Report finds fewer priests celebrating more Masses at fewer parishes

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More U.S. Catholics are attending Masses at fewer parishes staffed by a rapidly declining corps of priests, according to a new report on “The Changing Face of U.S. Catholic Parishes.”

Produced by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate for the Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership project of five national Catholic ministerial organizations, the report documents what it calls the “supersizing” of U.S. Catholic parish life.

“Bigger parishes, more Masses and ministries in languages other than English are becoming the norm,” said a news release on the report released July 18.

CARA found that the number of Catholic parishes has declined by 1,359 since the year 2000 to 17,784 in 2010, representing a 7.1 percent decrease. The 2010 number is roughly equal to the 17,637 U.S. parishes in 1965 and 1,836 fewer than the peak number of U.S. parishes in 1990.

catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1102844.htm
 
I believe that EF Parishes are surging in much bigger scale. Thanks be to God.
 
I also read testimony of guys who left the seminar because they found their teachings and behavior to be an abomination to God. This is happening in South America.
 
Two interesting points from the report:
“Although Mass attendance has declined in the long term since the 1950s, there has been no recent decline or increase in attendance in the last decade,”
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and
Total average weekly offering has grown by more than 14 percent in U.S. parishes over the past five years
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No doubt the ascendant anti-Catholic elements in the media will contiinue pushing the line that “since the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in 2002, Catholics have been marching out of the Church in droves and taking their money with them”. A line now clearly proven false.
 
I hope that’s true, but I’ve seen what seems to be less people the last 10 years. I have gone back to certain parish’s and seen, at least with my eyes, less people and less money in the collection (which could be from a variety of things) My parish now just had the priest say that this church used to have the pews full years ago, and now 100 or 150 at a popular mass time is the max. He is trying to have outreaches of different types but I do believe it’s where you live. We have had more Hispanics and families from Haiti I think.

We had to merge 2 church’s and I feel with the closing of one Catholic grade school, and less attendance at that church(many went from out of the city who went to the school) that church will close although many don’t want to think about it. It makes me sad and although I’m happy to hear about good news, when your backyard is not seeing those things, it’s hard to stay focused on that.
 
Our parish is seeing more younger couples attending which is great. We also send letters to members who have not been attending. Surprisingly, some have responded to the letter by coming to mass again. Others have talked to our priest and others just don’t respond. We have three masses during the weekend and just had a new church built and it opened in June in our Diocese.

One thing we do see is a poor turn out in the parents sending their children to Faith Formation (CCD). We probably get about 25% of the young people attending but those 25% are good students. We would like to see that number increase of course. We also offer a library of books, dvds, audios, etc., for free to our parishioners and others. Much of that is from the apologists and authors here at Catholic Answers. We are always looking for new ways to evangelize our own parishioners to increase their knowledge in the Catholic Faith.

Our parish also helps our youth group to attend Steubenville North in St. Paul. This year, our Diocese had to charter 7 buses to go. We have never had more than 5 so we are pretty excited about this.

I feel for the people that do not attend or sporadically attend church. I use to be one of them until I got involved. Actually, Steubenville lit a fire in me that can’t be extinguished. I was a chaperone and it was a life changing experience for me that is still continuing. A long way to go yet. I am a lowly sinner.
 
_Abyssinia said:


“Bigger parishes, more Masses and ministries in languages other than English are becoming the norm,” said a news release on the report released July 18.
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it is very hard to maintain a small parish. Many hands make the work light. Our parish is active but struggling with a small pool of people. But we are in a rural setting where you can’t really make a larger parish.​
 
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