United States: Report--Parish priest tells of the giant and souring drop in Catholics going to Sunday mass (and what he thinks should be done.)

[mdgspencer]

https://ucatholic.com/blog/parish-priest-faced-with-declining-parish-gives-homily-every-priest-needs-to-hear/

“In many (if not most) Catholic dioceses across the county, attendance for Sunday Mass has been in steep decline for the last 50 years,” he says. In his own diocese Sunday mass attendance has dropped by nearly 45% in the last 13 years.

[Catholics have been silent about this problem.]

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I know this is happening some places in a big way.

Meanwhile, the parish up the street just put an extra Sunday Mass on the schedule.

My question would be whether this parish is in an area suffering from a general population decline overall. Many of the parish I see with a drop-off in attendance are in such areas.

 

[EnglishTeacher]

I am sure it varies somewhat with region, but the main factor that I am seeing in our area is that the faithful older generation is dying off and there aren’t enough younger people to replace them. Some of our bigger parishes in town have a funeral close to once per week.

Our area is a great place to be Catholic, and there are many faith-filled younger and middle-aged folks, too–but we aren’t getting enough new Catholics, either by birth or conversion, to slow the population decline. Over the next 15 or so years, as the Baby Boomers age, we will probably see an even steeper decline in the Catholic population, unless something happens to reverse the trend.