How small does the church become before it disappears?

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I married into a family that was Catholic two generations back but has since gone all sorts of ways. The town in Louisiana they are all from is too small to be on a map and virtually no one lives there anymore.

Despite no longer living in the town and no longer being Catholic, this family is always trying to fundraise to keep the parish open. They keep asking us for money thinking we would jump on this cause because we are Catholic.

It takes everything in me not to scream “So go to mass! They don’t need money they need parishioners!”
 
I think the only solution is to batten down the hatches, remain true to Catholicism and start educating parishioners more. Where I live there is no education. We have ‘retreats’ but they are fluff and don’t do anything to educate. They focus on feelings and emotions and not on educating and helping us to understand the Catholic faith.

This forum has done more in a few weeks for helping me understand than my diocese has done in 7 years.

People leave the Church, in my opinion, because they don’t fully understand what it is.

I’m unhappy in my parish. Desperately so. But I don’t leave because I know the truth. You can’t know the truth and leave. So obviously people don’t understand.

Education is key. IMHO. Not entertainment, not fluff, not pandering. Just educate.

PS: I do think we will see even more numbers drop as cultural Catholics continue to leave. SO many people were raised Catholic in name only and have no respect for the Church or what it teaches because they were only required to come once a year for Easter and for their baptism and confirmation… Sorry if that’s harsh but it’s what I see.
 
the Church is contracting and may continue to contract as the chaff is blown from the winnowing floor. That which remains is the seed that has deep roots and grows strong and vibrant.
 
PJH_74 said:
  • Younger people are not as interested in maintaining infrastructure and prefer options that are more fluid, this is exacerbated by aging and over built church buildings. This is really true in Europe.
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This is true, in my American city, with local parishes. It also is true with the Knights of Columbus. My council has 2 enormous buildings, that essentially look like Senior Citizen centers. A generation or two ago, I think having a large IMPRESSIVE building may have been a drawing card to join a council. Today the council has gotten much smaller, and less active.

We don’t use the buildings much, (hardly any programs anymore) but are heavily dependent on rentals. But a great deal of of our money, and volunteer time, goes to maintaining them. We have to have bingo 3 times a week partly to pay the building expenses, and we have to keep the buildings partly to maintain bingo. The buildings became an end in themselves, but they do not attract any young people nowadays.

Some of the same people who oppose any kind of parish merger with half empty parishes also oppose selling our k of c buildings to move into one of the half empty parishes. But both the parishes and K of C are getting much older, in population.
 
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I’ve actually seen the opposite - young people in USA are attracted to beautiful old churches and in some cases, beautiful newer churches. They don’t really like worshipping in some space that looks like a basement with folding chairs. They will do it if they have to, but they love the pretty old church.

I can see where the attitude in Europe would be different because there is a beautiful, ornate church on literally every block and people take them very much for granted, plus the number of ornate churches is overkill and the public doesn’t want to pay to keep them all up. In the US, beautiful, ornate churches are harder to find, and many young people didn’t get to grow up with them, so they are valued more.
 
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It may sound good to keep parishes open at all costs. But as the number of priests shrank over 50 years in my diocese, they kept most parishes open by pulling priests out of schools, hospitals, and other settings where they were in touch with young people, and put almost every one in a parish.

Then they began assigning one priest to cover 2 half empty parishes. When a priest has to cover two parishes he has no extra time to develop any special outreaches, or new ministries. He is responsible for two of everything, so he does only what is necessary.

This is stressful for the priest, especially if he never had a calling to be a pastor in the first place.
 
Joseph Ratzinger was OVERWHELMED by the homosexual lobby within the Vatican and led to his resignation from the Papacy.

Read the recent articles by Rod Dreher.

www.theamericanconservative.com

Francis Abolishing Family Norms?

Cardinal: Pope leading us to embrace 'new kinds of families'
www.theamericanconservative.com www.theamericanconservative.com
 
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Unfortunately until the church does away with the whole celibacy nonsense it will keep getting worse.
There is no reason why a priest should not be able to marry. Saint Peter was married and had a daughter.
 
Sure, I can’t wait for married priests, so we can have all the joy of watching priests and priests’ wives cheating on each other, getting divorced and trying to get annulments. I wonder if Fr. Ripperger will say it’s okay for priests’ wives to work outside the home or does he expect Mr. and Mrs. Priest and the half dozen little Priestlings they will have given that they need to be “open to life” to all live on a priest’s normal salary?
 
They also weren’t used to saying mass in the vernacular or facing the people but somehow they got used to it (unfortunately)
 
Dreher is commenting on an organized betrayal of Christian values … and of Christianity itself.

Excerpt from an earlier post:

I have been reading various stories on how communists wanted to infiltrate the Catholic Church to change it from within. If they did try to do this, were they somewhat successful in changing the Church? Please give some information to me to either say yes they did or no they didn’t. Here is a sample of some of the information I had read:

Two former Communists, Bella Dodd and Manning Johnson, spoke on Communist infiltration of the Catholic Church. Dodd, an important Communist party lawyer, teacher and activist, converted to Catholicism in April 1952 under the tutelage of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Stating that the Communist infiltration was so extensive that in the future “you will not recognize the Catholic Church,” Dodd also asserted that:
Code: 
"In the 1930's, we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within."

"Right now they are in the highest places, and they are working to bring about change in order that the Catholic Church will no longer be effective against Communism."
Manning Johnson, a former Communist Party official and author of “Color, Communism and Common Sense” testified in 1953 to the House un-American Activities Committee regarding the infiltration of the Catholic Church:
Code: 
"Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations was set by the Kremlin ... the Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the (Catholic) Church by Communists operating within the Church itself. The Communist leadership in the United States realized that the infiltration tactic in this country would have to adapt itself to American conditions (Europe also had its cells) and the religious make-up peculiar to this country. In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available to them, it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries. The practical conclusion drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small Communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths conducive to Communist purposes This policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even our communist expectations."
 
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There is no church without the Eucharist.

So, if Jesus is to be with us always, the disappearance of the Eucharist will mean time is up.
 
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