The diocese’s pastoral planning survey, part of a larger diocesan pastoral planning process, has garnered a significant number of responses since it was released in July.
With the support of the Catholic Leadership Institute, Bishop Earl Fernandes engaged in pastoral planning to identify actionable goals to address his four priorities: vocations, evangelization, Catholic education and formation, and social outreach.
Information will be gathered from individual interviews and focus groups. Feedback was additionally extended to all Christian faithful in the diocese who are invited to participate via a survey.
As of the end of August, the survey received nearly 1,400 responses. Females ages 55 and older constituted the largest response demographic.
Father Michael Hartge, diocesan vicar general and moderator of the curia, said the responses have been encouraging and present an opportunity for a more unified, coordinated effort in addressing the bishop’s priorities.
“I want to continue to encourage people to fill it out and give us their thoughts on how we’re doing in these four priorities right now, so we can read those with the other feedback that we anticipate getting and hopefully come up with some good actionable items for our four pastoral priorities,” Father Hartge said.
For vocations, responses noted good promotion through seminarian postcards that are distributed in the diocese and offer information about the men in formation for the priesthood. Others highlighted the opportunity to visit and tour the Pontifical College Josephinum.
Suggestions included better promoting positive aspects of religious life.
For Catholic education and formation, participants mentioned Theology of the Body – a series of addresses by Pope St. John Paul II on the redemption of the body and sacramentality of marriage – as being helpful, and implementing programs and trainings to help schools and families evangelize.
Deeper formation opportunities for young adults was mentioned as being in need of improvement. Others suggested better promotion of the diocese’s Emmaus Road Scholarship to make Catholic schools more accessible and attractive to families.
Responses also mentioned challenges with accessibility to Catholic schools outside of Franklin County due to density and distance.
“That tells us that there might be a demand for more, possibly looking at where we could have more schools in the diocese,” Father Hartge said.
As part of the pastoral planning process, an envisioning team compiled names of people to invite to various focus groups. Groups will consist of between eight and 10 people.
The team identified priests, permanent deacons, young adults, elementary school teachers, and Fellowship of Catholic University Students, Saint Paul’s Outreach and Damascus Catholic Mission Campus missionaries in the diocese.
Focus groups can talk through issues mentioned in the online survey. They will be interviewed through a virtual 90-minute session.
“It’s a different avenue to be able to, in real time, drill down on what people mean when they answer a question, and how can they flesh out some more of that?” Father Hartge explained.
“We’ll also be conducting some individual interviews with a select group of people as well.”
Focus groups and interviews will take place throughout September as part of the data gathering phase. The survey will continue to be open through Oct. 17.
Certain individuals will soon be invited to participate in focus groups.
The envisioning team also completed a pastoral card sort activity. From it, they identified six opportunities for the diocese to increase its efforts in responding to the bishop’s four pastoral priorities.
The six identified opportunities were given to the new Diocesan Pastoral Council, which, Father Hartge explained, is a larger and more stable participatory body. The council discerns and offers wisdom on the bishop’s pastoral concerns in the diocese.
The council will be tasked with creating a purpose statement for the five-year pastoral plan and a brief vision statement.
“We wanted their participation in helping us alongside the envisioning team to come up with these two brief statements that can help then be a way to measure our goals that are going to come out from this,” Father Hartge said.
“We want our goals to be consistent and in line with the purpose and vision statement for this pastoral plan.”
Pastors have been asked to identify a parish point of contact. The contact will help to promote and encourage participation in an upcoming disciple maker index survey that will be released at the end of November.
“We’re in the preparatory phases for getting pastors up to speed about what that is and what their level of involvement will be in that,” Father Hartge said.
The disciple maker index survey was offered nearly five years ago in the diocese’s last pastoral planning initiative. It received more than 20,000 responses.
“We would like for a similar robust response so that we can really compare apples-to-apples and see how we have improved in our efforts of evangelization, in our efforts of encouraging people in their formation in the faith to be confident in the way they talk about the faith with others, and to see where we are with understanding of some points of doctrine,” Father Hartge said.
The survey is accessible online at Diocese of Columbus Pastoral Planning 2025-2026. A Quick Response, or QR code, is also available to scan and complete the survey.
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