W
White_Tree
Guest
This is something both I and my old pastor have talked about quite a bit, so it’s definitely on both of our minds.
A few years ago, my parish did an analysis of financial contributions broken down by age group. The (perhaps unsurprising) result was that the majority of the financial support for the parish was coming from people in the much older demographic (post-retirement).
The church is in a working class area, so these are not wealthy people. The group consists almost entirely of people on fixed income.
This was concerning for the obvious reason that people in that demographic tend to die more often.
The Church has a supernatural component to it, but the institutions of the church have to operate in the natural world.
In some sense, it doesn’t really matter if there is a resurgence in religious fervor in 200 years if those institutions collapse in the next 20 years. They’ve already had to close a large number of Catholic churches and elementary schools in my diocese, and the enrollment at the Catholic high schools has declined precipitously even in the past few years. That means they’ve had to increase tuition (which is now almost $17,000/year), making it prohibitively expensive for a lot of families, and leading to even further declines in enrollment (and further tuition increases). It’s a downward spiral.
Part of the purpose of Catholic schools and religious education is to saturate people’s minds early and often with religion, so when they get older, and they start to come face to face with what life really is, and the suffering and emptiness inherent in this fallen world, they will look back on their childhood and try to reset back to the point where they knew happiness, and the Church will be a part of that.
But if the institutions have largely collapsed in the interim, generations of people will grow up without having that experience as part of their formative foundation. Such people, even if they did rediscover a yearning for God, might not necessarily use the Church as the outlet for that yearning if have no prior exposure to it.
Short term declines can have long-term, or even permanent, consequences. So yes, this is concerning, and it is a topic that weighs heavily on my mind, as well as my former pastor. He’s mentioned to me that he’s discussed this with the bishop as well.
A few years ago, my parish did an analysis of financial contributions broken down by age group. The (perhaps unsurprising) result was that the majority of the financial support for the parish was coming from people in the much older demographic (post-retirement).
The church is in a working class area, so these are not wealthy people. The group consists almost entirely of people on fixed income.
This was concerning for the obvious reason that people in that demographic tend to die more often.
The Church has a supernatural component to it, but the institutions of the church have to operate in the natural world.
In some sense, it doesn’t really matter if there is a resurgence in religious fervor in 200 years if those institutions collapse in the next 20 years. They’ve already had to close a large number of Catholic churches and elementary schools in my diocese, and the enrollment at the Catholic high schools has declined precipitously even in the past few years. That means they’ve had to increase tuition (which is now almost $17,000/year), making it prohibitively expensive for a lot of families, and leading to even further declines in enrollment (and further tuition increases). It’s a downward spiral.
Part of the purpose of Catholic schools and religious education is to saturate people’s minds early and often with religion, so when they get older, and they start to come face to face with what life really is, and the suffering and emptiness inherent in this fallen world, they will look back on their childhood and try to reset back to the point where they knew happiness, and the Church will be a part of that.
But if the institutions have largely collapsed in the interim, generations of people will grow up without having that experience as part of their formative foundation. Such people, even if they did rediscover a yearning for God, might not necessarily use the Church as the outlet for that yearning if have no prior exposure to it.
Short term declines can have long-term, or even permanent, consequences. So yes, this is concerning, and it is a topic that weighs heavily on my mind, as well as my former pastor. He’s mentioned to me that he’s discussed this with the bishop as well.