Is it a building full of antique stained glass windows and the scent of incense?Is it the families who fill the wooden pews?
Or is it the priest who baptizes the young and comforts the dying?
When the Rev. Joseph Mauritzen retires, St. Joseph's Church in Woods Hole will lose its full-time pastor.
Parishioners and religious leaders from the Fall River Catholic Diocese will have to redefine what a parish is in the next few years, as they prepare to lose an estimated 50 percent of priests through retirement, death and the lack of people willing to go into the vocation.
This week, representatives from every Catholic church on the Cape and Islands have been invited to attend a session with diocese officials to talk about the mission of the church and plans for the future.
Every parish has been asked to have a council that will examine the parish's fate.
The change could be as severe as shuttering churches with fewer families.But community leaders say it won't be all loss. It will be about reinvigorating church communities by combining parishes so leaders can pro- vide better services to parishioners.
''It's renewal in a good sense,” said the Rev. David Andrade, director of the diocese's pastoral planning office. ''But in any kind of renewal, there is change, and that is the tough part.”
By 2015, diocese leaders estimate they will have only 60 priests for 95 parishes. Today they have 120 priests. That lack of clergymen will force the diocese to make tough decisions about closing parishes, splitting one priest between several churches, or turning some parishes into missions.
Diocese leaders are asking parish councils to help them make those decisions to ease the transition. Andrade, who is pastor of a Fall River church that combined three separate parishes in 2000, said it's a better planning model.
''It would have been so much better if the people here in this neighborhood had come to it themselves,” Andrade said.
In Woods Hole, parishioners have long seen this day coming when they might have to give up their church.
The tiny St. Joseph's parish - just 15 rows of pews to fit the 240 member families - may become a mission church to St. Patrick's Church on Main Street. One thing is certain: when the current pastor, the Rev. Joseph Mauritzen, retires, there will be no resident priest for the church.
It's a reversal of roles for the Falmouth churches. A century ago, it was St. Joseph's that acted as parent church for Catholics around the Cape.
The Woods Hole church was built in 1882 by a local businessman for his immigrant workers. As the Catholic population swelled in the ensuing decades, according to ''The Book of Falmouth,” St. Patrick's on Main Street was built as a mission church.
The St. Joseph's pastor said Mass at churches around the Cape.
With the Woods Hole church turning 125 years old this summer, the parishioners had planned a $1 million renovation to tear down acoustical tiles and restore the ceiling that was once stenciled by an Italian artist.
''These people have gone through so much in the past few years, it was like therapy for them,” said Mauritzen, referring to the embezzlement conviction of the parish's former pastor, the Rev. Bernard Kelly.
But Fall River Bishop George Coleman told the parish they couldn't spend $1 million to renovate a church with an uncertain future. It came as a blow. Mauritzen said he realizes this was a decision the bishop had to make.
''I think people understand we have to be obedient to the bishop,” he said.
Some may be resigned to change, but it won't come easy for everyone.
''What they were hoping to do was let people self-diagnose the problem,” said Brian Clifford, who represented his East Sandwich parish, Corpus Christi, in the last round of pastoral planning a few years ago. ''That is probably not going to happen because everyone has a dog in the race and they don't want their church to close.”
The planning process takes into account what Andrade calls the ''vibrancy” of a parish - the quality of the services provided, how many families attend Mass, the number of baptisms versus funerals.
It may be good for churches to combine efforts to provide better adult education or youth ministry programs, said the Rev. Bernard Baris, of Our Lady of the Cape in Brewster.
''We are trying to see how we can work together,” he said.
Churches like Corpus Christi, a large congregation with a mission church just a few miles away, may lose its mission or have to reduce the number of Masses said at that location.
Unlike the Boston Archdiocese, which closed churches it could not afford to keep open, Cape churches have the financial resources to keep a church open in a limited capacity even if it does not have a pastor.
On the Outer Cape where the parishes are smaller, they may have to share a priest.
The Rev. John Andrews, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes, which is building a new church in Eastham, said he doesn't expect the diocese to replace him with another pastor when he retires.
''From Orleans to Provincetown is 26 miles,” he said. ''I would guess there would be one priest some day taking care of Orleans, Wellfleet and Provincetown.”
For the time being, Andrade said, all options are being considered.
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