By Mary Drier
Staff Writer
SEBEWAING — Parishioners who are opposed to the Saginaw Catholic Diocese’s Planning Tomorrow’s Parishes plan to close and/or combine some rural churches will have an opportunity to make their feelings known during a “Save our Rural Catholic Churches” event.
By 2015, the church’s plan is to have 56 parish communities, 24 churches for additional use and 29 churches for occasional use. Currently, there are 105 parish communities. To accomplish that in the Tuscola County Advertiser’s readership area: St. Pancratius in Cass City, Holy Family in Sebewaing, St. Agatha in Gagetown, and St. Michael in Wilmot will merge and form a new parish on July 1, 2014.
Holy Family will be an additional-use church with just weekend masses while St. Agatha and St. Michael will become occasional-use churches that will, with the permission of the diocese, be allowed to be open to perform marriages and funerals of current members.
A “Save Our Rural Catholic Churches” event will be 6 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 8, at Holy Family Catholic Church, M-25, Sebewaing. Participants to the event are asked to bring a lawn chair, a can of food for the food pantry, an open mind, and a willing spirit.
“It is a chance to make our feelings about tearing our churches apart known. It may help,” said one of the organizers of the event, noting she feels the changes “are ruining the Catholic Church in the rural area” because the churches are so far apart and a lot of people, especially the elderly, will stop attending because they feel it is too far to drive and won’t in the winter.