Merging dioceses - how common is it?

[HomeschoolDad]

(This isn’t the category I would like, but it was the closest fit.)

Questions and answers about the transition to the new Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau – The Inside Passage

I just learned this today.

You always hear of dioceses being split, often in response to increases in Catholic population (hooray!), but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of two dioceses being merged into one larger diocese.

How often does something like this happen?

 

[Bithynian]

How often does something like this happen?

Not too often. But it’s not particularly unusual. Some French and German dioceses have particularly convoluted histories, alternatively being suppressed, absorbed, merged and then re-established in response to changing demographics or political considerations.

 

[Glennon_P]

How often does something like this happen?

It’s not common, but it happens in response to demographic shifts.

In 1956, the Diocese of St. Joseph Missouri was merged with the Diocese of Kansas City. The two cities are about 50 miles apart but had separate dioceses since the 1800s. At the same time the Holy See established the Diocese of Jefferson City in central Missouri and the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau across the southern part of the state.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

How often does something like this happen?

Not too often. But it’s not particularly unusual. Some French and German dioceses have particularly convoluted histories, alternatively being suppressed, absorbed, merged and then re-established in response to changing demographics or political considerations.

And then there was the situation after World War II, when diocesan lines had to be redrawn, to conform to new borders, as in Poland. Even in this country, you had the unusual situation in the dioceses of Richmond, Virginia and Wheeling, West Virginia. (Please, for anyone who is unaware, come away from this with the knowledge that Virginia and West Virginia are two separate states, and not just that, but two different cultures.) After the Civil War, part of the Wheeling diocese (the diocese predates the existence of West Virginia itself) took in southwestern Virginia (the “chicken’s head”), and part of the Richmond diocese took in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. Finally, in 1974, one hundred and one years later (!), they realigned the diocesan boundaries to put West Virginia entirely within the Wheeling diocese, and the Virginia parts were transferred to the Richmond diocese.

At this point I need some Goody’s or Stanback powders. Preferably with a cup of hot coffee

 

[commenter]

I believe a few hundred Dioceses were merged/suppressed in North Africa and Mideast as Islam took hold. The old diocese might be used to give an auxillary bishop a titular see.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I believe a few hundred Dioceses were merged/suppressed in North Africa and Mideast as Islam took hold. The old diocese might be used to give an auxillary bishop a titular see.

They were indeed. I had in mind existing, flourishing dioceses which have undergone this sort of administrative re-shuffle, rather than dioceses where the Church basically ceased to exist.

There are also cases of see-cities being moved, as was the case with the Diocese of Bardstown (Kentucky), whose see-city became Louisville when it became apparent that Louisville was going to grow into a large city, while Bardstown remained a small town even to the present day. The Bardstown proto-cathedral still exists, but AFAIK has no official status (I’ve visited it, many years ago).

 

[InThePew]

How often does something like this happen?

According to the oracle (Catholic Hierarchy.org) three times so far this year but before that the last time was in 2009! So take from that what you will.

Merging parishes is fraught enough merging dioceses would be administratively nightmarish for two reasons: people and money. The new diocese inherits all of the assets and liabilities of its predecessors which would include payroll and clergy healthcare/retirement care responsibilities. At the same time, there’s also the need to address the double-ups: the new diocese doesn’t need two of everything (except possibly cathedrals because things aren’t just bigger in Texas) so this is going to put some people out of a job. While there may be more people and priests demographics also have to be taken into account. Finally, how smoothly it all goes (or doesn’t) very much depends on the characteristics of the two dioceses and how similar their respective policies / approaches are. In some cases two diocese may have worked closely for years, in other they may barely be on speaking terms!

 

[Phemie]

Happened to ours in 2007.

Our diocese (Labrador City-Schefferville) which consisted of parishes in two Canadian provinces, was suppressed. The Labrador part of the diocese was added to another Newfoundland and Labrador diocese, (St. George’s) which was then renamed Corner-Brook and Labrador; the Northern Quebec part of the diocese was split between two Quebec dioceses (Amos & Baie-Comeau).

 

[Margaret_Ann]

(Please, for anyone who is unaware, come away from this with the knowledge that Virginia and West Virginia are two separate states, and not just that, but two different cultures .)

Most people don’t know that West Virginia seceded from Virginia during the Civil War (1863, if I remember right) and was pro-Union. IIRC, Lincoln immediately recognized them and WV got seats in Congress.

Are you in WV?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

(Please, for anyone who is unaware, come away from this with the knowledge that Virginia and West Virginia are two separate states, and not just that, but two different cultures .)

Most people don’t know that West Virginia seceded from Virginia during the Civil War (1863, if I remember right) and was pro-Union. IIRC, Lincoln immediately recognized them and WV got seats in Congress.

Are you in WV?

Not at the moment. I have long-standing ties there, and have some family members in Charleston. The cathedral there is very interesting, they have actually built a parish hall around the outer walls of the cathedral itself, with the stone walls left uncovered. Unusual visual effect. You can kind of tell that the part in the lower center of this photo was added on later (the six arched windows):

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It is a little more complicated than “West Virginia seceded from Virginia during the Civil War… and was pro-Union”. Like many things about West Virginia, it defies easy categorization. And the Capitol dome is patterned after the Hôtel National des Invalides in Paris — when I went to the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower (2010), I looked out and said to myself “that looks just like the West Virginia State Capitol!”.

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And the Hôtel des Invalides:

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[dochawk]

I’m assuming that there is another diocese around, as well?

Without a suffragan diocese, a diocese would not be an arch-diocese . . .

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I’m assuming that there is another diocese around, as well?

Without a suffragan diocese, a diocese would not be an arch-diocese . . .

There is. Fairbanks is suffragan to Anchorage-Juneau.

 

[InThePew]

Without a suffragan diocese, a diocese would not be an arch-diocese

There is such a thing as an Archdiocese with no suffragettes - Australia has two: Hobart and Canberra-Goldburn.

 

[Anesti33]

dochawk:

Without a suffragan diocese, a diocese would not be an arch-diocese

There is such a thing as an Archdiocese with no suffragettes - Australia has two: Hobart and Canberra-Goldburn.

 

[CRM_Brother]

I believe the last merging of “dioceses” in the United States was in 1977. The territory of Belmont Abbey (which stretched over most of the modern Diocese of Charlotte) was under the episcopal control of the Abbot of the Abbey from 1910-1977. While he was not an ordained bishop, he had all the authority of a bishop granted to him by canon law within his territory. So too were Territorial abbeys treated as dioceses under canon law.

The abbey was originally given the territorial status because the counties under its governance were so remote and their Catholics so few in number that the current diocese of Raleigh was not able to adequately provide for their needs. Once the roads improved and the number of Catholics increased in these counties, the territory was subsumed back into the Diocese of Raleigh. It grew so quickly that it was quickly broken off from Raleigh again and made its own diocese.

A similar situation is happening in Alaska. The diocese of Juneau was created to serve remote Catholic communities which were not able to be served by the Archdiocese of Fairbanks. As transportation and the number of available clergy rose, the Diocese was reassessed. In terms of Catholics, it was the smallest in the country with less than 11000 Catholics and only 7 priests as of 2019. It struggled to meet the needs of all its people and thus was taken over by the Archdiocese so that it could adequately cover all the needs of the Catholics now that transportation was much easier.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I believe the last merging of “dioceses” in the United States was in 1977. The territory of Belmont Abbey (which stretched over most of the modern Diocese of Charlotte) was under the episcopal control of the Abbot of the Abbey from 1910-1977. While he was not an ordained bishop, he had all the authority of a bishop granted to him by canon law within his territory. So too were Territorial abbeys treated as dioceses under canon law.

The abbey was originally given the territorial status because the counties under its governance were so remote and their Catholics so few in number that the current diocese of Raleigh was not able to adequately provide for their needs. Once the roads improved and the number of Catholics increased in these counties, the territory was subsumed back into the Diocese of Raleigh. It grew so quickly that it was quickly broken off from Raleigh again and made its own diocese.

Not to correct you, but the territorial abbey of Belmont only took in eight small, largely rural counties immediately to the west of Charlotte (and then finally only Gaston County, which borders Charlotte), it was by no means “most of the modern Diocese of Charlotte”. If you took a line and drew it straight down the state of North Carolina, the Charlotte diocese would take in basically everything to the west of that line, 46 counties in all, including not only Charlotte, but Asheville, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and dozens of smaller cities with Catholic parishes. North Carolina is one big, sprawling state, the second largest in area (not counting Florida) in the Southeast, but Georgia is more compact, whereas North Carolina stretches from the Outer Banks to a point farther west than Detroit, and not a long distance from the Central Time Zone.

 

[CRM_Brother]

Yes, at the time when it was subsumed back into the diocese of Raleigh, it did compose of just Gaston County, but I was told by the monks at Belmont when I went to school there, they originally had jurisdiction over pretty much everything north and west of the Abbey. They began running into problems because it sometimes took days for the priest-monks who were assigned there to return to the monastery. It was just that, over time, it the early communities sputtered out and they were left with those parishes, slowly ceeding land back to the diocese when they no longer had ministry in those areas. At the time of the dissolution of their territorial abbey status, they were considered the smallest diocese in the world.

I know there were many of these small Catholic Communities in the mountains of Western NC because it used to be part of my own diocese of Charleston SC and from the beginning, they had petitioned the Bishop of Charleston for priests to serve them. Those petitions even continued after the Diocese of Raleigh took over their ministry until the Territory of Belmont Abbey was established because their own diocese was not meeting their needs.

When I said "most of the modern Diocese of Charlotte, I meant that it’s autonomous ministry sprawled across much of the western part of the diocese. There were very little established parishes in the western mountains and the monks traveled almost to the Virginia line ministering in the early days. Canonically, any chapel established by the Abbey (however temporary) was under their territorial authority, even if it was outside of the land area of the Territory. The same principle is used today for the founding of new monasteries. Technically, those communities that the monks regularly visited which did not have a parish or diocesan mission were part of the Territory via the monastic chapel (usually in a barn or someone’s home) rather than the set geographic boundaries. This changed after the 1917 code of Canon Law and the monastic chapels officially became part of the Diocese of Raleigh and the monks were just considered visiting priests.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Yes, at the time when it was subsumed back into the diocese of Raleigh, it did compose of just Gaston County, but I was told by the monks at Belmont when I went to school there, they originally had jurisdiction over pretty much everything north and west of the Abbey. They began running into problems because it sometimes took days for the priest-monks who were assigned there to return to the monastery. It was just that, over time, it the early communities sputtered out and they were left with those parishes, slowly ceeding land back to the diocese when they no longer had ministry in those areas. At the time of the dissolution of their territorial abbey status, they were considered the smallest diocese in the world.

I know there were many of these small Catholic Communities in the mountains of Western NC because it used to be part of my own diocese of Charleston SC and from the beginning, they had petitioned the Bishop of Charleston for priests to serve them. Those petitions even continued after the Diocese of Raleigh took over their ministry until the Territory of Belmont Abbey was established because their own diocese was not meeting their needs.

When I said "most of the modern Diocese of Charlotte, I meant that it’s autonomous ministry sprawled across much of the western part of the diocese. There were very little established parishes in the western mountains and the monks traveled almost to the Virginia line ministering in the early days. Canonically, any chapel established by the Abbey (however temporary) was under their territorial authority, even if it was outside of the land area of the Territory. The same principle is used today for the founding of new monasteries. Technically, those communities that the monks regularly visited which did not have a parish or diocesan mission were part of the Territory via the monastic chapel (usually in a barn or someone’s home) rather than the set geographic boundaries. This changed after the 1917 code of Canon Law and the monastic chapels officially became part of the Diocese of Raleigh and the monks were just considered visiting priests.

Thanks, this was very educational. That is a fascinating part of the country and it has a very interesting history. If the rump Belmont Abbey quasi-diocese ended up consisting of just Gaston County, that would be very small in Catholic population indeed, couldn’t have been more than one or two parishes in the entire county. Geographically, there are dioceses about that size, possibly in Italy (in the US, not sure if Brooklyn and Queens put together would be smaller in area than Gaston County). The Catholic Church is growing by leaps and bounds in NC, as so many people from traditionally Catholic parts of the US move there (especially Charlotte and Raleigh) for career and educational opportunities, as well as Latino immigrants. Charlotte is a pretty nice place to be a Catholic, two parishes with Sunday Latin Mass, and TAN Books is now headquartered there (either Charlotte or Gastonia, not sure). Wouldn’t mind living there.

 

[CRM_Brother]

Belmont gave up Gaston County in 1971. It continued its Territorial Abbey status for another six years afterwards. At the time, the “diocese” just consisted of the Abbey and the college. The whole territory was about half the size of Vatican City.

You’re correct. Charlotte is a very nice city to live in and around. It was voted the happiest city in the US multiple times. They do have a large amount of Catholics but they are encountering an overcrowding of some parishes. I believe it is St. Matthew’s which has a whopping 10,500 families.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

This doesn’t answer the question posed with regard to the Catholic Church, but I can tell you that in the Church of Ireland there is a Diocese of Limerick, Ardfert, Aghadoe, Killaloe, Kilfenora, Clonfert, Kilmacduagh, and Emly. Understandably, it’s generally abbreviated to Limerick and Killaloe. Almost as impressive are the United Dioceses of Cashel, Waterford, and Lismore with Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin (known as the Diocese of Cashel and Ossory).