17 Parishes close July 1

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davy39

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Seventeen parishes in the Toledo, Oh diocese will close on July 1, due to the priest shortage, demographics, and lack of attendance. It’s really sad, but it had to be done. Is this going on anywhere else?
 
We’re still growing but the lack of vocations has caused our diocese to have one of the worse ratios of priest to parishoners in the country. Obviously, when Catholics comprise less than 4% of the population, there’s lots of room to expand.
 
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davy39:
Seventeen parishes in the Toledo, Oh diocese will close on July 1, due to the priest shortage, demographics, and lack of attendance. It’s really sad, but it had to be done. Is this going on anywhere else?
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:crying:
 
Less wastes too, and we can make a mass in a house, bad weater, good face
 
This is so sad. My old hometown church in Rossford, Sts. Cyril & Methodius, shut down in 1990 along with the other church, St. Mary Magdalene when they consolidated the two to form All Saint’s Parish.

We moved away from Rossford back in 1962 when I was a child, but my memories and heart were always there. As an adult, we’ve gone back home on quite a few occasions. It’s not that far from where we live near Ft. Wayne. Going to back to St. Cyril’s was always comforting, always provided a connection, and now it’s gone. I am sure that other people will feel the same about those parishes that are closing.
 
This is not unique to the areas in the nation where the population is not growing and the lack of vocations has been the most pronounced. It happened here in Pittsburgh in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Smaller and more rural dioceses will be the hardest hit.
 
It’s very sad. The church I was married in is one of the 17. It’s going to be very strange to go back home, and not be able to my “home” church anymore.
 
Parish closings and new parishes being created is simply part of the life of the Church.

Almost all major US cities have had a huge change of demographics - most of the population in the last 50 years has moved from the city core to the suburbs. While I hate to lose old and often beautiful church buildings - it doesn’t make sense to keep a parish with 50 families and another parish 3 blocks over when you have parishes with 3000 families in the suburbs and the parishes are miles apart.
 
Yes, I understand that perfectly. It doesn’t ease the little bit of heartbreak or whistfulness that we experience, though. That was the Church where my parents were married and the one where all of their children were baptized. My sister and I received our 1st Communion there and my sister was confirmed there. When we moved to Illinois, we did not get the same sense of devotion in the congregation (mainly of French-Canadian descent) nor was there the active community at the local parish that we transferred to compared with my old (now closed) Church in Rossford which was mainly a Slovak community and was very active and devout.
 
Our parish bulletin had a prayer about realignments in the Archdiocese of New York. I sense that it is Cardinal Egan’s way of letting us know that more parish closings and consolidations are coming. Wonder if it means ours is scheduled for change.
 
It’s the demographics - Catholics move to the suburbs and who’s left to fill the city churches?

I’m grateful that my Polish-American parish in Brooklyn, NY is still the old-fashioned comforting parish that it was when I was baptized there 62 years ago. The steady influx of immigrants from Poland guarantees that.

But too many others just don’t have the parishioners, Americans or immigrants, to keep the parishes going. It’s very sad. There’s something that can’t be replaced when a 100-125 year old parish has to close.
 
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