave the church.

The pros believe he has done this to attract younger members and to make his workload more manageable.

As someone who worked for many years in leadership development, I can see many ways that this guy has shot himself in the foot. Yet I still want him to make a success of it for all our sakes.

Am I, as a mere member, able to do anything to bring reconciliation, or should I just hand this over to God?
 
Just hand it over to God. If necessary, leave the parish. I left a parish before. Best decision I ever made.
 
I have prayed about this and feel that God wants me to stay in the parish and support His church in my community, so leaving isn’t an option. In my heart I am saddened because we had such a lovely community working together under the previous priest.
 
I like your attitude! Has anyone, to your knowledge, tried speaking directly with the priest about the situation?
 
I’ve had this same experience. At first, I just dropped out of my parish and attended Mass elsewhere. But after a time I began to see that many of my fellow parishioners (and some very close friends) were treating the new pastor unfairly. Yes, he made some mistakes when he first arrived, but for a significant, and very vocal, group his biggest fault was that he was not the previous beloved pastor.

Stay and pray. Offer to help the priest in any way he needs.
 
I don’t believe anyone has had a compassionate discussion with him and tried to understand his point of view. There were plenty of unpleasant statements at the church council meeting and some have stopped their giving or resigned from the PCC.

I wondered if I might have a discussion around ‘did you know that’ or ‘how do you feel about’ with him.
 
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