Regular readers Rafal and Adam have commented on my original LiŁ«dnas post.

Rafal in particular notes:

Does anyone keep statistics about how many RC churches have been closed in the United States in the past 20 years or so? I many areas that do not have a fresh supply of Catholics (immigrants) there seems to be a big number of them closed. How does that compare with number of PNCC parishes that have been closed/merged?

Rather than bury a long reply in the comments, I’m posting my reply here.

After some digging I found some information that speaks to Rafal’s question at Future Church. Future Church cites the source of the data as a study conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. The study was primarily concerned with the declining number of R.C. priests and religious.

Just about every R.C. website and commentator with an agenda has used this data to make their case. For R.C. traditionalists these numbers are indicative of the damaged caused by Vatican II. For liberals and quasi-liberals like Call to Action, Voice of the Faithful, and Future Church the numbers indicate that the R.C. Church needs to foster further change.

Regardless of the agenda, the numbers do have a story to tell. Here are some highlights for the period between 1965 and 2003:

Diocesan priests	-18.4830%
Religious priests	-36.8080%
Total priests	-25.5799%
Priestly ordinations	-55.6338%
Parishes	8.1873%
Parishes w/o a resident priest	453.7341%
Roman Catholic population	39.0351%

At first glance I see a declining number of priests, fewer vocations, more parishes, and more R.C. faithful. The combination of those factors plays out in huge increase in the number of parishes without a resident priest.

But lets scratch the surface a little.

There have always been unmanned parishes. In the 1960’s and prior they were the small rural parish, two or three nearby parishes in hamlets served by the same circuit-riding priest/pastor. The larger village or hamlet had the resident pastor and the smaller outlying town had a chapel. Sometimes these were seasonal parishes, serving an influx of vacationers in the summer. The 1965 count is probably a baseline for these types of parishes. This is not bad in and of itself.

The decrease in available priests, and the general aging of priests (see Latest Statistics on Priests) coupled with the increase in the number of Roman Catholics results in more parishes (+8%) and more understaffed parishes (+453%). That’s pretty obvious.

But you say, why more parishes? I hear about parish closings all the time.

I would say that the increase is the result of two things. First, the suburban build-out. There hasn’t been much discussion of Roman Catholic megachurches, but they do exist, right in your suburban community. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research gives a nod in this direction in The Definition of a Megachurch. I have two right near me. Christ the King and St. Madeline Sophie are within 8 miles of each other and probably pull in 2,000 to 4,000 people per parish per weekend. Our parish is often visited by people who need respite from the massive crowds. They feel they have lost the intimacy of their faith. Couple suburban build-out with the build-up of new R.C. parishes serving retirees in the Sunbelt and you can pretty quickly see the reason for the increase. Secondly, the effort to close R.C. parishes has been slow and painful. Closures have not overtaken building.

That will end. The 3,000 to 4,000 parishes without a resident priest will disappear. Dioceses such as Buffalo, Albany, Boston, Detroit, and New York have all undertaken multi-year restructuring reviews. They’ve taken a more-or-less business approach to the problems cited. From a business perspective they need to dump under performing assets and convert those assets into ready cash. In poor Rustbelt inner cities they will roll the parish properties to unsuspecting not-for-profits, preservationists, and inner city Evangelical or Muslim missions. In larger cities those parishes represent a dead asset sitting on property valued in the millions (see the case of Our Lady of Vilnius in New York City for an example – a Lithuanian immigrant landmark).

These closings, which are expected to be sweeping, will wipe out the growth trend and indicate where R.C. Church really is. I would expect a 4 to 5% net decrease in parishes in comparison to the 1965 baseline. The remaining parishes will be predominantly middle-class and suburban. Those folks will contribute to “Catholic Charities” to help their inner city neighbors, raising the drawbridge in the process. They might even contribute to the ‘missions’ in Africa and Asia, but will miss the missionary opportunity right in their own back yard.

Now there have certainly been PNCC closures and consolidations. The vast difference is that those closures and consolidations are bottom-up. The people of the parish decide and approach the Church with a plan, the hierarchy does not impose (or even suggest) a plan. That was Bishop Hodur’s vision – parishes that were self managing and accountable to the people in terms of their worldly possessions. You pay for it, you take care of it – to be a little crass.

What surprises me about organizations like Call to Action, Voice of the Faithful, and Future Church is that the PNCC offers them a ready made solution that meets 80 to 90% of their needs. If they seek accountability, input, a voice and a vote, and a married clergy, the PNCC offers it. If they want to manage their parish, have at it. Of course, they would have to agree with basic Catholic doctrine and teaching, and no, there won’t be women as priests and deacons or same-sex marriages or blessings, but if they desire Catholicism and democracy, the PNCC is the place.

To Rafal’s next point:

You should send letters to all the former parishioners of that parish inviting them to BVMC. I bet quite a few would come.

I would – but I really doubt that the Albany Diocese or the pastor over at St. John the Evangelist would give me the names and addresses.

I hurt for these people. I know that my childhood parish, the beautiful St. Casimir’s in Buffalo will probably close (three parishes within three miles of each other – St. Casimir’s being the oldest and hardest to maintain financially), as my father’s and grandfather’s did.

I imagine Ms. Richmere standing there next to the Lithuanian flag and the nativity scene all decked out in her Suvalkija costume saying —there’s nothing we can do about it.— At the age of 80 pray, pay, and obey was the mantra she learned. Change is difficult, and I find that people like her just stop going to church. Her children or relatives will bury her, perhaps without a church service, and she’ll be gone. I’ll remember her though – and all those disaffected and put out who said —there’s nothing we can do about it.— The sin is not their’s.

To Adam’s point:

…the PNCC would be more than able to take these people in or open the doors to a new parish. Sadly, Rome has probably scared them into submission.

Yes we would, but it takes a leap of faith. After 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 years of following the Pope and R.C. teaching, it is easier to gripe and complain, but remain comfortably inside, than to change. I don’t think that they are scared into submission. How many R.C. Church members do you know who are scared of their pastor, bishop, or the Pope? That baby went out with the bath water around 1969. Rather they are just comfortable and complacent. It’s not where any person of faith should be.

This blog is a means to get the word out, and the seekers have come, have written to me, and do care about the Catholic faith. Our door is open and you are always welcome – Sveiki atvykę.

From the Times-Union: Faith tinged with anger: Parishioners mourn as two churches in Watervliet celebrate their final Masses

Nationality defined Immaculate Conception, too. The church traces its roots to 1908, when Bishop Thomas Burke granted the Polish immigrant community permission to organize a parish and worship in their native language [not true – Latin was standard].

Much of that world no longer exists, as Razzano pointed out during a walk around his old neighborhood: The Polish-owned White Eagle Bakery; the Morelli Brothers Italian specialty shop across from Mount Carmel; the toothbrush factory. Every one — and much more — is gone.

True.

But the church remained a spoke that connected families to each other and to their shared past, a connection you could feel Sunday in the sobs of a 15-year-old girl.

Also true —“ the center of communal life —“ who’d of thought —“ a church?

Emily McFeeters, seated in an oak pew between her mother and grandmother, dabbed her eyes before the 9 a.m. Mass began.

“I was supposed to get married here,” she said. “My kids were supposed to be baptized in this church. I’m the last generation. I know it’s a little ridiculous to cry. But it means a lot to me.”

Emily had her eye on the future, a future that included the Church, centered on Christ. Will she ‘adapt’ or will she be lost? May God have mercy on her and her family —“ I feel for them because I’ve experienced it.

When decisions like this are made (read imposed) apart from the people (all the people – not just appointed yes men and women) there are real casualties. I image that if they asked Emily she could have developed a hundred strategies that would have allowed the parish to remain active and open. That’s what those without stilted thinking do, they imagine solutions outside the ‘norm.’

Sure, big ‘C’ Church is more than the local parish, but the local parish is where the rubber hits the road. The local parish is the place where the realities of life are lived, the continuum of communion is realized.

The folks in Toledo, who finally came over to the PNCC, made a pilgrimage through three R.C. parishes, each closed in succession, before they saw the reality.

The reality is that the top down ‘pontifical’ culture of the R.C. Church has separated the shepherds from the flock. The bishop does not know this girl, her life, or her hopes. Maybe the local pastor did, but the pastor in the new and improved mega-church (one parish, three locations, yada, yada, yada) won’t be all that connected.

The reality is that R.C. clerical culture is undemocratic and distant. The R.C. Church in the United States has a culture predominantly developed under the heresy of Americanism which ingrained itself in a hierarchical structure that ‘knows what’s best for you.’ (Note: the wiki article only covers the surface elements of the problem; see The Phantom Heresy? by Aaron J. Massey for a fuller exposition —“ and notice the seeds of today’s Am-Church problems).

In an extensive article on the American Catholic Church, The American Catholic Church, Assessing the Past, Discerning the Future, Anthony Padovano* states:

The second letter, Testem Benevolentiae (1899) took direct aim at American Catholic culture…

The encyclical condemns … “Americanism,” a general tendency to suppose that the “Church in America” can be “different from” the rest of the world.

Cardinal James Gibbons objects to the encyclical in a sharp letter to the Pope on March 17, 1899.

If one looks carefully at the encyclical letter Testem Benevolentiae, the five criticisms of Leo XIII go to the heart of American culture. He dislikes, as we have noted: change, free speech, conscience, pragmatism and initiative.

The submissiveness De Tocqueville observed and the Roman critique of America advanced even further because of the massive influx of immigrants. The immigrants were less adept with the American system. They did not, for the most part, have English as a native language; as Catholics, they cared less about an active voice in governing their Church than in surviving. A ready group of bishops moved in a sternly conservative direction, with Roman support.

The Roman Phase [1850-1960] stresses submissiveness, the papal critique of America and service to the immigrant community. In fairness, it must be noted that many conservative and even repressive bishops organized assistance for Catholic immigrants that was often healing and life-saving. A great deal of social justice work was expended on behalf of vulnerable and frightened immigrants. But these bishops, in turn, and many priests, insisted on absolute power and total obedience. They were brilliant organizers but also men of narrow theological vision. They tended to be belligerent, more impressive in conflict than in their capacity to reconcile.

John Hughes, Archbishop of New York, is typical. He dismantles the trustee system in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, boasting, “I made war on the whole system.” He added that “Catholics did their duty when they obeyed their bishop.” Even more ominously, he warns: “I will suffer no man in my diocese that I cannot control.”

Rome kept up the pressure. In Vehementer Nos, Pius X writes: “the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led and, like a docile flock, to follow their pastors”

The problem is that the ‘Roman Phase’ never ended. The window dressing, a result of Vatican II, has changed, but the underlying model of pray, pay, and obey remains.

In addition to the above, the American R.C. Church was built on the leadership of many clergy, shipped to the United States, because they had —problems— at home. While the true malcontents and problems stood out, the recent scandals point out that a lot remained hidden and suppressed.

In International Priests: New Ministers in the Catholic Church in the United States by Dean R. Hoge and Aniedi Okure, O.P. synopsized in International Priests in American History the authors’ state:

European bishops sometimes viewed America as a kind of Australia for wayward priests, a dumping ground for clergy of the lowest quality.

These two issues have combined into a clerical culture, which at its heart, is control based and influenced by the dysfunctional.

The bottom line is that people will do one of two things, they will simply stop going to church, or they will trot over to the next nearest R.C. parish, but remain apart from the community (at least for a couple years). This is the expected and time tested response, closing protests in Boston being the anomaly.

The disaffected in Watervliet (especially the Poles) will head over to St. Michael’s in Cohoes. There they will await the next closing under an immigrant pastor from Poland who was quickly installed and promoted after ordination in the Albany Diocese (that raises questions in my mind —“ aren’t there more senior priests awaiting parishes, why the special treatment).

Of course they could all attend the nearest PNCC parish in Latham or Schenectady —“ but it is a swim few will make.

Perhaps they would if they understood that they actually do get a voice and a vote in the management of the parish, that no one will close their parish without each person’s input (that’s why you never hear protests when PNCC parishes merge or move —“ the people decide for themselves).

Perhaps they are not used to a pastor who knows them individually? Perhaps their faith is dependent upon the pope? Perhaps, being treated as human beings, with thoughts, opinions, ideas, and the Constitutionally protected right to express such is too foreign? Perhaps the mentality of pray, pay, and obey is too deeply ingrained? Perhaps it is easier to stay home on Sunday?

For whatever reason, it is just sad, and I pray for these people, for all the Emily McFeeters who’s walk down the aisle will be something other than expected. We are here for you, follow Jesus’ direction to ‘come and see.’

*The conclusions of Mr. Padano’s article are suspect and carry a certain political agenda, but he raises valid historical points.