With the rollout of a sweeping plan to consolidate Catholic churches throughout the Archdiocese of Seattle, St. John Vianney Church on Vashon — a place of worship, contemplation and tight-knit community — could soon experience significant change.
For many in the 180 households that make up the parish, the practice of their Catholic faith has long been defined by timeless traditions: Mass, sacraments, and activities including rosary, Bible study, and celebratory gatherings including the church’s annual Salmon Bakes and Italian dinners.
Countless christenings, confirmations, marriages, and funeral Masses have been celebrated at the church, built on approximately 60 acres of property purchased by the Archdiocese in the 1950s when it seemed likely that a bridge would soon connect Vashon with the mainland.
And although that never happened, St. John Vianney has, throughout the years, remained Vashon’s largest faith community, serving not only parish members but also the wider community through charitable programs.
Last year, its chapter of the Society of St. Vincent DePaul provided approximately $100,000 in donations to islanders in need. A free firewood ministry helps warm the homes of low-income islanders, and Backpack Pantry, an independent program affiliated with the church, partners with the school district to provide weekend meals for families in need.
Almost continually throughout the past 25 years, the parish has been served by resident priests — including its present pastor, Father David Mayovsky — housed in a small rectory nestled near the church, available to administer all the rites and sacraments of the church to islanders.
St. John Vianney Church, said multiple parishioners who are knowledgeable about its finances, is financially stable, thanks to the weekly generosity of those who attend.
But much about the parish could look different in the next few years, due to the arching plan announced last year by the Archdiocese of Seattle, to consolidate 136 parishes in Western Washington into 60 “parish families.”
According to the plan, only eight parishes in the Archdiocese, either run by a religious order or serving a specific cultural community, will continue to stand alone.
Vashon’s St. John Vianney — accessible by ferry only — is not among those eight exceptions. According to a final plan, announced by the Archdiocese in early February, St. John Vianney will now be grouped in a parish family with Holy Cross Church and St. Patrick Catholic Church and School, in Tacoma.
The next major step in the process will take place later this spring when pastors and at least one parochial vicar for each of the new parish families will be announced. Other more immediate changes will include changes in Mass and meeting times at some parishes, subject to the availability of priests serving multiple locations.
After that will come a long period of discernment and consultation between each of the parishes in the respective families, according to Helen McClenahan, chief communication officer for the Archdiocese.
“Each parish still remains a distinct parish with separate finances and finance councils, etc. until they develop a plan for how to join the parishes together as one canonical parish, which is estimated to be a three-year process,” said McClenahan, adding that this does not necessarily mean that a single worship space or church buildings will close.
“How parishes will join together will be very different depending on the needs and makeup of the parish family,” she said.
Father Mayovsky of St. John Vianney Church, said through an administrative aide that due to other commitments, he did not have time to comment on the plan, recommending that The Beachcomber contact McClenahan.
Partners in the Gospel
The Archdiocese’s plan, called “Partners in the Gospel,” is a strategic pastoral planning effort aimed at reinvigorating the local Catholic Church by addressing a number of factors, including a severe shortage of priests, declining Mass attendance in many parishes, and financial insolvency in many others.
A report called “Current Reality Presentation,” released by Partners in the Gospel in June of 2023, charted a precipitous decline in the pre-pandemic years of 2010-2019 of Catholic observance in the Archdiocese, including a substantial drop in Mass attendance and participation in the sacraments, including 30% fewer baptisms and 18% fewer Catholic weddings.
Attendance of faith formation education programs — known as “Sunday School” in Protestant denominations — also declined from 2010-2019, before these programs were even more severely impacted by the pandemic.
The report cited pressing financial woes, saying that 64% of its parishes currently operate at a deficit, and analyzed retirement trends for pastors — estimating that by 2032, only 60 non-retirement-aged Archdiocesan priests would be available to be pastors.
“Of course, statistics do not present a full picture of life and vitality in our local Church,” said Archbishop Paul D. Etienne, in a pastoral letter announcing the Archdiocese initiative. “Wonderful things are happening, with God’s grace, every day. Nevertheless, we would be failing in our call to ‘read the signs of the times’ if we simply ignored the trends, made light of the dramatic changes we are witnessing, and kept on doing what we have always done. The status quo is no longer an option. The realities of our situation call for a new response — indeed, for a revisiting of parish life.”
Islanders respond
Island Catholics have long known about the plan, first announced by the Archdiocese in January of 2023.
Last summer and fall, Partners in the Gospel solicited broad feedback following the release of its preliminary plan for parish families, which at that time included grouping Vashon’s St. John Vianney with three parishes spread out across the Kitsap Peninsula: St. Nicholas, in Gig Harbor; St. Gabriel, in Port Orchard, and Prince of Peace, in Belfair.
According to longtime parishioners Laura Wishik, John McCoy, and Constance Walker, their fellow parishioners pushed back against that idea at listening sessions held in September and October — citing unreliable and expensive ferry service, the loss of a unique and vibrant parish culture, and the possible loss of a resident priest, resulting in fewer Masses, sacraments, funerals, and other functions.
Parishioners also expressed concern that St. John Vianney — a financially sound parish — would be called upon to subsidize other parishes.
“They listened to us, and came back with the suggestion to group us with two parishes in Tacoma,” said Wishik, a member of the pastoral council of St. John Vianney.
While Wishik said that parishioners had told the Archdiocese that “we like the way things are now,” she also emphasized the long timeline of Partners in the Gospel, saying there was still much to learn as it unfolds.
Walker, in a phone interview, was more critical of Partners in the Gospel, suggesting that local parishes were paying the price for problems brought about by the rigidity of the Roman church.
“I am not anti-Cathollic, but I am [against] the antiquated Catholic bureaucracy,” she said. “The sexual abuse by priests took care of the young boys in the generation that would have been our up-and-coming priests of today, and the position of the church that women are not allowed or worthy to serve as priests — nor are clergy allowed to marry — has taken care of others that would serve as priests.”
Walker said that she was hurt by the Archdiocese’s decision not to recognize St. John Vianney as a standalone parish.
“I feel that the community we’ve worked so hard to build here on the island — it feels like, to me, that is not valued in the eyes of the Archdiocese, because they thought nothing about tearing it apart,” she said. `
According to a transcription of listening sessions facilitated by McCoy, which drew more than 70 St. John Vianney parishioners on September 30 and October 8, Walker was not alone in her suggestion that the church should reform.
McCoy’s one-page summary of “Hopes and Opportunities” discussed in the sessions detailed recommendations that the Archdiocese address the priest shortage by reviving the diaconate program for men and women, ordaining women and married men, and recruiting “second-career” lay people to be church leaders.
The summary also detailed an “overwhelming concern … that Vashon’s geographic isolation, the ferries, and travel time [would] make joining an off-island parish family very difficult.” Parishioners feared “the loss of a unique, vibrant parish culture,” according to the summary.
But a summary of a third listening session, held in December after parishioners were asked if they would prefer to be grouped with Holy Cross and St. Patrick Church in Tacoma, sounded more hopeful notes — with some parishioners saying that joining with Tacoma parishes would be a better cultural fit and that others considered it a plus to be linked to St. Patrick’s school.
Still, parishioners at that listening session expressed a litany of concerns about how creating a thriving parish family could be possible given the need for expensive and time-consuming ferry commutes.
And one parishioner, according to the transcript, expressed another worry — that the change would cause “splintering [of] our community between those who like the change (merging with Tacoma), and those who think St. John Vianney needs to be a standalone parish.”
McCoy, in a phone interview, said that he had another idea that was perhaps too “radical” for some of his fellow Catholics — to find ways to join together with other island Christians to create a more vibrant community of faith on Vashon.
Noting that attendance at many mainstream Protestant island churches had still not recovered after being deeply impacted by the COVID pandemic and that all congregations island-wide were aging, McCoy suggested an ecumenical approach to preserve and build the different Christian communities of faith on Vashon.
“We think we have more in common than we disagree on,” he said.
Documents detailed in this article can be found at the website for Partners in the Gospel and under the Partners of the Gospel banner at stjohnvianneyvashon.org.
