The voluntary work of laypeople in the Catholic Church should not end at the parish boundaries, says Dean Martin Ringhof. Things could also be tight when it comes to finances and personnel.
Schwindkirchen
– The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising wants to give pastoral care more impetus with a deanery reform. That's why the Erding and Dorfen deaneries were merged at the beginning of the year. At the spring general meeting of the deanery council on Tuesday in the Schwindkirchen parish hall, Dean Martin Ringhof, pastor in St. Wolfgang, presented the new structures to the parish councilors from the district. There are currently 120 deanery councilors, all of whom will remain in office until the next parish council election in 2026. “What will happen next, whether it will be slimmed down, has not yet been decided,” said the dean, who was introduced into office by Cardinal Reinhard Marx at the beginning of the year.
“I am happy and proud that we have formed a team that is now gradually getting started,” explained Ringhof. He is the supervisor for the employees in the dean's office and at the same time the direct contact person on site. There is also a permanent dean's office in St.Vinzenz in Klettham.
It's about the individual parishes working better together and not just "muddling along, but rather pooling their resources," said the Catholic priest. Of course, this also applies to finances and personnel, which will decline massively in the coming years, he believes.
“Our watchword is the best possible pastoral care,” says Ringhof. Youth, senior citizen and sick pastoral care relies on committed volunteers. “The focus is on networking.”
There are currently around 71,000 Catholics in the Erding district who receive pastoral care in 43 parishes and eight branches. “We want to bring specific people in specific situations together with the Gospel,” says Maria Gleißl, who is responsible for pastoral care for the sick in the district. This applies not only to believers who belong to the church, but also to everyone who has “internally or externally” distanced themselves from the Catholic Church.
Gleißl said that the church is not an end in itself, but must keep an eye on all people and make appropriate offers, so in the future it should be “service-oriented”. The pastoral officer and her team offer patients psychological support in the clinics in the district. Help for relatives is also on her agenda. Even in the hospice, spiritual impulses are increasingly requested by patients, said the employee of the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising.
Andrea Schirnjack is in charge of pastoral care for seniors in the Erding deanery. She is responsible for pastoral care in retirement homes and looks after relatives of dementia sufferers. Anton Emehrer heads the youth pastoral care in the social area. He also welcomes the structural change and sees it as an opportunity for altar boys to come together across the district, for example, to take part in projects across their own parish boundaries.
It is inevitable that the diverse tasks in the communities will increasingly depend on volunteers. “We want to take the volunteers with us – at eye level,” assured Gleißl, who even spoke of a paradigm shift.
Balthasar Nußrainer, chairman of the merged dean's council, is now officially part of Dean Ringhof's team. Nußrainer called for equality among pastors. Pastors and pastoral officers have the same degree but different powers. The Isen parish council chairman promised his colleagues from neighboring communities that the position of women in the Catholic Church will continue to be his topic. The fact that as a layman he now sits at the same table as Cardinal Marx, the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, at least offers him the opportunity to repeatedly draw attention to these grievances.
The opportunity for co-determination for volunteers is to be enhanced with the deanery reform. “We are all the future,” summarized Wambacher parish councilor Markus Tremmel: “The full-time employees will give us impulses, but we volunteers will have to do the rest ourselves in the future.”
The celebration will take place together on Friday, April 26th, at the opening service of the new deanery in St. Johannes Erding at 7 p.m. with Auxiliary Bishop Wolfgang Bischof. Afterwards there will be a standing reception in the Johanneshaus.