Diocesan Strategy Plan and its implementation in Hook & Hartley Wintney

This document captures the discussion held at the parish meeting and forms our feedback to the Bishop and his team who are considering the implementation of the Diocesan Strategy.

Demographics: our population has increased substantially in recent years and Hook is a designated growth area in the Hampshire structural plan.

Young families, in particular young children are the future of our church. We are fortunate to have a vibrant group of young families.

Our three Mass-communities are friendly with active greeting at each Mass and liturgy group for the parish.

What happens to all those children when they reach 10+?

The Larger Pastoral Area (LPA) would afford better cohesion for establishing music groups, youth groups, peace and justice groups, etc. that are not currently sustainable.

Transport problems: there is no public transport in Hartley Wintney on Sundays.

As part of a LPA, St Thomas More (Hartley Wintney) will be on the periphery. There is a high probability that eventually it will lose Sunday Mass, as a consequence the parishioners will be dispersed and we will lose the friendly atmosphere.

We understand that Our Lady, Fleet already feels it has too many Mass centers, if St Thomas More becomes part of the same LPA will it be closed completely?

If administration of the LPA is centralized, how will this work in practice for our parish?

Will there be active management of present parishes?

Without a full time priest, the parish will lack cohesion. It will be a real challenge to keep the community together.

We have village-based communities where people have chosen to live outside the towns of Basingstoke, Fleet and Reading. Road and rail transport is mostly south west to north east along the Southampton / London axis. Bus transport is minimal during the week and non-existent at weekends. Most people shop locally in Hook for groceries and from the Hook end of the parish focus on Basingstoke for other shopping and leisure, the Hartley Wintney end tend to gravitate towards Fleet.

Fundamental problem is shortage of priests. What are we doing to address this?

LPAs will increase work for priests and spread the work over a larger area but should provide better pastoral support for them if they share living accommodation.

If Sacred Heart, Hook and St Thomas More stay together in the short-term it would continue to work. But if we lost our priest, it would be very difficult for a priest to travel out from Basingstoke to service Hartley Wintney in the long-term.

It was strongly felt that community spirit would be lost if the two churches were separated.

It is difficult to maintain a community if there is no weekly Sunday Mass.

The teenage children in Hartley Wintney go to school with the children of Hook (Robert Mays is the main school for both areas) providing a social focus.

If St Thomas More join the Fleet / Aldershot LPA they will lose their voice.

We are 11 villages as opposed to Basingstoke being a large town. The overwhelming needs of the huge numbers attending services in Basingstoke would always take precedence over the minority of the smaller Mass centers.

Many people will just not make the effort to travel greater distance to Mass.

Are we monitoring other dioceses that are going through similar processes?

LPA does give the possibility for Youth groups, young peoples music groups to be more lively and interesting due to the larger number of youth to be targeted.

Priests will be overstretched, how will they fit in other services, such as funerals (problems already exist in this area)?

Why can’t we bring priests in from Africa, Philipines and other countries where the Church is growing and there are a large number of priests?

From Sacred Heart, Hook it takes 12 minutes by car to the new church in Basingstoke

Is it possible to arrange a minibus (borrowed from one of the schools or similar) to take older parishioners or those who do not have transport? We tried this in the past but found the insurance, co-ordination and administration too complicated.

The issue of car parking in Basingstoke was raised and it was stressed that the new church would have good parking facilities.

We would be strangers in any other Mass center.

If we do not have a Sunday service, the community will die. No Mass = no community.

We fear both our churches will be closed.

St Thomas More members spoke of past experiences of when they were part of Fleet parish. They were unheard and fear that the same will happen again.

Sacred Heart members felt they would be dominated by Basingstoke (Holy Ghost).

Can we be a community with Basingsoke? Past shared events, confirmation programs were well organized but many felt that our parish had been relegated to low priority and preference given to Basingstoke parishioners re seating arrangements. This may have been due to the large number of candidates. Generally the impression was that the experience had not enjoyed. We would prefer to keep celebrations of first holy communion and confirmation within our parish.

We, the laity, are going to have to develop our communities for ourselves as the priests’ role will be primarily spiritual leaders.

It was stressed that there would be no guarantees, that all liturgical and administrative arrangements need to be worked out within the LPAs, taking all the communities into consideration.

It would have been helpful to have had guidelines on how the administration of the LPA will work.

For our parish, 26 people were present, including Fr. Danny, the chair and minute taker. This represents about 10% of the parish. Concern was expressed that others did not attend because they believed that the whole process was a ‘done deal’ and therefore the meeting was pointless. Others are confident that the Bishop will take notice of what parishioners want.

General belief held that we need to co-operate as a parish and with the neighboring parishes to make it work.

Parishes as they stand now should have equal say with the LPA.

It is right that the LPA should center around schools, hospital, etc.?

We support the idea to have a lay person (salaried) to act as coordinator to run the parish, attend meetings, etc. A person who would be involved spiritually and work with the priests to develop the parish.

What is the timescale? When is it going to happen? Indicated in the Diocesan literature- implementation starts Autumn 2006.

It was difficult to be precise without knowing what the actual structure of the LPA would be.

We really do want a Mass every Sunday in our church to keep our community alive.

The people from Hartley Wintney thought that if there was no Mass in St Thomas More the community would drift to several different Mass centers. Yately, Fleet, Farnborough.

Document was very clear that there would be a collaborative team led by a priest.

At end of meeting we took a vote on whether those present thought the diocesan proposal to split the parish between Basingstoke LPA and Fleet / Aldershot / Farnborough LPA was satisfactory.

Those present from Hartley Wintney agreed that Fleet/Aldershot/ Farnborough was the most practical.

Those present from Hook agreed that Basingstoke/ Tadley was the most practical.

It was generally agreed that everyone would eventually settle into a routine and would choose the Mass center most convenient to themselves which would in itself bring about major changes to the parish as we know it today.

It was stressed that we should not assume the LPAs ‘will just take over’. When we have a model for management of the LPA we will be in a better position to evaluate our role within the new area